Confessions

SIGNIFICANCE: Because confessions are of high evidentiary value at criminal trials, law-enforcement officers must secure the admissibility of the confession by utilizing proper interrogation methods in custodial settings.

Traditionally, any statement made by a criminal suspect, regardless of how the statement was obtained, was admissible at trial. This rule had the effect of producing unreliable statements, especially when the interrogators had used extreme force or brutality. Beginning during the late nineteenth century, American courts began to recognize that a confession was of little evidentiary value if it was not made voluntarily. To that end, the US Supreme Court determined that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination made involuntary confessions inadmissible.

A confession may be deemed involuntary in one of two ways. First, if the confession is obtained by the use of coercion, such as physical or mental torture, that confession is considered involuntary because it was not made of the suspect’s free will. Second, if the confession is obtained while the suspect is in a custodial setting and is not free to leave, that confession is presumed to be compelled and will be inadmissible at trial, even if police have not used coercive tactics. The US Supreme Court has set forth numerous procedural guidelines designed to assist police officers during the interrogation process in order to obtain admissible confessions while safeguarding suspects’ constitutional rights.

Voluntariness

Aware that the pressures one faces when subjected to police interrogation might stimulate false confessions and therefore undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system, the Supreme Court mandated in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) that police officers advise suspects in custody, prior to interrogation, that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them in court, and that they have a right to an attorney present during questioning. If a police officer fails to read these rights before questioning a suspect, the suspect’s statements will not be admissible at trial. In addition, any evidence obtained as a result of the illegal interrogation can be considered tainted and excluded from trial as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” It is important to note that the Miranda doctrine only applies to a suspect who is in custody.

The Miranda decision has come under attack. Some prosecutors and law-enforcement officers view the rigid guidelines as the primary reason for losing valuable evidence that could have been used at trial. Instead, they have argued that Miranda should be overturned and that the admissibility of confessions should be determined by the totality of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation. In 2000, however, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Miranda’s constitutional underpinnings in Dickerson v. United States when it held that Miranda rules are “concrete constitutional guidelines” that may not be overturned by legislation enacted by Congress in favor of the pre-Miranda case-by-case voluntariness standard.

While Miranda may appear to place significant restrictions on police interrogation procedures, it does not bar police officers from lying, using tricks, or cajoling a suspect into speaking. Although threatening a suspect would be considered coercive, and evidence gained in that way would be inadmissible, police may, for example, tell a suspect that evidence exists, even when it does not, in order to coax the suspect into confessing. Similarly, while physical mistreatment will render a confession invalid, an officer pretending to be angry to induce a confession or playing on a suspect’s sympathies may not be. In short, there is a fine line between what is considered coercive and what is not, and it takes a skilled practitioner to extract a confession in a manner that is constitutionally acceptable.

The Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel

Laws regulating admissibility of confessions do not only apply to police interrogation before trial. After a suspect is arrested and charges are filed by a district attorney, the suspect becomes a criminal defendant and is entitled to legal representation. In Massiah v. United States (1966), the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant may not be questioned by any police or officers of the court outside the presence of counsel. If any illegal interrogation occurs, or if any tricks are used, such as informants or wiretaps, to deliberately elicit a statement from the accused, that statement will be inadmissible at trial.

There is a major difference between the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The Massiah doctrine is offense-specific and only applies to those charges for which adversarial criminal proceedings have been initiated. It does not bar police from questioning criminal defendants about other cases. Additionally, if defendants are released from custody, they are no longer considered to be under arrest, and Miranda does not apply. In such cases, the suspects need not be advised of their rights prior to interrogation.

Bibliography

Dressler, Joshua. Understanding Criminal Procedure. 3rd ed. New York: LexisNexis, 2002. Print.

Inbau, Fred, John Reid, Joseph Buckley, and Brian Jayne. Criminal Interrogations and Confessions. 4th ed. Boston: Jones, 2001. Print.

Krishnamurthi, Guha. "The Case for the Abolition of Criminal Confessions." SMU Law Review, vol. 75, no. 1, 2022, scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4911&context=smulr. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Orth, John V. Due Process of Law: A Brief History. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2003. Print.

Stephen, John, and Earl Sweeney. Officer’s Interrogation Handbook. New York: LexisNexis, 2004. Print.

Zalman, Marvin. Criminal Procedure: Constitution and Society. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002. Print.