Hess, Lester Clay, Jr.

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Volume 67 | Issue 1 Article 7December 1964Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts ofEvidence Derived from Inadmissible JuvenileConfessionsLester Clay Hess Jr.West Virginia University College of LawFollow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlrPart of the Criminal Law Commons, and the Evidence CommonsThis Case Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the WVU College of Law at The Research Repository @ WVU. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in West Virginia Law Review by an authorized editor of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contactian.harmon@mail.wvu.edu.Recommended CitationLester C. Hess Jr., Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence Derived from Inadmissible Juvenile Confessions, 67 W. Va. L.Rev. (1964).Available at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol67/iss1/7CASE COMMENTSand so long as he has no responsibility to the employer, association,or union. 2 W. VA. BAR NEWs 161, 166 (1963).Although the balance of interests in the instant case was resolvedin favor of constitutional rights, the courts should be quick to notethat a myriad of unsolved problems may now have been engenderedbecause of the general relaxation in the application of the Canonsof Professional Ethics to the union program. Will divergent inter-ests between organization and members create a risk that theattorney might digress from the undivided pursuit of his clienfsinterests? Will the nature of a case result in the selection of clientswhose claims afford the organization an opportunity to retain theconfidence of its members through extraordinary recoveries? Willthe decision in the instant case necessitate federal legislation? Theproblems now created can only be solved through sober recogni-tion of a new pattern developed by the court in this liminal area ofattorney-client relationships-a pattern based on an extension ofconstitutional guarantees modifying the previously accepted appli-cation of the Canons of Professional Ethics. As the law must meetthe needs of the people, so must the molds be reshaped accordinglyto reestablish a standard of conduct comportable to the legal pro-fession and the well-being of society.Frank Cuomo, Jr.Criminal Law-Admissibility in Criminal Courts of EvidenceDerived from Inadmissible Juvenile ConfessionsD was one of two juveniles convicted of robbery by a jury in afederal district court following waiver of juvenile court jurisdiction.On appeal, D objected to testimony of a third juvenile who con-fessed participation in the robbery. D claimed this witness's identitywas discovered as a result of a confession obtained from one of theDs while in the custody of the juvenile court. Held, convictionaffirmed. The rule forbidding the use of the confessions or admis-sions obtained from the accused while detained under juvenilecourt jurisdiction is intended to preserve the fundamental fairnessto the juvenile, not to deter improper police conduct. The rela-tionship between the inadmissible confession and the testimonyof the witness was so slight that there was no reason for excludingit. Edwards v. United States, 330 F.2d 849 (D.C. Cir. 1964).196411Hess: Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence DerivePublished by The Research Repository @ WVU, 1964WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 67The objective of juvenile court programs in every state is remedialand to a degree preventive, rather than punitive. Some authoritieshave maintained that "the juvenile court is not a court at all, buta kind of hospital for children afflicted with the disease of de-linquency." Nunberg, Problems in the Structure of the JuvenileCourt, 48 J. Cntv. L., C. & P.S. 500 (1958). Nevertheless, youthssubjected to the jurisdiction of juvenile courts for having committedcertain grave acts may be vulnerable to subsequent criminal pros-ecution for the same acts. Legislation in many states authorizesjuvenile courts having jurisdiction over the age group astride theline between child and adult to waive that jurisdiction and transferto the criminal court those offenders who are not amendable torehabilitation. The possibility of subsequent criminal prosecutionraises the question of whether information, stemming directly orindirectly from a confession made by a youth while subject to thejuvenile process, may be introduced as evidence in later criminalproceedings.In Harling v. United States, 295 F.2d 161 (D.C. Cir. 1961), thecourt held that confessions obtained within the juvenile systemwere inadmissible in subsequent criminal proceedings. The courtreasoned that subsequent criminal use of such confessions wouldimpair the parens patriae function of the juvenile court and wouldbe fundamentally unfair to the youth. The holding in the principalcase reaffirms several other decisions which apparently place alimitation on the rule in the Harling case. Although the court fol-lowed Harling in disallowing the confessions of the juvenile Ds, itallowed testimony of an eyewitness whose identity was revealedin the excluded confession. In essence, the court deemed inapplic-able the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine of Nardone v. UnitedStates, 308 U.S. 338 (1939). Answering D's claim that the testimonyof the eyewitness was the "fruit" of the inadmissible confession, thecourt in the principal case held that there was not a sufficientrelationship between the inadmissible confession and the "fruit"testimony of the eyewitness to warrant exclusion of the testimony.The fact situation in Smith v. United States, 324 F.2d 879 (D.C.Cir. 1963) closely resembles that of the principal case. However,in Smith the police learned of the existence and identity of such aneyewitness from Ds during a period of illegal detention. The trialcourt admitted the testimony of the eyewitness. The court ofappeals affirmed this ruling, explaining that such disclosure of a2West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 67, Iss. 1 [1964], Art. 7https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol67/iss1/7CASE COMMENTSpotential witness "is of no evidentiary significance, per se, since theliving witness is an individual human personality..." The reasoningseems to be that since human faculties operate in deciding whatevidence the witness will give of his own volition, his decision isan intervening act which dissipates the taint of original illegality.The court added that the testimony of a living witness is not to bemechanically equated with the production of inanimate evidentiaryobjects illegally seized. By way of dictum, the court suggestedthat such inanimate evidence would be inadmissible as "fruit of thepoisonous tree."However, a dissenting judge would have disallowed the evidenceof the eyewitness. He found no such attenuation between the inad-missible confession and its fruit, the testimony of the eyewitness.The rationale underlying this view is that there is no meaningfuldistinction between animate and inanimate evidence emanatingfrom the inadmissible confession. The majority distinquished thetwo types of fruit on the basis of the voluntary decision the eye-witness must make to testify. However, as the dissent points out,this same voluntary choice must be exercised when an individualpersonality decides to give police officers inanimate evidence, suchas narcotics, the existence of which was disclosed in the inadmissibleconfession. Thus the dissent felt that the decision to give certainevidence was not the kind of intervening voluntary act of an in-dividual personality that should dissipate the taint of originalillegality. The court in the principal case relied on the majorityopinion in the Smith case, as did the court in McLindon v. UnitedStates, 329 F.2d 238 (D.C. Cir. 1964).Although the West Virginia court has not ruled in this area, itis clear that a juvenile may face criminal prosecution after beingsubjected to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. W. VA. CoDu.ch. 49, art. 5, § 3 (Michie 1961) provides that "[I]f the child beover sixteen years of age at the time of the commission of theoffense . . . the [juvenile] court may enter an order showing itsrefusal to take jurisdiction and permit the child to be proceededagainst.. ." in an adult criminal court. In State ex rel. Hinkle v.Skeen, 138 W. Va. 116, 75 S.E.2d 223 (1953), the court indicatedthat the hearing of evidence in a juvenile court is merely for thepurpose of determining whether the juvenile is delinquent. How-ever, no West Virginia case was found which decided the questionof whether evidence obtained directly or indirectly from the juven-1964]3Hess: Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence DerivePublished by The Research Repository @ WVU, 1964WEST VIRGINIA LAW REVIEWile court jurisdiction could be used against him in a subsequentcriminal proceeding.This issue is likely to confront the court in the future. One ob-server estimates that ninety-nine per cent of the children broughtto juvenile courts for delinquency admit involvement in the offensein question. Alexander, Constitution Rights in Juvenile Court, 46A.B.A.J. 1206 (1960). Another writer has pointed out that the Amer-ican Law Institute's Youth Correction Authority Act, as yet unac-cepted in West Virginia, would extend the age of legal infancy totwenty-one, thus providing a wider latitude for the issue to beraised. Lunwic, Your AND i LAw 85 (1955).If juvenile proceedings are made to serve as an adjunct to anda part of the adult process, the non-criminal philosophy whichunderlies the juvenile court system will be destroyed. It is clearthat any position the West Virginia court may take on the rule inthe principal case should be made in view of the necessity of suf-ficiently preserving the basic insulation between juvenile andcriminal proceedings.The development of the relationship between the juvenile courtconfession and the subsequent "fruit" evidence in adult criminalproceedings affords a parallel to the rise of the limitation on theadmission of confessions and their fruits in normal criminal pro-ceedings. During the period of the Court of the Star Chamber anyconfession, regardless of how extracted from the accused, was ad-missible. However, a common law test evolved whereby confessionswere not admissible if given under circumstances that would makethem unreliable. 2 WHARTON, CRnIMIIAL EvmENcE § 358 (12th ed.1955). The test of reliability obviously did not apply to evidenceprocured as a result of this confession-coerced or not-and suchevidence was always admitted.However, in Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156 (1953), the SupremeCourt of the United States applied a second test of due process asa supplement to the common law reliability test. By the dueprocess test, a conviction will be reversed where the confession wasobtained by methods which themselves offend due process; here noinquiry into reliability is relevant. The purpose of this standard isto protect the accused against brutal police tactics.If an involuntary confession is to be excluded, what about otherevidence disclosed by the involuntary confession? The Supreme[Vol. 674West Virginia Law Review, Vol. 67, Iss. 1 [1964], Art. 7https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol67/iss1/7CASE COMMENTSCourt has not ruled. Many states, including West Virginia, haveheld that information ascertained through an inadmissible con-fession is admissible because of its reliability as evidence. Wattsv. State, 229 Ind. 80, 95 N.E.2d 570 (1950); State v. Douglass, 20W. Va. 770 (1882). But the reliability test for admitting evidenceuncovered by coercing the accused no longer stands alone. Thisresulted when the Supreme Court made it clear that coerced con-fessions could be excluded from evidence because of a violation ofthe due process requirement as well as lack of reliability. Paulsen,The Fourteenth Amendment and the Third Degree, 6 STAN. L. REV.411,429 (1954).Two state courts recently ruled on the admissibility of fruitevidence. In People V. Robinson, 13 N.Y.2d 296, 196 N.E.2d 261,224 N.Y.S.2d 705 (1962), the court ruled that where an illegallyobtained statement is excluded, evidence found as a result of thatstatement must also be banned. Similarly, the California court hasstated, by dictum, that real evidence discovered as a result of acoerced confession is inadmissible. People v. Ditson, 57 Cal. 2d415, 369 P.2d 714 (1962).The inadmissibility of such evidence is consistent with SupremeCourt holdings requiring exclusion of reliable evidence uncoveredby the use of improper police methods. As a violation of dueprocess, narcotics capsules forcibly pumped from the defendant'sstomach were held inadmissible in state courts, Rochin v. California,342 U.S. 165 (1952), and the bar on evidence obtained by illegalsearch and seizure has been extended to the states, Mapp v. Ohio,367 U.S. 643 (1961).With the emergence of the due process test in coerced confessioncases, the admissiblity of the fruits of inadmissible confessions be-comes questionable. By the reliability test, a coerced confession wasinadmissible because of its untrustworthiness, but the fruit of thatconfession obviously was trustworthy and thus admissible. How-ever, when the due process test is applied, evidence discovered asa result of the inadmissible confession may become "fruit of thepoisonous tree". It would seem that animate or inanimate evidencewhich directly stems from the inadmissible confession would bejust as tainted as the confession and thus inadmissible.Lester Clay Hess, Jr.1964]5Hess: Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence DerivePublished by The Research Repository @ WVU, 1964

Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence Derived from Inadmissible Juvenile Confessions

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Criminal Law--Admissibility on Criminal Courts of Evidence Derived from Inadmissible Juvenile Confessions

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