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Constitutional Law - Due Process - Coerced Confessions And The Stein Case, Marvin O. Young S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Stein v. People of State of New York, a coerced confession case decided by the Supreme Court last June, at first suggests some rather startling propositions about the effect of a denial of procedural due process. Since Brown v. Mississippi in 1936 it has been well settled that the admission of a coerced confession into evidence in a state criminal proceeding contravenes the due process guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the confession cases subsequently considered by the Supreme Court it has been consistently held that the admission of an extorted confession vitiates the entire proceeding and renders the …