Course: Introduction / Procedural Law
In the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Mississippi (1936), the court prohibited the use of torture as a means of obtaining confessions by the police.
The landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Mississippi (1936) was a major turning point in the history of criminal justice in the United States. In this case, the Supreme Court held that the use of torture as a means of obtaining confessions by the police was prohibited under the Constitution.
Prior to the Brown decision, police officers frequently used brutal and inhumane methods to extract confessions from suspects, including beatings, electrocution, and other forms of torture. These methods were used despite the clear prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In the Brown case, the Supreme Court was asked to consider the case of three African American men who had been convicted of murder based on confessions obtained through the use of physical torture. The men had been beaten, whipped, and otherwise abused by law enforcement officers until they confessed to the crime.
The Supreme Court held that the use of torture to obtain confessions violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees that individuals will not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Court noted that the use of torture was antithetical to the principles of a fair and just legal system and that it had no place in the administration of justice in the United States.
The Brown decision had far-reaching implications for the criminal justice system. It helped to establish the principle that the use of physical coercion or other forms of torture to obtain confessions was a violation of the Constitution and that evidence obtained through such means could not be used in court. This principle was later extended to include other forms of coercive interrogation, such as psychological manipulation and the use of drugs to extract confessions.
In the years following the Brown v. Mississippi decision, there were continued efforts to reform the criminal justice system and to prevent the use of torture and other forms of coercion in police interrogations. These efforts led to the development of new interrogation techniques, such as the Reid technique, which emphasized the use of non-coercive methods to elicit confessions from suspects.
Today, the use of torture or other forms of physical coercion in police interrogations is widely condemned as a violation of human rights and a fundamental breach of the principles of a fair and just legal system. While there are still instances of police misconduct and abuse of authority, the principles established in the Brown decision continue to guide the development of criminal justice policies and practices in the United States and around the world.
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Last Modified: 04/13/2023