NCJ Number
137223
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 82 Issue: 4 Dated: (Winter 1992) Pages: 849-877
Date Published
1992
Length
29 pages
Annotation
In its ruling in Arizona v. Fulminante, the U.S. Supreme Court had to decide whether two confessions obtained from the suspect were coerced and therefore inadmissible, whether the harmless error analysis could be applied to the admission of the coerced confessions, and whether any error was harmless in the present case. In its decision, the Court for the first time applied the harmless error analysis to a case involving a coerced confession.
Abstract
A majority of the Court held that the confessions were coerced and improperly admitted as evidence by the trial court. However, the majority also ruled that the error should be subject to harmless error analysis. On the third question, a majority, composed of different justices, ruled that, even if analyzed in terms of harmlessness, the coerced confessions did not constitute a harmless error because the successful prosecution of this case depended on the jury's belief in them. This author maintains that the decision with respect to the voluntariness of the confessions was impermissibly expansive of prior holdings of involuntariness. However, the expansion of the harmless error analysis to coerced confessions is probably justifiable. The danger of eroding, through this expansion of harmless error, the category of constitutional errors which always warrant a new trial, is noted. 232 notes