Criminal Justice: Concern About Confessions

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the Supreme Court sifted 170 confession appeals and accepted five involving six defendants:

¶ Sylvester Johnson and Stanley Cassidy, now awaiting execution in New Jersey, were implicated by a confederate's coerced confession in the 1958 holdup murder of a toyshop operator in Camden. Johnson, then 21 and a schizoid, asked a magistrate for a lawyer, was refused, and confessed after twelve hours. Cassidy, then 25 and "regressed," received no warning and confessed during 20 hours' grilling. Because both convictions were final before Escobedo, they pose the retroactivity riddle. ¶ Ernesto Miranda, 23, an "emotionally ill" truck driver, received 25-and 30-year sentences in 1963 for robbing a woman and kidnaping and raping an 18-year-old girl. Miranda was picked up on suspicion: both victims identified him in a lineup. He talked freely, was neither told nor knew of his right to counsel. The Arizona Supreme Court took the "hard" Escobedo line, upheld his conviction. ¶Roy A. Stewart, 28, a sixth-grade dropout, was suspected in 1963 of mugging a number of Los Angeles women, one of whom died. Arrested with his common-law wife, Stewart was grilled 4½ days before admitting that he robbed but did not kill the woman. He was sentenced to death for felony-murder. He did not request counsel, claims he confessed to free his wife. The California Supreme Court said police should have given him a silence warning, reversed his conviction. ¶Michael Vignera, 31, got a 30-to 60-year rap for holding up a Brooklyn dress shop in 1961. Vignera was fingered by a confederate, linked to stolen goods, and identified by his victims. He confessed after about twelve hours. To clinch the police case, he was then grilled far beyond "focus," and was not taken before a judge until roughly 24 hours after his arrest. He was not advised of his right to counsel; police also ignored New York's prompt-arraignment statute. The state's highest court upheld his conviction on "totality" grounds. ¶ Carl C. Westover, 44, the only federal defendant, was picked up by Kansas City, Mo., police in 1963 after they got FBI word that he was suspected of robbing two federally insured banks in California. The police first questioned him about local robberies; some 14 hours later they turned him over to FBI agents, who got a confession 2½ hours later. Though warned of his right to counsel, Westover was not allowed to exercise it; he was held incommunicado for eleven days before being arraigned. He drew a 30-year sentence. Westover's case raises the issue of FBI collusion with local police to avoid the Mallory rule.

Hypocrisy v. Disaster. In choosing these cases, the Supreme Court revealed Escobedo's potential dynamite: all but one of the confessions were apparently true and voluntary; most of the defendants probably could not have been convicted without their confessions. Yet the court is being asked to void all the confessions by reading into Escobedo a new standard: that police must warn all suspects at focus point that they need not talk, that anything they say may be held against them, and that they have a right to counsel, furnished by the state if necessary.

As it devoted an unusual three days to oral arguments last month, the court heard the defendants' lawyers declare that the new standard will not affect

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