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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rethinking The Involuntary Confession Rule: Toward A Workable Test For Identifying Compelled Self-Incrimination, Mark A. Godsey
Rethinking The Involuntary Confession Rule: Toward A Workable Test For Identifying Compelled Self-Incrimination, Mark A. Godsey
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
For more than a century, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Bill of Rights as prohibiting the police from obtaining involuntary confessions from suspects through the use of coercion. If asked whether this involuntary confession rule is an understandable and workable doctrine, however, a noticeable percentage of judges, prosecutors, police officers, criminal defense attorneys and law professors would answer with an unequivocal no.
Basic questions concerning voluntariness and free will - whether it exists, and if so, when it exists, etc. - have puzzled philosophers for centuries and represent one of history's Gordian knots. Not surprisingly, judges have fared no …
Broken Promises And Involuntary Confessions: May A State Introduce Incriminating Statements Made By A Defendant As A Result Of Promises In A Plea Bargain Agreement If The Defendant Breaches That Agreement?, Bradford Mank
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
There is a substantial constitutional question concerning whether admissions made pursuant to a plea bargain that the defendant has breached are admissible under the fifth amendment's privilege against compelled self-incrimination or the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments. Courts have reached conflicting results in regard to whether such statements are voluntary.lo This Article argues that it is difficult to resolve whether such admissions are voluntary because courts have not provided a clear definition as to under what circumstances a confession is voluntary in accordance with the dictates of the fifth and fourteenth amendments.