10 N.Y.2d 347 | NY | 1961
Lead Opinion
The judgments convicting defendants of felony murder and sentencing them to death must be reversed and new trials ordered.
The most substantial errors raised by appellants concern the admissibility of their confessions, nature of the search resulting in discovery of the revolver, sufficiency of evidence corroborating accomplice testimony, and propriety of actions of the District Attorney.
We hold that no error was committed in submitting to the jury, under proper instructions, the voluntary nature of the confessions, although obtained after removal from the county jail, and during a delay in arraignment (Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534; Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 187-188). Admissibility of confessions is a matter of State procedure (Rogers v. Richmond, supra, p. 543). Nothing in Mapp v. Ohio (367 U. S. 643) is to the contrary.
It is evident that Mapp does not bar the admission, as evidence, of the revolver found in McNair’s car, unless it was seized by an unreasonable search, for “ It is [only] unreasonable searches that are prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” (United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 60; Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132,147). A search incident to a lawful arrest is itself lawful (People v. Defore, 242 N. Y. 13, 18; People v.
The investigation conducted in this case meets both these tests.
“A peace officer may, without a warrant, arrest a person, ® * * [w]hen a felony has in fact been committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person to be arrested to have committed it ” (Code Grim. Pro., § 177).
The classic statement of the meaning of probable, or reasonable, cause is that of Chief Justice Marshall in Locke v. United States (7 Crunch [11 U. S.] 339, 348): “It may be added, that the term 1 probable cause,’ according to its usual acceptation, means less than evidence which would justify condemnation. * * * It imports a seizure made under circumstances which warrant suspicion.” (See, also, Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 102; Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 175; Carroll v. United States, supra, p. 162; Dumbra v. United States, 268 U. S. 435.)
It is conceded that the arrest took place at the time that Sergeant Decker and Officer Cerone approached the car with guns drawn and ordered the two occupants out (see Henry v. United States, supra, p. 103; Code Crim. Pro., §§ 167, 171). The testimony of decedent’s wife, Sergeant Gallagher and Officer Cerone shows that the arresting officers had “ reasonable cause for believing the person to be arrested to have committed ” the felony (Code Grim. Pro., § 177). The arrest, therefore, being lawful, the incidental search was also permissible.
Furthermore we find the search of the automobile was conducted with the consent of the owner, McNair. Such acquiescence is binding on the occupants, for “ [t]he immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures being personal, one cannot object to the searching of another’s premises or property if the latter consents to the search, even though property is found, for the possession of which defendant is subsequently prosecuted.” (4 Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, p. 215).
Defendants’ contention that there is insufficient evidence in the record to corroborate the accomplice testimony given by Lane and Williams is contrary to the facts. Such proof is clearly found in testimony that McNeil and Sloan were arrested
However, when the District Attorney, in spite of objections, referred in his summation to the absence of brutal treatment of McNair, reversible error was committed. The testimony of this witness, which had been excluded as a result of the District Attorney’s objection, was relevant, and could have been allowed on the issues of credibility and coercion. A common pattern of mistreatment of all of the suspects held in connection with the commission of the crime was pertinent to a particularly critical conflict in the evidence. It was, therefore, clearly prejudicial to the defendants for the District Attorney, after succeeding in preventing testimony on that subject by McNair, to argue that McNair was not beaten, and urge that, therefore, the jury should find the others similarly treated. Such conduct merely served to illustrate the importance attached by all parties to that testimony. Hence the reference by the District Attorney to the nonexistent evidence constitutes error requiring our reversal.
A reversal is also dictated by the cumulative effects of the improprieties committed on cross-examination and in the summation. Although taken singly they were not detrimental, considered collectively they were exceedingly harmful (see People v. Carborano, 301 N. Y. 39, 42).
In this view it is not necessary to pass on the other questions. Accordingly, all the judgments appealed from should be reversed, and a new trial ordered.
Concurrence Opinion
I agree that there must be a new trial for the reasons set forth in the court’s opinion, but, contrary to the view held by the majority, I believe that reversible error was also committed by the trial judge’s ruling admitting into evidence the defendants’ confessions.
Upon further deep and considered reflection, I am convinced that our present rule which permits a confession to be used against a defendant, even though obtained in contravention of law, is indefensible. “ Nothing can destroy a government more quickly ”, observed Mr. Justice Clark, writing for the Supreme Court in Mapp v. Ohio (367 U. S. 643, 659), “ than its failure to observe its own laws * * *. As Mr. Justice Brandéis,
In the case before us, the confessions were obtained from the defendants not only while they were being unlawfully detained in violation of the arraignment provisions of our statute (Code Grim. Pro., § 165; Penal Law, § 1844),
As judges of the State’s highest court — ever under the necessity of reconsidering an old and unsatisfactory court-made rule, at variance with concepts of justice and fair dealing (see, e.g., People v. Oakley, 9 N Y 2d 656 [voluntary confession sworn to before judicial officer excluded]; People v. Waterman, 9 N Y 2d 561 [voluntary confession obtained after indictment excluded]; People v. Spitaleri, 9 N Y 2d 168 [withdrawn plea of guilty excluded]; Bing v. Thunig, 2 N Y 2d 656, 667)—we
“ A democratic society, in which respect for the dignity of all men is central,” the Supreme Court declared in a case also dealing with confessions illegally secured,1 ‘ naturally guards against the misuse of the law enforcement process. * * * Legislation * * *, requiring that the police must with reasonable promptness show legal cause for detaining arrested persons, constitutes an important safeguard—not only in assuring protection for the innocent but also in securing conviction of the guilty by methods that commend themselves to a progressive and self-confident society. For this procedural requirement checks resort to those reprehensible practices known as the ‘ third degree ’ which, though universally rejected as indefensible, still find their way into use. It aims to avoid all the evil implications of secret interrogation of persons accused of crime. It reflects not a sentimental but a sturdy view of law enforcement.” (McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 343-344, supra.) In other words, the requirement of prompt arraignment is in large measure prompted by the knowledge that “ The seeds of coercion sprout readily in the earth of illegal detention”. (Hennings, Detentions and Confessions: The Mallory Case, 23 Missouri L. Rev. 25, 31.)
The purposes of the exclusionary rule are, of course, to deter law enforcement officials from violating the very law they are sworn to uphold and to engender respect for constitutional guarantee or statutory mandate “ in the only effectively available way — by removing the incentive to disregard it.” (Elkins
. Section 165 of the Code is mandatory in its terms, providing that upon arrest the defendant “ must in all cases he taken before the magistrate without unnecessary delay”. (Italics supplied.) And section 1844 of the Penal Law, punishing wrongful delay in effecting an arraignment, recites that “A public officer 6 ® having arrested any person upon a criminal charge, who wilfully and wrongfully delays to take such person before a magistrate having jurisdiction to take his examination, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
. There is no doubt in the present case of the unlawful detention or the illegal removal. Indeed, the trial court charged the jury, “as a matter of law ”, that the police “ had no legal right to remove ” the defendants from the jail and that “ the delay in arraigning [them] * * * was unreasonable and therefore illegal.”
. It is, perhaps, not amiss to point out that involuntary confessions have been held inadmissible “ not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law”. (Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 540-541.)
Dissenting Opinion
This case was fairly and carefully tried and the guilt of each appellant was proven beyond any doubt which a reasonable mind could form. I see no ground at all for reversal.
The majority opinion recommends reversal because the trial court excluded testimony that McNair was beaten by the police during their investigation of this homicide and because the District Attorney, so it is said, afterwards improperly told the jury in his summation that McNair had not been subjected to such treatment. But McNair was not a defendant and proof as to the way he was dealt with by the police was quite irrelevant to any issue in this case. It did not become relevant just because the prosecutor made some cryptic side remarks which on close inspection can be construed as a suggestion that, since it had not been shown that McNair was beaten, probably defendants were not beaten, either. If this was an error, it was certainly a small one and should not be magnified into cause for reversal (Cede Orim. Pro., § 542). The law as to confessions was correctly charged to the jury.
Judge Fuld would have us make a brand new rule of evidence for New York State criminal trials, barring proof of any confession, even though voluntary, if made while the person admitting guilt is illegally confined, in violation of our prompt arraignment statutes (Code Grim. Pro., § 165; Penal Law, § 1844). I say that the adoption by us of such a new exclusionary rule of criminal evidence not only is not required by any known principle of constitutional law or natural law or morals but is a procedural innovation beyond our power to make.
It is a basic rule of evidence applicable to trials of every sort of issue that a voluntary admission against interest made to
That a confession is made during detention and under police questioning does not in law or in common sense make it involuntary (Murphy v. People, 62 N. Y. 590; People v. Perez, 300 N. Y. 208, supra). The fact that it is so made is a circumstance only, a piece of circumstantial evidence which with other circumstances attendant on its making may raise a question of fact as to whether it was in fact voluntary (Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 187). To protect citizens against prolonged and oppressive questioning our State and most other States (see list in McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 342, n. 7) have statutes requiring that the arrested citizen be brought without unnecessary delay before a judicial officer. Such statutes, however, are not part of the law of evidence and do not regulate the admissibility of confessions. Recognizing this, our State like most of the others (except Michigan, see People v. Hamilton, 359 Mich. 410, and Texas, see Texas Code Crim. Pro., arts. 726, 727) has held consistently that violating these statutes in order to get a confession does not result in keeping out of evidence a
In 1943 in McNabb v. United States (318 U. S. 332) the Supreme Court, overruling earlier authority (see Wilson v. United States, 162 U. S. 613, supra), “ drew upon its supervisory authority over the administration of * * * criminal justice ” in the Federal system to set up for the Federal courts only “an exclusionary practice” whereby those courts were thenceforth required to exclude from evidence “ any confession 1 made during illegal detention due to failure to carry a prisoner before a committing magistrate’” (Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 599, supra). Over and over again the Supreme Court has repeated that this new rule was procedural and evidentiary only, not required by constitutional due process, not made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment but solely an exercise of the Supreme Court’s power to supervise Federal criminal court practice (Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U. S. 55, 63, 64; Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 476; Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156,187,188, supra; Cicema v. Lag ay, 357 U. S. 504). The court has told us that the purpose in McNabb (supra) was simply to provide and apply a sanction for subdivision (a) of rule 5 of the Federal Buies of Criminal Procedure and that the States are not obliged to accept that particular method. In view of these repeated explanations, I do not see how it can be argued from any general language in Federal decisions that we must or should change our old rule. Surely Mapp v. Ohio (367 U. S. 643) does not require such an alteration. Mapp says that illegality of a search and seizure requires
All criminal law, substantive or procedural, has as its two purposes the protection of the individual citizen from unjust punishment and the protection of the community from unchecked crime. Serious indeed is the withholding by police or prosecutor of any part of this protection from a citizen who is under arrest. But serious, too, is the danger that punishing offending police or prosecutors by barring confessions made during contra-statutory detention will make protection of the community difficult or impossible. We simply have no right to keep from jurors evidence of a confession which is in fact voluntary. A policeman who violates the law as to the time and place of imprisoning citizens should be punished and, if present punishments are insufficient or impractical to enforce, new statutes should be enacted. But the punishment should not take the form of destroying sound, competent evidence.
We as a court have not been thwarted by any lack of power to strike down convictions founded on the use of confessions
The judgments should be affirmed.
Judges Van Voorhis and Foster concur with Judge Burke; Judge Froessel concurs in result only; Judge Fuld concurs for reversal in a separate opinion; Chief Judge Desmond dissents in an opinion in which Judge Dye concurs.
Upon reargument: Judgments of conviction reversed and a new trial ordered.
