IEJS > Law > Procedure > Interrogations and Admissions

 Leading Cases on Interrogations and Admissions

• BRAM v. U S, 168 U.S. 532 (1897)
  Established that the privilege against self incrimination applies to out-of-court confessions. 
   
• MIRANDA v. ARIZONA, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
  "In the absence of other effective measures the following procedures to safeguard the Fifth Amendment privilege must be observed: The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him."
   
• UNITED STATES v. DIONISIO, 410 U.S. 1 (1973)
  "The compelled production of the voice exemplars would not violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, since they were to be used only for identification purposes, and not for the testimonial or communicative content of the utterances."
   
• UNITED STATES v. WADE, 388 U.S. 218 (1967)
  Forced participation in a police lineup does not violate the privilege against self incrimination. 
   
• GILBERT v. CALIFORNIA, 388 U.S. 263 (1967)
  "The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination reaches compulsory communications, but a mere handwriting exemplar, in contrast with the content of what is written, is an identifying physical characteristic outside its protection."
   
• PENNSYLVANIA v. MUNIZ, 496 U.S. 582 (1990)
  "Muniz's answers to direct questions are not rendered inadmissible by Miranda merely because the slurred nature of his speech was incriminating. ... Requiring a suspect to reveal the physical manner in which he articulates words, like requiring him to reveal the physical properties of the sound of his voice by reading a transcript, does not, without more, compel him to provide a "testimonial" response for purpose of the privilege."
   
• DOE v. UNITED STATES, 487 U.S. 201 (1988)
  "This case presents the question whether a court order compelling a target of a grand jury investigation to authorize foreign banks to disclose records of his accounts, without identifying those documents or acknowledging their existence, violates the target's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination."
   
• BOYD v. U S, 116 U.S. 616 (1886)
  A historical case in which the court determined that it was a Fifth Amendment violation to force a defendant to surrender private records.  Substantially modified by later cases.
   
• FISHER v. UNITED STATES, 425 U.S. 391 (1976)
  "The Fifth Amendment does not independently proscribe the compelled production of every sort of incriminating evidence but applies only when the accused is compelled to make a testimonial communication that is incriminating."
   
• SHAPIRO V. UNITED STATES , 335 U.S. 1 (1948)
  If documents are required to be kept by law for administrative purposes, then the Fifth Amendment does not protect their contents or the act of producing them. 
   
• CALIFORNIA v. BYERS, 402 U.S. 424 (1971)
  "Compliance with this essentially regulatory and noncriminal statute, where self-reporting is indispensable to its fulfillment, where the burden is on "the public at large," as distinguished from a "highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities," and where the possibility of incrimination is not substantial, does not infringe the privilege against self-incrimination."
   
• BRASWELL v. UNITED STATES, 487 U.S. 99 (1988)
  "The custodian of corporate records may not resist a subpoena for such records on the ground that the act of production will incriminate him in violation of the Fifth Amendment."
   
• CURCIO v. UNITED STATES, 354 U.S. 118 (1957)
  "Though the custodian of the books and records of a corporation or a labor union may not, on grounds of possible self-incrimination, refuse to produce them pursuant to subpoena, he cannot lawfully be compelled, in the absence of a grant of adequate immunity from prosecution, to condemn himself by his own oral testimony."
   
• MCCARTHY v. ARNDSTEIN, 266 U.S. 34 (1924)
  "The privilege is not ordinarily dependent upon the nature of the proceeding in which the testimony is sought or is to be used. It applies alike to civil and criminal proceedings, wherever the answer might tend to subject to criminal responsibility him who gives it."
   
• LEFKOWITZ v. TURLEY, 414 U.S. 70 (1973)
  "Under a proper accommodation between the interest of the State and the Fifth Amendment, the State can require employees or contractors to respond to inquiries, but only if it offers them immunity sufficient to supplant their Fifth Amendment privilege."
   
• MALLOY v. HOGAN, 378 U.S. 1 (1964)
  "The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state infringement of the privilege against self-incrimination just as the Fifth Amendment prevents the Federal Government from denying the privilege."
   
• BROWN v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, 297 U.S. 278 (1936)
  "The question in this case is whether convictions, which rest solely upon confessions shown to have been extorted by officers of the state by brutality and violence, are consistent with the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States."
   
• SPANO v. NEW YORK, 360 U.S. 315 (1959)
  "...petitioner's will was overborne by official pressure, fatigue and sympathy falsely aroused; his confession was not voluntary; and its admission in evidence violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
   
• ARIZONA v. FULMINANTE, 499 U.S. 279 (1991)
  "The risk that a coerced confession is unreliable, coupled with the profound impact that it has upon the jury, requires a reviewing court to exercise extreme caution before determining that the confession's admission was harmless."
   
• COLORADO v. CONNELLY, 479 U.S. 157 (1986)
  "Coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to finding that a confession is not "voluntary" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause."
   
• HAYNES v. WASHINGTON, 373 U.S. 503 (1963)
  A written confession signed "after he had been held incommunicado for 16 hours" was held to be coercive and thus a due process violation.
   
•  MINCEY v. ARIZONA, 437 U.S. 385 (1978)
  "The "murder scene exception" created by the Arizona Supreme Court to the warrant requirement is inconsistent with the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the warrantless search of petitioner's apartment was not constitutionally permissible simply because a homicide had occurred there."
   
• TOWNSEND v. SAIN, 372 U.S. 293 (1963)
  Coerced testimony is involuntary no matter whether physical or psychological coercion is used.
   
• LEGO v. TWOMEY, 404 U.S. 477 (1972)
  To admit a confession, the prosecution must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the confession was voluntary.
   
• LYNUMN v. ILLINOIS, 372 U.S. 528 (1963)
  A woman's conviction was based on  an oral confession obtained by threats of police officers that, if she did not "cooperate," she would be deprived of state financial aid for her dependent children and that her children would be taken from her and she might never see them again; the court held that the confession was coerced.
   
• BECKWITH v. UNITED STATES, 425 U.S. 341 (1976)
  "Although the "focus" of the investigation may have been on petitioner when he was interviewed, in the sense that his tax liability was under scrutiny, that is not the equivalent of "focus" for Miranda purposes, which involves questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way."
   
• HUTTO v. ROSS, 429 U.S. 28 (1976)
  "Respondent's confession to a crime was not per se inadmissible at his criminal trial as being involuntary merely because it was made as a result of an agreed-upon but unexecuted plea bargain that did not call for such a confession. Where the confession does not appear to have been the result of "any direct or implied promises" or any coercion on the prosecution's part, it was not involuntary."
   
• BREWER v. WILLIAMS, 430 U.S. 387 (1977)
  "The right to counsel granted by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments means at least that a person is entitled to a lawyer's help at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him, and here there is no doubt that judicial proceedings had been initiated against respondent before the automobile trip started, since a warrant had been issued for his arrest, he had been arraigned, and had been committed to jail."
   
• RHODE ISLAND v. INNIS, 446 U.S. 291 (1980)
  "The Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. That is to say, the term "interrogation" under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. The latter portion of this definition focuses primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police."
   
• BERKEMER v. McCARTY, 468 U.S. 420 (1984)
  "A person subjected to custodial interrogation is entitled to the benefit of the procedural safeguards enunciated in Miranda, regardless of the nature or severity of the offense of which he is suspected or for which he was arrested.  ...The roadside questioning of a motorist detained pursuant to a routine traffic stop does not constitute "custodial interrogation" for the purposes of the Miranda rule."
   
• OROZCO v. TEXAS, 394 U.S. 324 (1969)
  "According to the officer's testimony, petitioner was under arrest and not free to leave when he was questioned in his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. The Miranda opinion declared that the warnings were required when the person being interrogated was in custody at the station or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way."
   
• OREGON v. MATHIASON, 429 U.S. 492 (1977)
  "In the present case, however, there is no indication that the questioning took place in a context where respondent's freedom to depart was restricted in any way. He came voluntarily to the police station, where he was immediately informed that he was not under arrest. At the close of a 1/2-hour interview respondent did in fact leave the police station without hindrance. It is clear from these facts that Mathiason was not in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." 
   
• OREGON v. ELSTAD, 470 U.S. 298 (1985)
  "The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not require the suppression of a confession, made after proper Miranda warnings and a valid waiver of rights, solely because the police had obtained an earlier voluntary but unwarned admission from the suspect."
   
• NEW YORK v. QUARLES, 467 U.S. 649 (1984)
  "This case presents a situation where concern for public safety must be paramount to adherence to the literal language of the prophylactic rules enunciated in Miranda."
   
• ILLINOIS v. PERKINS, 496 U.S. 292 (1990)
  "An undercover law enforcement officer posing as a fellow inmate need not give Miranda warnings to an incarcerated suspect before asking questions that may elicit an incriminating response. ... Those concerns are not implicated here, since the essential ingredients of a "police-dominated atmosphere" and compulsion are lacking."
   
• KASTIGAR v. UNITED STATES, 406 U.S. 441 (1972)
  "The United States can compel testimony from an unwilling witness who invokes the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination by conferring immunity."
   
• MASSIAH v. UNITED STATES, 377 U.S. 201 (1964)
  "Incriminating statements thus deliberately elicited by federal agents from the petitioner, in the absence of his attorney, deprived the petitioner of his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment; therefore such statements could not constitutionally be used as evidence against him in his trial."
   
• PATTERSON v. ILLINOIS, 487 U.S. 285 (1988)
  "Petitioner cannot avail himself of the argument that, because his Sixth Amendment right to counsel arose with his indictment, the police were thereafter barred from initiating questioning, since he at no time sought to have counsel present."
   
• MAINE v. MOULTON, 474 U.S. 159 (1985)
  "Whatever else it may mean, the right to counsel means at least that a person is entitled to the help of a lawyer at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him."

This page available at: