Confessions Gratuitously Offered Are Not Considered Involuntarily Offered
Colorado v. Connelly, Supreme Court of the United States (1986), 479 U.S. 157, 107 S. Ct. 515
FACTS:
Respondent Connelly approached an off duty Denver Police Officer and stated that he had committed a murder and desired to discuss the situation. The officer advised Connelly of his right to remain silent and that anything he said could be used against him in court. Connelly indicated that he understood his rights and remained willing to talk about the homicide. When Officer Anderson asked if Connelly had been drinking or taking drugs, respondent replied in the negative but added that he had been a mental patient in several hospitals.
Following a second warning of the right to remain silent and the arrival of a homicide detective, the officer warned Connelly for the third time. Respondent indicated that he was the person responsible for the murder of Mary Ann Junta, a young girl who had been killed in Denver. Connelly was taken to headquarters, told his story to a third officer, and led the police to the exact location of the homicide. During the entire encounter with officers, including the confessions, Connelly appeared lucid and normal in all respects.
However, the next day, in an interview with a public defender, he began giving confused answers and noted that "voices" had told him to return to Denver and had directed his confession. Convinced that the confessions were involuntary due to the defendant's mental state, public defender filed a motion to suppress the confessions as not being freely and voluntarily given.
At a motion to suppress hearing, a psychiatrist testified that Connelly suffered from schizophrenia and was in a psychotic state the day prior to the confession. Such diagnosis indicated that the disease interfered with respondent's volitional abilities and impaired his capacity to make free and rational choices.
The trial court ordered that the statements to police be suppressed because they had been given involuntarily. The state Supreme Court agreed and held that the correct test for admissibility was "whether the statements are 'the product of a rational intellect and a free will.'" According to the Court, the capacity for proper judgment and free choice may be overcome by mental illness as well as other factors. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari.
PROCEDURAL QUESTION:
Where a mentally ill person confesses to a police officer following an appropriate warning of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, is coercive police activity a required predicate to a finding that the confession was not voluntarily offered?
Held: Yes.
RATIONALE:
II
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Just last Term, in Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104,109,106 S.Ct. 445, 449, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), we held that by virtue of the Due Process Clause "certain interrogation techniques, either in isolation or as applied to the unique characteristics of a particular suspect, are so offensive to a civilized system of justice that they must be condemned." See also Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 432-434, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 1147, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986).
Indeed, coercive government misconduct was the catalyst for this Court's seminal confession case, Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682 (1936). In that case, police officers extracted confessions from the accused through brutal torture. The Court had little difficulty concluding that even though the Fifth Amendment did not at that time apply to the States, the actions of the police were "revolting to the sense of justice." Id., at 286, 56 S.Ct., at 465. The Court has retained this due process focus, even after holding, in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964), that the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination applies to the States. See Miller v. Fenton, supra, 474 U.S., at 109-110, 106 S.Ct., at 449.
Thus the cases considered by this Court over the 50 years since Brown v. Mississippi have focused upon the crucial element of police overreaching. While each confession case has turned on its own set of factors justifying the conclusion that police conduct was oppressive, all have contained a substantial element of coercive police conduct. Absent police conduct causally related to the confession, there is simply no basis for concluding that any state actor has deprived a criminal defendant of due process of law. Respondent correctly notes that as interrogators have turned to more subtle forms of psychological persuasion, courts have found the mental condition of the defendant a more significant factor in the "voluntariness" calculus. See Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959). But this fact does not justify a conclusion that a defendant's mental condition, by itself and apart from its relation to official coercion, should ever dispose of the inquiry into constitutional "voluntariness."
Respondent relies on Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 274, 4 L.Ed.2d 242 (1960), and Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963), for the proposition that the "deficient mental condition of the defendants in those cases was sufficient to render their confessions involuntary." Brief for Respondent 20. But respondent's reading of Blackburn and Townsend ignores the integral element of police overreaching present in both cases. In Blackburn, the Court found that the petitioner was probably insane at the time of his confession and the police learned during the interrogation that he had a history of mental problems. The police exploited this weakness with coercive tactics: "the eight- to nine-hour sustained interrogation in a tiny room which was upon occasion literally filled with police officers; the absence of Blackburn's friends, relatives, or legal counsel; [and] the composition of the confession by the Deputy Sheriff rather than by Blackburn." 361 U.S., at 207-208, 80 S.Ct., at 280. These tactics supported a finding that the confession was involuntary. Indeed, the Court specifically condemned police activity that "wrings a confession out of an accused against his will." Id, at 206-207, 80 S.Ct., at 280. Townsend presented a similar instance of police wrongdoing. In that case, a police physician had given Townsend a drug with truth-serum properties. 372 U.S., at 298-299, 83 S.Ct., at 749-750.
The subsequent confession, obtained by officers who knew that Townsend had been given drugs, was held involuntary. These two cases demonstrate that while mental condition is surely relevant to an individual's susceptibility to police coercion, mere examination of the confessant's state of mind can never conclude the due process inquiry.
Our "involuntary confession" jurisprudence is entirely consistent with the settled law requiring some sort of "state action" to support a claim of violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Colorado trial court, of course, found that the police committed no wrongful acts, and that finding has been neither challenged by respondent nor disturbed by the Supreme Court of Colorado. The latter court, however, concluded that sufficient state action was present by virtue of the admission of the confession into evidence in a court of the State. 702 P.2d, at 728-729.
The difficulty with the approach of the Supreme Court of Colorado is that it fails to recognize the essential link between coercive activity of the State, on the one hand, and a resulting confession by a defendant, on the other. The flaw in respondent's constitutional argument is that it would expand our previous line of "voluntariness" cases into a far-ranging requirement that courts must divine a defendant's motivation for speaking or acting as he did even though there be no claim that governmental conduct coerced his decision.
The most outrageous behavior by a private party seeking to secure evidence against a defendant does not make that evidence inadmissible under the Due Process Clause. [Citations omitted.] We have also observed that "[j]urists and scholars uniformly have recognized that the exclusionary rule imposes a substantial cost on the societal interest in law enforcement by its proscription of what concededly is relevant evidence." [Citations omitted.] Moreover, suppressing respondent's statements would serve absolutely no purpose in enforcing constitutional guarantees. The purpose of excluding evidence seized in violation of the Constitution is to substantially deter future violations of the Constitution. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906-913, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3411-3415, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). Only if we were to establish a brand new constitutional right--the right of a criminal defendant to confess to his crime only when totally rational and properly motivated--could respondent's present claim be sustained.
We have previously cautioned against expanding "currently applicable exclusionary rules by erecting additional barriers to placing truthful and probative evidence before state juries...." Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 488-89, 92 S.Ct. 619, 626, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972). We abide by that counsel now. "[T]he central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant's guilt or innocence," Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 681, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1436, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986), and while we have previously held that exclusion of evidence may be necessary to protect constitutional guarantees, both the necessity for the collateral inquiry and the exclusion of evidence deflect a criminal trial from its basic purpose. Respondent would now have us require sweeping inquiries into the state of mind of a criminal defendant who has confessed, inquiries quite divorced from any coercion brought to bear on the defendant by the State. We think the Constitution rightly leaves this sort of inquiry to be resolved by state laws governing the admission of evidence and erects no standard of its own in this area. A statement rendered by one in the condition of respondent might be proved to be quite unreliable, but this is a matter to be governed by the evidentiary laws of the forum, see, e.g., Fed.Rule Evid. 601, and not by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "The aim of the requirement of due process is not to exclude presumptively false evidence, but to prevent fundamental unfairness in the use of evidence, whether true or false." Lisenba v. California, 314 U.S. 219, 236, 62 S.Ct. 280, 290, 86 L.Ed. 166 (1941).
We hold that coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not "voluntary" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We also conclude that the taking of respondent's statements, and their admission into evidence, constitute no violation of that Clause.
IIIA
The Supreme Court of Colorado went on to affirm the trial court's ruling that respondent's later statements made while in custody should be suppressed because respondent had not waived his right to consult an attorney and his right to remain silent. That court held that the State must bear its burden of proving waiver of these Miranda rights by "clear and convincing evidence." 702 P.2d, at 729. Although we have stated in passing that the State bears a "heavy" burden in proving waiver, Tague v. Louisiana, 444 U.S. 469, 100 S.Ct. 652, 62 L.Ed.2d 622 (1980) (per curiam); North Carolina v. Butler 441 U.S. 369, 373, 99 S.Ct. 1755, 1757, 60 L.Ed.2d 286 (1979); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S., at 475, 86 S.Ct., at 1628, we have never upheld that the "clear and convincing evidence" standard is the appropriate one.
In Lego v. Twomey, supra, this Court upheld a procedure in which the State established the voluntariness of a confession by no more than a preponderance of the evidence. We upheld it for two reasons. First, the voluntariness determination has nothing to do with the reliability of jury verdicts; rather, it is designed to determine the presence of police coercion. Thus, voluntariness is irrelevant to the presence or absence of the elements of a crime, which must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). Second, we rejected Lego's assertion that a high burden of proof was required to serve the values protected by the exclusionary rule. We surveyed the various reasons for excluding evidence, including a violation of the requirements of Miranda v. Arizona, supra, and we stated that "[i]n each instance, and without regard to its probative value, evidence is kept from the trier of guilt or innocence for reasons wholly apart from enhancing the reliability of verdicts." Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S., at 488, 92 S.Ct., at 626. Moreover, we rejected the argument that "the importance of the values served by exclusionary rules is itself sufficient demonstration that the Constitution also requires admissibility to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt." Ibid. Indeed, the Court found that "no substantial evidence has accumulated that federal rights have suffered from determining admissibility by a preponderance of the evidence." Ibid.
We now reaffirm our holding in Lego: Whenever the State bears the burden of proof in a motion to suppress a statement that the defendant claims was obtained in violation of our Miranda doctrine, the State need prove waiver only by a preponderance of the evidence. See Ni v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 444, and n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 2509, and n. 5, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984); United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 178, n. 14, 94 S.Ct. 988, 996, n. 14, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974) "[T]he controlling burden of proof at suppression hearings should impose no greater burden than proof by a preponderance of the evidence . . ." cf. Moore v. Michigan, 355 U.S. 155, 161-162, 78 S.Ct. 191, 195, 2 L.Ed.2d 167 (1957). If, as we held in Lego v. Twomey, supra, the voluntariness of a confession need be established only by a preponderance of the evidence, then a waiver of the auxiliary protections established in Miranda should require no higher burden of proof. "[E]xclusionary rules are very much aimed at deterring lawless conduct by police and prosecution and it is very doubtful that escalating the prosecution's burden of proof in ... suppression hearings would be sufficiently productive in this respect to outweigh the public interest in placing probative evidence before juries for the purpose of arriving at truthful decisions about guilt or innocence." Lego v. Twomey, supra, 404 U.S., at 489, 92 S.Ct., at 626. See also United States v. Leon, 468 U.S., at 906-913, 104 S.Ct., at 3411-3415.
B* * *
Respondent urges this Court to adopt his "free will" rationale, and to find an attempted waiver invalid whenever the defendant feels compelled to waive his rights by reason of any compulsion, even if the compulsion does not flow from the police. . . . Respondent's perception of coercion flowing from the "voice of God," however important or significant such a perception may be in other disciplines, is a matter to which the United States Constitution does not speak.
IV
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is accordingly reversed, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
1. In Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477 (1972), mentioned in the principal case, the Court held that where the prosecution must establish the voluntariness of a confession, the government's burden of proof must meet the standard known as preponderance of the evidence. Thus, in the Connelly case, the prosecution needed to prove that it was more likely than not that Connelly had voluntarily confessed to the murder without being subjected to coercion of the police.
2. Has a confession been voluntarily offered where psychological problems motivate a person to confess when the person would not have done so in the absence of mental problems? What if an individual confessed but did not possess a free will due to mental disease or defect? Is such a confession admissible against the maker? Would the Connelly court have decided the case differently if Connelly had been under the influence of a mental disease? Why or why not?
Reversal for Coerced Confessions Judged by Harmless Error Standard
Arizona v. Fulminante, Supreme Court of the United States (1991), 497 U.S. , 111 S.Ct. 1246
FACTS:
Following the suspicious death of Oreste Fulminante's eleven year old step-daughter, he became a prime suspect in her murder due to a series of inconsistent statements to police. At the time the girl's body was discovered, police proved unable to develop sufficient evidence to charge Fulminante with the killing.
Subsequently, Fulminante served time in a federal correctional facility on an unrelated charge. During his stay some inmates gave him a rough time because of the rumor that he was a child murderer and molester. Sarivola, a former police officer working for the Federal Bureau for Investigation pretended to befriend Fulminante and offered "protection" from other inmates on the condition that Fulminante tell Sarivola the complete story of the child killing. Fulminante complied with the request and related how he had killed the girl following a sexual assault.
Following Fulminante's release from prison, he related substantially the same story to Sarivola's future wife, Donna. This confession and the earlier prison confession were introduced at Fulminante's later trial for murder. The trial resulted in a death penalty for Fulminante's murder of his step-daughter.
In his appeal, defendant contended that the first confession had been coerced and, therefore, its use at trial violated his rights to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Arizona Supreme Court originally ruled that although the first confession was coerced, its introduction in evidence constituted harmless error due to the overwhelming strength of the state's case. Upon reconsideration, the Arizona court reversed defendant's conviction and overruled its prior decision holding that the harmless error standard should not apply to coerced confessions. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to resolved differing interpretations among the states and federal courts.
PROCEDURAL QUESTION:
Where a confession has been illegally coerced from a suspect and admitted in evidence against that accused, on appellate review should courts apply the harmless error analysis?
HELD: Yes
RATIONALE:
JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
* * *
Because of differing views in the state and federal courts over whether the admission at trial of a coerced confession is subject to a harmless-error analysis, we granted the State's petition for certiorari, 494 U.S. (1990). Although a majority of this Court finds that such a confession is subject to a harmless-error analysis, for the reasons set forth below, we affirm the judgment of the Arizona court.
II
We deal first with the State's contention that the court below erred in holding Fulminante's confession to have been coerced. The State argues that it is the totality of the circumstances that determines whether Fulminante's confession was coerced, cf. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 226 (1973), but contends that rather than apply this standard, the Arizona court applied a "but for" test, under which the court found that but for the promise given by Sarivola, Fulminante would not have confessed.
* * *
In applying the totality of the circumstances test was to determine that the confession to Sarivola was coerced, the Arizona Supreme Court focused on a number of relevant facts. First, the court noted that "because [Fulminante] was an alleged child murderer, he was in danger of physical harm at the hands of other inmates." Ibid. In addition, Sarivola was aware that Fulminante had been receiving "'rough treatment from the guys.'"
* * *
Although the question is a close one, we agree with the Arizona Supreme Court's conclusion that Fulminante's confession was coerced. The Arizona Supreme Court found a credible threat of physical violence unless Fulminante confessed. Our cases have made clear that a finding of coercion need not depend upon actual violence by a government agent; a credible threat is sufficient.
* * *III
Four of us, JUSTICES MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, and myself, would affirm the judgment of the Arizona Supreme Court on the ground that the harmless-error rule is inapplicable to erroneously admitted coerced confessions. We thus disagree with the Justices who have a contrary view.
The majority today abandons what until now the Court has regarded as the "axiomatic [proposition] that a defendant in a criminal case is deprived of due process of law if his conviction is founded, in whole or in part, upon an involuntary confession, without regard for the truth or falsity of the confession, Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, and even though there is ample evidence aside from the confession to support the conviction. (Citations omitted.) The Court has repeatedly stressed that the view that the admission of a coerced confession can be harmless error because of the other evidence to support the verdict is "an impermissible doctrine," Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528, 537 (1963); for "the admission in evidence, over objection, of the coerced confession vitiates the judgment because it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
* * *
Today, a majority of the Court, without any justification, cf. Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203, 212 (1984), overrules this vast body of precedent without a word and in so doing dislodges one of the fundamental tenets of our criminal justice system.
In extending to coerced confessions the harmless error rule of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), the majority declared that because the Court has applied that analysis to numerous other "trial errors," there is no reason that it should not apply to an error of this nature as well. The four of us remain convinced, however, that we should abide by our cases that have refused to apply the harmless error rule to coerced confessions, for a coerced confession is fundamentally different from other types of erroneously admitted evidence to which the rule has been applied. Indeed, as the majority concedes, Chapman itself recognized that prior cases "have indicated that there are some constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error," and it placed in that category the constitutional rule against using a defendants coerced confession against him at his criminal trial.
* * *
A defendant's confession is "probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him," Cruz v. New York, 481 U.S. 186, 195 (1987) (WHITE, J., dissenting), so damaging that a jury should not be expected to ignore it even if told to do so, Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 140 (1986) (WHITE, J., dissenting), and because in any event it is impossible to know what credit and weight the jury gave to the confession. Cf. Payne, supra, at 568. Concededly, this reason is insufficient to justify a per se bar to the use of any confession. Thus, Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371 (1972), applied harmless-error analysis to confession obtained and introduced in circumstances that violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Similarly, the Courts of Appeals have held that the introduction of incriminating statements taken from defendants in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), is subject to treatment as harmless error.
Nevertheless, in declaring that it is "impossible to create a meaningful distinction between confession elicited in violation of the Sixth Amendment and those in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment," post, at 10 (opinion of REHNQUIST, C.J.), the majority overlooks the obvious. Neither Milton v. Wainwright nor any of the other cases upon which the majority relies involved a defendant's coerced confession, nor were there present in these cases the distinctive reasons underlying the exclusion of coerced incriminating statements of the defendant. First, some coerced confessions may be untrustworthy. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S., at 385-386; Spano v. New York, 360 U.S., at 320. Consequently, admission of coerced confession may distort the truth-seeking function of the trial upon which the majority focuses. More importantly, however, the use of coerced confessions, "whether true or false," is forbidden "because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not be coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth," Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S., at 540-541; see also Lego, 404 U.S., at 485.
* * *
The search for truth is indeed central to our system of justice, but "certain constitutional rights are not, and should not be, subject to harmless-error analysis because those rights protect important values that are unrelated to the truth-seeking function of the trial." Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S., at 587 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). The right of a defendant not to have his coerced confession used against him is among those rights, for using a coerced confession "abort[s] the basic trial process" and "render[s] a trial fundamentally unfair." Id., at 577, 578, n. 6.
For the foregoing reasons the four of us would adhere to the consistent line of authority that has recognized as a basic tenet of our criminal justice system, before and after both Miranda and Chapman, the prohibition against using a defendant's coerced confession against him at his criminal trial.
IV
Since five Justices have determined that harmless error analysis applies to coerced confessions, it becomes necessary to evaluate under that ruling the admissibility of Fulminante's confession to Sarivola. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S., at 24, made clear that "before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." The Court has the power to review the record de novo in order to determine an error's harmlessness. See Ibid.; Satterwhite v. Texas, 486 U.S., at 258. In so doing, it must be determined whether the State has met its burden of demonstrating that the admission of the confession to Sarivola did not contribute to Fulminante's conviction. Chapman, supra, at 26. Five of us are of the view that the State has not carried its burden and accordingly affirm the judgment of the court below reversing petitioner's conviction.
A confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, "the defendant's own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him. ...
* * *
While some statements by a defendant may concern isolated aspects of the crime or may be incriminating only when linked to other evidence, a full confession in which the defendant discloses the motive for and means of the crime may tempt the jury to rely upon that evidence alone in reaching its decision. In the case of a coerced confession such as that given by Fulminante to Sarivola, the risk that the confession is unreliable, coupled with the profound impact that the confession has upon the jury, requires a reviewing court to exercise extreme caution before determining that the admission of the confession at trial was harmless.
* * *
Our review of the record leads us to conclude that the State has failed to meet its burden of establishing, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the admission of Fulminante's confession to Anthony Sarivola was harmless error. Three considerations compel this result.
First, the transcript discloses that both the trial court and the State recognized that a successful prosecution depended on the jury believing the two confessions. Absent the confessions, it is unlikely that Fulminante would have been prosecuted at all, because the physical evidence would have been insufficient to convict.
Second, the jury's assessment of the confession to Donna Sarivola could easily have depended in large part on the presence of the confession to Anthony Sarivola. Absent the admission at trial of the first confession, the jurors might have found Donna Sarivola's story unbelievable.
Third, the admission of the first confession led to the admission of other evidence prejudicial to Fulminante. For example, the State introduced evidence that Fulminante knew of Sarivola's connections with organized crime in an attempt to explain why Fulminante would have been motivated to confess to Sarivola in seeking protection. Id., at 45-48, 67. Absent the confession, this evidence would have had no relevance and would have been inadmissible at trial.
Finally, although our concern here is with the effect of the erroneous admission of the confession on Fulminante's conviction, it is clear that the presence of the confession also influenced the sentencing phase of the trial. Under Arizona law, the trial judge is the sentencer. Ariz. Rev. Stat. 13-703(B) (1989).
* * *
Although the sentencing judge might have reached the same conclusions even without the confession to Anthony Sarivola, it is impossible to say so beyond a reasonable doubt. Furthermore, the judge's assessment of Donna Sarivola's credibility, and hence the reliability of the second confession, might well have been influenced by the corroborative effect of the erroneously admitted first confession. Indeed, the fact that the sentencing judge focused on the similarities between the two confessions in determining that they were reliable suggests that either of the confessions alone, even when considered with all the other evidence, would have been insufficient to permit the judge to find an aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt as a requisite prelude to imposing the death penalty.
Because a majority of the Court has determined that Fulminante's confession to Anthony Sarivola was coerced and because a majority has determined that admitting this confession was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we agree with the Arizona Supreme Court's conclusion that Fulminante is entitled to a new trial at which the confession is not admitted. Accordingly the judgment of the Arizona Supreme Court is Affirmed.
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom JUSTICE O'CONNOR joins, JUSTICE KENNEDY and JUSTICE SOUTER join as to Parts I and II, and JUSTICE SCALIA joins as to Parts II and III, delivering the opinion of the Court as to Part II, and dissenting as to Parts I and III.
The Court today properly concludes that the admission of an "involuntary" confession at trial is subject to harmless error analysis. Nonetheless, the independent review of the record which we are required to make shows that respondent Fulminante's confession was not in fact involuntary. And even if the confession were deemed to be involuntary, the evidence offered at trial, including a second, untainted confession by Fulminante, supports the conclusion that any error was certainly harmless.
* * *II
Since this Court's landmark decision in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), in which we adopted the general rule that a constitutional error does not automatically require reversal of a conviction, the Court has applied harmless error analysis to a wide range of errors and has recognized that most constitutional errors can be harmless.
* * *
The admission of an involuntary confession is a "trial error," similar in both degree and kind to the erroneous admission of other types of evidence. The evidentiary impact of an involuntary confession, and its effect upon the composition of the record, is indistinguishable from that of a confession obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment - of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment - or of a prosecutor's improper comment of a defendant's silence at trial in violation of the Fifth Amendment. When reviewing the erroneous admission of an involuntary confession, the appellate court, as it does with the admission of other forms of improperly admitted evidence, simply reviews the remainder of the evidence against the defendant to determine whether the admission of the confession was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
* * *
Of course an involuntary confession may have a more dramatic effect on the course of a trial than do other trial errors - in particular cases it may be devastating to a defendant - but this simply means that a reviewing court will conclude in such a case that its admission was not harmless error; it is not a reason for eschewing the harmless error test entirely.
III
I would agree with the finding of the Supreme Court of Arizona in its initial opinion - in which it believed harmless-error analysis was applicable to the admission of involuntary confessions - that the admission of Fulminante's confession was harmless.
Notes
1. Would Fulminante's confession have been considered involuntary if a private citizen not working for the government had offered protection to Fulminante in exchange for his story? Would the confession have been any less voluntary if it had been extracted by a private citizen rather than a government informant?
2. Prior to Fulminante, cases where coerced confessions had allegedly been used in evidence, courts tended to automatically reverse convictions once they had determined that a particular confession had been coerced? What could have been the rationale for automatic reversal of convictions based partly on coerced confessions? Are you sure that a coerced confession is a truthful statement of what occurred? Why or why not?
3. Fulminante changed the rule for determining whether the trial use of a coerced confession should require a reversal. The Court held that the "harmless error" rule should apply. When a reviewing court can state with certainty that the particular admission of an involuntary confession did not affect the result of a case, a reversal is not mandated. However, if the reviewing court has a reasonable doubt that the confession may have influenced a finder of fact, a reversal is appropriate.