Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

March 2, 1945.—Referred to the House Calendar and ordered to be printed

Mr. WEAVER, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 43]

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 43) to safeguard the admission of evidence in certain cases, having considered the same, report the bill favorably to the House with amendments, with the recommendation that, as amended, the bill do pass.

The committee amendment is as follows:

Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert the following:

[ocr errors]

That the act of August 18, 1894 (ch. 301, sec. 1, 28 Stat. 416), as amended (U. S. C., title 18, sec. 595), is amended to read as follows:

"It shall be the duty of the marshal, his deputy, or other officer who may arrest a person charged with any crime or offense, to take the defendant within a reasonable time before the nearest United States commissioner or other nearby judicial officer having jurisdiction under existing laws for a hearing, commitment, or taking bail for trial, and the officer or magistrate issuing the warrant shall attach thereto a certified copy of the complaint, and upon the arrest of the accused, the return of the warrant, with a copy of the complaint attached, shall confer jurisdiction upon such officer as fully as if the complaint had originally been made before him, and no mileage shall be allowed any officer violating the provisions hereof." SEC. 2. The act of March 1, 1879, chapter 125, section 9, 20 Statutes 341 (U. S. C., title 18, sec. 593), is amended to read as follows:

"Where any marshal or deputy marshal of the United States within the district for which he shall be appointed shall find any person or persons in the act of operating an illicit distillery, it shall be lawful for such marshal or deputy marshal to arrest such person or persons, and take him or them within a reasonable time before some judicial officer named in section 591 of this title, who may reside in the county of arrest or if none, in that nearest to the place of arrest, to be dealt with according to the provisions of sections 591, 596, and 597 of this title."

SEC. 3. The act of June 18, 1934, chapter 595, as amended by the act of March 22, 1935, chapter 39, title 2 (49 Stat. 77, U. S. C., title 5, sec. 300 (A)), is amended to read as follows:

"The Director, Assistant Directors, agents, and inspectors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice are empowered to serve warrants and subpenas issued under the authority of the United States; to make seizures under warrant for violation of the laws of the United States; to make

[ocr errors][merged small]

arrests without warrant for felonies which have been committed and which are cognizable under the laws of the United States, in cases where the person making the arrest has reasonable grounds to believe that the person may escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the person arrested shall be within a reasonable time taken before a committing officer. Such members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice are authorized and empow ered to carry firearms."

SEC. 4. Section 397 of the Revised Statutes of the District of Columbia (D. C. Code, title 4, sec. 4-140) is amended to read as follows:

"The several members of the police force shall have power and authority to Immediately arrest, without warrant, and to take into custody any person who shall commit, or threaten or attempt to commit, in the presence of such member, or within his view, any breach of the peace or offense directly prohibited by act of Congress, or by any law or ordinance in force in the District, but such member of the police shall, within a reasonable time, upon such arrest, convey in person such offender before the proper court, that he may be dealt with according to law."

SEC. 5. Failure to observe the requirement of law as to the time within which a person under arrest must be brought before a committing officer shall not render inadmissible any evidence that is otherwise admissible; but if it be found by the trial court that any person under arrest, was not brought before a committing officer within a reasonable time this shall be prima facie evidence that any admission or confession made by him during the time of such unreasonable detention was made under duress.

In the Seventy-eighth Congress extensive hearings were held on a similar bill, H. R. 3690, which was subsequently reported favorably to the House.

THE NEED FOR SUCH LEGISLATION

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision in the case of McNabb v. United States (318 U. S. 332), on March 1, 1943. That decision established, without constitutional or legislative authority, a rule of evidence utterly new and variant from the standard set up by the Constitution of the United States in the Bill of Rights. In that part of the Bill of Rights known as the fifth amendment there is the familiar guaranty that no person shall "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Since the Bill of Rights became fully ratified as a part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791, this has been recognized as the supreme law of the land on this subject. Such recognition has been accorded by repeated decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and prior to the McNabb decision, it had become well settled that the sole test of admissibility of statements made by persons accused of crime while in custody was whether they were "made freely, voluntarily, and without compulsion or inducement of any sort" (Wilson v. U. S. (1896), 162 U. S. 613, 623; see also Lisenba v. California (1943), 314 U. S. 219, 239).

Whether an individual in custody had or had not been arraigned prior to the obtaining of a confession from him was never before considered a determining factor in considering its admissibility.

*

For the first time in legal history, in the McNabb case, the Supreme Court used section 595, title 18, of the United States Code as a factor in determining the admissibility of confessions. This section provides that it shall be the duty of the marshal or other officer who may arrest a person charged with any crime or offense, "to take the defendant before the United States commissioner or the nearest judicial officer having jurisdiction under existing laws, for a hearing, commitment, or take bail for trial * * A similar statute is found in 5 United States Code, section 300a, requiring agents of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation to take arrested persons immediately before a committing officer.

Thus, the Supreme Court has substituted a rule or law of evidence, written and adopted by a majority of the Court, for and instead of the Constitution. The Constitution says that involuntary confessions must not be admitted as evidence in any criminal case. Therefore, by plain implication and on ample authority, voluntary confessions should be admitted as evidence. Yet in the McNabb case the Supreme Court says:

Quite apart from the Constitution, therefore, we are constrained to hold that the evidence elicited from the petitioners in the circumstances disclosed here must be excluded. For in their treatment of the petitioners the arresting officers assumed functions which Congress has explicitly denied them.

The Supreme Court does not say that the confessions of the McNabbs were involuntary, but "quite apart from the Constitution," and although "Congress has not explicitly forbidden the use of evidence so procured," because the arresting officers failed to comply with the requirement that defendants should be promptly arraigned— no matter how voluntary the confessions may have been, no matter that the trial judge, jury, and the Supreme Court of Tennessee had held them to be voluntary, no matter that Congress had not forbidden, and no matter what the Constitution provides the confessions were inadmissible as evidence.

Mr. Justice Rutledge took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. Mr. Justice Reed dissented, as follows:

An

I find myself unable to agree with the opinion of the Court in this case. officer of the United States was killed while in the performance of his duties. From the circumstances detailed in the Court's opinion, there was obvious reason to suspect that the petitioners here were implicated in firing the fatal shot from the dark. The arrests follow. As the guilty parties were known only to the McNabbs who took part in the assault at the burying ground, it was natural and proper that the officers would question them as to their actions.

The cases just cited show that statements made while under interrogation may be used at a trial if it may fairly be said that the information was given voluntarily. A frank and free confession of crime by the culprit affords testimony of, the highest credibility and of a character which may be verified easily. Equally frank responses to officers by innocent people arrested under misapprehension give the best basis for prompt discharge from custody. The realization of the convincing quality of a confession tempts officials to press suspects unduly for such statements. To guard accused persons against the danger of being forced to confess, the law admits confession of guilt only when they are voluntarily made. While the connotation of voluntary is indefinite, it affords an understandable label under which can be readily classified the various acts of terrorism, promises, trickery, and threats which have led this and other courts to refuse admission as evidence to confessions. The cases cited in the Court's opinion show the broad coverage of this rule of law. Through it those coerced into confession have found a ready defense from injustice.

Were the Court today saying merely that in its judgment the confessions of the McNabbs were not voluntary, there would be no occasion for this single protest. A notation of dissent would suffice. The opinion, however, does more. Involuntary confessions are not constitutionally admissible because violative of the provision of self-incrimination in the Bill of Rights. Now the Court leaves undecided whether the present confessions are voluntary or involuntary and declares that the confession must be excluded because in addition to questioning the petitioners, the arresting officers failed promptly to take them before a committing magistrate. The Court finds a basis for the declaration of this new rule of evidence in its supervisory authority over the administration of criminal justice. I question whether this offers to the trial courts and the peace officers a rule of admissibility as clear as the test of the voluntary character of the confession. I am opposed to broadening the possibilities of defendants escaping

punishment by these more rigorous technical requirements in the administration of justice. If these confessions are otherwise voluntary, civilized standards, in my opinion, are not advanced by setting aside these judgments because of acts of omission which are not shown to have tended toward coercing the admissions. Our police officers occasionally overstep legal bounds. This record does not show when the petitioners were taken before a committing magistrate. No point was made of the failure to commit by defendant or counsel. No opportunity was given to the officers to explain. Objection to the introduction of the confessions was made only on the ground that they were obtained through coercion. This was determined against the accused both by the Court, when it appraised the fact as to the voluntary character of the confession, preliminarily to determining the legal question of its admissibility, and by the jury. The Court saw and heard witnesses for the prosecution and the defense. The defendants did not take the stand before the jury. The uncontradicted evidence does not require a different conclusion. The officers of the Alcohol Tax Unit should not be disciplined by overturning this conviction.

It is most interesting to note, in connection with the McNabb decision, that no point was made by the defendants nor by their counsel of any failure on the part of the arresting officers to arraign the defendants promptly. The decision is grounded solely upon the assumption indulged by the court that the petitioners had not been promptly arraigned. The record was silent on this most important point. The petitioners and their counsel did not claim that the petitioners had not been promptly arraigned. The truth is that the petitioners had been promptly arraigned. The prisoners were arrested early Thursday morning on the charge of operating an illicit still. They were properly and promptly arraigned and committed on that charge between 8:30 and 10:30 the same morning. During the raid on the distillery, or shortly thereafter, the murder had been committed in an adjacent cemetery in the darkness of night. No one had been seen, nor apprehended. There was no clue as to the identity of the murderer or murderers. There was a strong suspicion that the McNabbs, who had been operating the illicit distillery, or some of them, were also guilty of the murder. However, there was no evidence sufficient to justify a committing magistrate in binding them over on the murder charge. So there was no arraignment on the murder charge until after three of them had confessed; but every question put to any one of the prisoners was put after they had been promptly arraigned, and committed.

Almost immediately after the decision in the McNabb case was handed down, the administration of justice in criminal courts was thrown into confusion because of the McNabb decision, and in case after case defendants were, solely because of the rule promulgated in the McNabb case, freed by orders of the courts nolle prossing, or reversing, or directing verdicts, in pending cases. Many of such cases are cited in the hearings on H. R. 3690, pages 21 (cited by the author of the bill), 31, 32, 33 (cited by the Attorney General), and 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, and 60 (cited by members of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington).

In one of these cases, Mitchell v. United States, the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia (138 Fed. 2d 426) reversed convictions and upon certiorari granted by the Supreme Court the decision of the Court of Appeals was reversed by the Supreme Court, April 24, 1944, although the Supreme Court said in part: "We adhere to that decision" (McNabb v. United States), "and to the views on which it was based."

The history of the Mitchell case is bad enough, but that of the Wilborn case is infinitely worse. While the convictions of Mitchell were reversed by the court of appeals, yet this reversal has now been reversed by the Supreme Court, so Mitchell may now be punished. In the Wilborn case, however, Judge Pine is quoted as having stated from the bench on the trial, that, although his acquittal would constitute a "miscarriage of justice," nevertheless he must be acquitted because of the Supreme Court's decision in the McNabb case. So, Judge Pine directed a verdict of acquittal, and Wilborn walked out of the court a free man. The Constitution prohibits another trial, because a second trial would constitute double jeopardy, so he is as free and clear as anyone could be. What was his self-confessed crime? About 1 a. m. of March 18, 1943, he broke into the apartment occupied by three girls, where he assaulted one of them, inflicting lacerations requiring 11 stitches, though he did not complete the rape because of the screams of the other girls. He was arrested about 2 a. m. on the same night. About 4 a. m. he confessed. About 5 a. m., in the presence of the arresting officers and his victim, he reenacted the circumstances. About 11:30 of the same day he signed a written confession, and was arraigned about 3 o'clock that afternoon. But the McNabb decision held that no confession could be used as evidence if the selfconfessed criminal had not been arraigned promptly, and the judge construed this to mean just that. So, Wilborn, not having been arraigned for several hours after he might have been, was freed by a reluctant jury, because of the court's direction, made solely because of the McNabb decision. Is this only a "miscarriage of justice" or is it a license to rape?

WHAT H. R. 43 WOULD DO

It would merely nullify the new rule of the McNabb decision. It would declare that no such policy as that indicated in the McNabb decision underlies the laws Congress passed requiring prompt arraignment.

It would leave the law exactly as it was before the turmoil and confusion caused by the McNabb decision, and wipe out the attempt to bypass and ignore the Bill of Rights, restoring to the full the protective guaranty that no person shall "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."

MERELY A TEMPORARY EMERGENCY MEASURE

The bill H. R. 43 is not designed to be a complete nor permanent solution of the problems involved in arrest, detention, and interrogation of criminal suspects. These problems are many, varied, and important. They cry for adequate remedies-for full, painstaking study and solution.

All of us favor prompt arraignment. Failure to observe the legal requirement thereof should be punished. The punishment, however, should be inflicted upon the guilty-not the innocent. The arresting officers are the guilty when they fail to see to it that prisoners are promptly arraigned. The public-"We, the people"-are the innocent. Yet, under the McNabb decision only the law-abiding, innocent citizens, whose safety is jeopardized by turning self-confessed criminals loose, are punished.

« PreviousContinue »