The Morals of the Story
- Warren restates the constitutional issues at hand (using confessions from confined suspects), and admits that in the past, and in the modern day, brutal police treatment of prisoners has led to confessions. This is just wrong.
- Want an example? Warren says that recently in New York, "the police brutally beat, kicked, and placed lighted cigarette butts on the back of a potential witness under interrogation for the purpose of securing a statement incriminating a third party" (Opinion.I.2). Whoa.
- A huge statement comes next: "It is not admissible to do a great right by doing a little wrong…It is not sufficient to do justice by obtaining a proper result by irregular or improper means" (Opinion.I.5).
- Warren's quoting Lord Sankey, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 1920s and 1930s.
- Getting a confession by beating someone up is not the right thing to do.
- Check out this next part: Warren points out that if the police focus on getting confessions from prisoners, they might rely only on that, and not on finding other evidence.
- A fun quote: "If you use your fists, you are not so likely to use your wits" (Opinion.I.6).
- That's gotta be right up there with "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." We bet Johnnie Cochran was a big Earl Warren fan.
- Next Warren goes over a few past Supreme Court cases, and says that the pressure to confess can be mental as well as physical.
- A good example would be feeling like you can't leave until you confess—you're not being physically hurt, but you still feel pressured.
- Concerning mental pressures, the key point here is privacy. Warren says that being alone with a police officer puts you at a disadvantage, compared to say, being in your own home. When someone is alone with an officer in custody, the investigator has "all the advantages" (Opinion.I.13). And all the donuts.
- Warren gives an example of this interrogation pressure, with a story about an officer putting words in a defendant's mouth about a revenge killing case.
- Then we have another example of a different type of psychological pressure—the line-up. This is a tactic where the police place the accused guy in a line with other people, and pretend that someone else (a witness, maybe) is pointing him out as the guilty one.
- Apparently the defendant often confesses or admits to something, out of fear of being falsely accused of something else.
- One last example of psychological pressure, and this is a big one: Are the police guilting someone about remaining silent?
- Think about it this way: "Oh, you're using your right to remain silent? What do you have to hide?" A statement like that might pressure someone to talk rather than stay quiet.
- To sum up the last few points, Warren brings us back to the idea that being alone with the interrogator can result in coerced confessions. Getting the defendant alone is essential to police interrogation, and it even says so in police manuals.
- (By the way, these mental pressures are often referred to as the "third degree" throughout this case.)
- To back up the court's belief that these pressures are unfair (because defendants don't feel comfortable invoking their constitutional rights), Warren gives three examples from previous court cases where people admitted guilt rather than keep quiet because they felt a variety of pressures.
- If you're starting to feel lost in all of this court talk, remember that Warren is just trying to tell us that the police can put unfair, or even "evil" pressure (Opinion.I.36) on the accused in order to get them to confess.
- He's citing a lot of examples and police techniques to show how defendants might not use their constitutional rights when under physical or mental duress.