December 17, 2024
When we think about a U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming a criminal defendant’s right against self-incrimination, most of us think of Chief Justice Earl Warren’s famous opinion for the Court’s majority in Miranda v. Arizona, which gave us the well-known, “you have the right to remain silent” warning.However, I believe that the most eloquent statement of the reasons for the protection against self-incrimination embodied in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments was made by Justice Hugo Black in his opinion for a unanimous Court in the now largely forgotten case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940).The case is perhaps not entirely forgotten, as anyone who reads the Miranda decision will find Chambers v. Florida cited five times.
The Chambers case arose out of the murder and robbery in 1933, of an elderly man in Pompano, Florida.“Within the next 24 hours from 25 to 40 negroes living in the community including petitioners Williamson, Chambers and Woodward were arrested without warrants and confined in the Broward County Jail.”[Id. at 229].Four defendants were convicted, largely on the basis of coerced confessions of three of them.The case eventually made it to the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the verdicts and resulting death sentences.
The team representing Chambers and his co-defendants before the Supreme Court included future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, then serving as Special Counsel to the NAACP.
I will not repeat here at length, the full description in the opinion of the days of threats and intimidation to which the defendants were subjected, including by a so called “convict guard,” meaning a trusted prisoner who was present at all the interrogation sessions.Justice Black’s recap toward the end of the opinion will suffice:
“For five days petitioners were subject to interrogations culminating in Saturday’s (May 20th) all night examination.Over a period of five days they steadily refused to confess and disclaimed any guilt.The very circumstances surrounding their confinement and their questioning without any formal charges having been brought, were such as to fill petitioners with terror and frightful misgivings.Some were practical strangers in the community; three were arrested in a one-room farm tenant house which was their home; the haunting fear of mob violence was around them in an atmosphere charged with excitement and public indignation.From virtually the moment of their arrest until their eventual confessions, they never knew just when any one would be called back to the fourth floor room, and there, surrounded by his accusers and others, interrogated by men who held their very lives – so far as these ignorant petitioners could know – in the balance.The rejection of petitioner Woodward’s first “confession,” given in the early hours of Sunday morning, because it was found wanting, demonstrates the relentless tenacity which “broke” petitioners’ will and rendered them helpless to resist their accusers further.To permit human lives to be forfeited upon confessions thus obtained would make of the constitutional requirement of due process of law a meaningless symbol.”[Id. at 239-240].
Black explained the historical background of the Fifth Amendment in the most vivid terms:
“The determination to preserve an accused’s right to procedural due process sprang in large part from knowledge of the historical truth that the rights and liberties of people accused of crime could not be safely entrusted to secret inquisitorial processes.The testimony of centuries, in governments of varying kinds over populations of different races and beliefs, stood as proof that physical and mental torture and coercion had brought about the tragically unjust sacrifices of some who were the noblest and most useful of their generations.The rack, the thumbscrew, the wheel, solitary confinement, protracted questioning and cross questioning, and other ingenious forms of entrapment of the helpless or unpopular had left their wake of mutilated bodies and shattered minds along the way to the cross, the guillotine, the stake and the hangman’s noose.And they who have suffered most from secret and dictatorial proceedings have almost always been the poor, the ignorant, the numerically weak, the friendless, and the powerless.”[Id. at 237-238].
In a final burst of eloquence, Black explained why our law and our nation’s ideals require the rejection of forced confessions and the tactics used to obtain them.In doing so, he made reference to some of the dictatorships extant in the world at that time (early 1940) when the Second World War had already begun in Europe:
“We are not impressed by the argument that law enforcement methods such as those under review are necessary to uphold our laws.The Constitution proscribes such lawless means irrespective of the end.And this argument flouts the basic principle that all people must stand on an equality before the bar of justice in every American court.Today, as in ages past, we are not without tragic proof that the exalted power of some governments to punish manufactured crime dictatorially is the handmaid of tyranny.Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are non-conforming victims of prejudice and public excitement.Due process of law, preserved for all by our Constitution, commands that no such practice as that disclosed by this record shall send any accused to his death.No higher duty, no more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court, than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution – of whatever race, creed or persuasion.” [Id. at 240-241].
To me, Black’s words put in the shade all the tired platitudes and mindless flag-waving we so often witness and stand as the authentic voice of American patriotism.