CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - DUE PROCESS - USE OF INVOLUNTARY CONFESSIONS IN CRIMINAL CASES

The practice of wringing confessions from the lips of persons accused of crime forms a substantial blot on the history of the medieval administration of criminal law. Never legalized in England, the practice early earned the condemnation of writers and criticism of courts. From a recognition of human rights and a perception of the unreliability of statements extorted by violence, evolved the general rule, now long recognized in England and the United States, that the accused's involuntary confession is inadmissible in evidence against him. Recently this rule of evidence has been implemented by the recognition of the United States Supreme Court that in the light of the requirement of due process of law embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, a conviction based solely on use in evidence of the accused's involuntary confession is void.

This recognition of the application of the due process clause to involuntary confessions first appeared in Brown v. Mississippi, and was recently followed in Chambers v. Florida. The basis of these holdings seems to be that since an involuntary confession is unreliable evidence, a conviction resting solely on its use in a state criminal trial deprives an accused of life or liberty without the hearing guaranteed to him by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.