Also known as: voluntary confession · voluntary confessions · voluntariness · confession voluntariness
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A constitutional requirement that a confession be the product of the suspect's free will rather than governmental coercion. Voluntariness is assessed under the totality of the circumstances, including the suspect's age, education, mental and physical condition, and the setting, duration, and manner of interrogation.
Vivian Vaughn was questioned at the station about a theft. Officers obtained her confession after explaining the investigation but without stating she could refuse to speak. A court later found the confession voluntary because the totality of circumstances showed no coercion despite the absence of an explicit refusal warning.
Viktor Voronin, an eighteen-year-old with limited education, was held in a small room for six hours without breaks. Officers repeatedly referenced his family and future. The resulting confession was ruled involuntary under the totality of circumstances because his youth, inexperience, and the extended coercive setting overbore his will.
Vincente Vukovic was summoned to a closed office by campus police and questioned for hours about stolen property. No Miranda warnings were given before he confessed. The confession was suppressed because the encounter constituted custodial interrogation requiring warnings to ensure voluntariness.
In March 1963 Ernesto Miranda was arrested at his home in Phoenix and taken to the police station where he was identified by the complaining witness. He was then questioned by two officers in Interrogation Room No. 2 for two hours. The officers did not advise him of any right to counsel. Miranda signed a typed confession that was introduced at his trial for kidnapping and rape. On October 14 1960 Michael Vignera was arrested in connection with a Brooklyn robbery. He was taken first to the 17th Detective Squad headquarters in Manhattan and later to the 66th Detective Squad. A detective questioned him for several hours without any advice concerning counsel. Vignera made an oral admission. He was then questioned by an assistant district attorney whose transcribed statement was also introduced at his trial for first-degree robbery. On March 20 1963 Carl Calvin Westover was arrested by Kansas City police as a suspect in two local robberies. Kansas City police interrogated Westover on the night of his arrest. The next day local officers interrogated him again throughout the morning. Westover was then turned over to FBI agents who questioned him for two to two-and-a-half hours about California robberies and obtained signed confessions. At the time the FBI agents began questioning Westover he had been in custody for over fourteen hours. On January 31 1963 Roy Allen Stewart was arrested at his home in connection with a series of purse-snatch robberies. During the next five days police interrogated Stewart on nine different occasions without any advice of rights. On the ninth session Stewart confessed. Transcripts of the interrogations were introduced at his trial for kidnapping rape and murder. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Miranda's conviction. The New York courts affirmed Vignera's conviction. The Ninth Circuit affirmed Westover's conviction. The California Supreme Court reversed Stewart's conviction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in the four cases and consolidated them for argument.
Vanessa Vinson was recovering from wounds in intensive care when officers questioned her repeatedly. She gave a statement while medicated and in pain. The confession was held involuntary because the medical condition and hospital setting rendered her statements the product of coercion rather than free will.
On October 28, 1974, undercover police officer Barry Headricks arranged to purchase a quantity of heroin from Rufus Mincey at Mincey's apartment in Tucson, Arizona. Headricks entered the apartment accompanied by an informant while nine other plainclothes officers and a deputy county attorney waited outside. After a short while, Headricks left the apartment and told the waiting officers that he had seen narcotics and narcotics paraphernalia inside. The officers then radioed for a search warrant and positioned themselves outside the apartment. Shortly thereafter the officers heard sounds of a struggle, forced entry, and a shootout followed in which Headricks was fatally wounded, Mincey was shot and left semiconscious, and another man in the apartment was also shot and later died. Mincey was taken to the hospital in critical condition, placed in the intensive care unit, and connected to breathing tubes, a stomach tube, a bladder catheter, and intravenous feeding equipment while receiving pain medication and other drugs. Homicide detectives arrived within ten minutes of the shooting, supervised removal of the wounded, and then conducted a warrantless search of the entire apartment that lasted four days. Officers opened drawers, closets, and cupboards, emptied clothing pockets, dug bullet fragments from walls and floors, pulled up sections of carpet, photographed and diagrammed every room, and seized between two hundred and three hundred objects including narcotics and paraphernalia. The evening of the shooting and again the next day, Detective Hust questioned Mincey in the intensive care unit. Unable to speak because of the breathing tube, Mincey wrote answers on paper while in pain and under medication; he repeatedly stated that he wanted a lawyer and asked that questioning stop, yet Hust continued the interrogation for several hours across multiple sessions interrupted only by medical treatment or loss of consciousness. At a single trial Mincey was convicted of murder, assault, and three counts of narcotics offenses; the trial court admitted both the evidence seized during the four-day search and Mincey's hospital statements over his objections. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the murder and assault convictions on state-law grounds but affirmed the narcotics convictions, upholding the search under a homicide-scene exception and finding the statements voluntary. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the constitutional questions presented by the search and the statements.
Vera Vu received immunity for testimony but later faced charges based on independent evidence. She argued her prior statements tainted the case. The court admitted the later confession because the immunity grant and independent sources preserved voluntariness without compelling self-incrimination.
In February 1971 petitioners were subpoenaed to appear before a United States grand jury in the Central District of California investigating violations of federal gambling and related laws. The government believed that petitioners were likely to assert their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Prior to the scheduled appearances, the government applied to the District Court for an order directing petitioners to answer questions and produce evidence before the grand jury under a grant of immunity conferred pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002-6003. Petitioners opposed issuance of the order, contending that the scope of the immunity provided by the statute was not coextensive with the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination and therefore was not sufficient to supplant the privilege and compel their testimony. The District Court rejected this contention and ordered petitioners to appear before the grand jury and answer its questions under the grant of immunity. Petitioners appeared but refused to answer questions, asserting their privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. They were brought before the District Court, and each persisted in his refusal to answer the grand jury's questions notwithstanding the grant of immunity. The court found both in contempt and committed them to the custody of the Attorney General until either they answered the grand jury's questions or the term of the grand jury expired. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the contempt findings. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve whether testimony may be compelled by granting immunity from the use of compelled testimony and evidence derived therefrom or whether transactional immunity is necessary.
Violet Vidal invoked her right to counsel during initial questioning. The next day a different officer approached her in jail without counsel present and obtained a second statement. The confession was suppressed because police reinitiated interrogation after a clear invocation, violating the rule protecting voluntariness.
On January 19, 1976, a sworn complaint was filed against Edwards in Arizona state court charging him with robbery, burglary, and first-degree murder. An arrest warrant was issued pursuant to the complaint, and Edwards was arrested at his home later that same day. At the police station, he was informed of his rights as required by Miranda v. Arizona. Petitioner stated that he understood his rights, and was willing to submit to questioning. After being told that another suspect already in custody had implicated him in the crime, Edwards denied involvement and gave a taped statement presenting an alibi defense. He then sought to make a deal. The interrogating officer told him that he wanted a statement, but that he did not have the authority to negotiate a deal. The officer provided Edwards with the telephone number of a county attorney. Petitioner made the call, but hung up after a few moments. Edwards then said: I want an attorney before making a deal. At that point, questioning ceased and Edwards was taken to county jail. At 9:15 the next morning, two detectives, colleagues of the officer who had interrogated Edwards the previous night, came to the jail and asked to see Edwards. When the detention officer informed Edwards that the detectives wished to speak with him, he replied that he did not want to talk to anyone. The guard told him that he had to talk and then took him to meet with the detectives. The officers identified themselves, stated they wanted to talk to him, and informed him of his Miranda rights. Edwards was willing to talk, but he first wanted to hear the taped statement of the alleged accomplice who had implicated him. After listening to the tape for several minutes, petitioner said that he would make a statement so long as it was not tape-recorded. The detectives informed him that the recording was irrelevant since they could testify in court concerning whatever he said. Edwards replied: I'll tell you anything you want to know, but I don't want it on tape. He thereupon implicated himself in the crime. Prior to trial, Edwards moved to suppress his confession on the ground that his Miranda rights had been violated when the officers returned to question him after he had invoked his right to counsel. The trial court initially granted the motion to suppress, but reversed its ruling when presented with a supposedly controlling decision of a higher Arizona court. The court stated without explanation that it found Edwards' statement to be voluntary. Edwards was tried twice and convicted. Evidence concerning his confession was admitted at both trials. On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court held that Edwards had invoked both his right to remain silent and his right to counsel during the interrogation conducted on the night of January 19. The court then went on to determine, however, that Edwards had waived both rights during the January 20 meeting when he voluntarily gave his statement to the detectives after again being informed that he need not answer questions and that he need not answer without the advice of counsel. The trial court's finding that the waiver and confession were voluntarily and knowingly made is upheld.
Voluntariness is judged by the totality of the circumstances under the Due Process Clause. Courts examine the suspect's age, education, mental and physical condition, and the interrogation's setting, duration, and manner. Threats tied to immigration status or family notification can render a statement involuntary when they overbear the suspect's will.
…resting on a compelled confession, Wan v. United States , 266 U. S. 1. He stated: "In the federal courts, the requisite of voluntariness is not satisfied by establishing merely that the confession was not induced by a promise or a threat. A confession is voluntary in law if, and only if, it was, in fact, voluntarily made. A…
…occurred or whether the warning was really given. The concurrence’s treatment of misadvice seems driven by concern about the voluntariness of Padilla’s guilty plea. See ante , at 12. But that concern properly relates to the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, not to the Sixth Amendment. See McCarthy…
…On the other hand, a defendant raising a coerced-confession claim under the Fifth Amendment must first prevail in a voluntariness hearing before his
…not introduce testimony bearing on the circumstances of his confession, on the grounds that this information bore only on the "voluntariness
Warnings are required during custodial interrogation. An encounter is custodial when a reasonable person would not feel free to leave, such as in a closed office with police present for hours. Without warnings, any resulting statement is inadmissible regardless of other voluntariness factors.
Only a clear and unambiguous invocation halts interrogation. A statement such as "Maybe I really should have a lawyer" is equivocal and does not trigger the Edwards rule. Officers may continue questioning when the request is not sufficiently definite for a reasonable officer to understand it as an invocation.
Once a suspect clearly invokes the right to counsel, police must cease interrogation and may not reinitiate about the same offense without counsel present. A second confession obtained the next day by a different officer violates this rule and must be suppressed even if the suspect eventually signs a waiver.