Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937)

U.S. Supreme Court PALKO v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT, 302 U.S. 319 (1937)

[Page 302 U.S. 319, 321]

found him guilty of murder in the second degree, and he was sentenced to confinement in the state prison for life. Thereafter the State of Connecticut, with the permission of the judge presiding at the trial, gave notice of appeal to the Supreme Court of Errors. This it did pursuant to an act adopted in 1886 which is printed in the margin. [Footnote 1] Public Acts 1886, p. 560, now section 6494 of the General Statutes. Upon such appeal, the Supreme Court of Errors reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. State v. Palko, 121 Conn. 669, 186 A. 657. It found that there had been error of law to the prejudice of the state (1) in excluding testimony as to a confession by defendant; (2) in excluding testimony upon cross- examination of defendant to impeach his credibility; and (3) in the instructions to the jury as to the difference between first and second degree murder.

[Page 302 U.S. 319, 326]

would limit its scope, or destroy it altogether. [Footnote 3] No doubt there would remain the need to give protection against torture, physical or mental. Brown v. Mississippi, supra. Justice, however, would not perish if the accused were subject to a duty to respond to orderly inquiry. The exclusion of these immunities and privileges from the privileges and immunities protected against the action of the States has not been arbitrary or casual. It has been dictated by a study and appreciation of the meaning, the essential implications, of liberty itself.

[Page 302 U.S. 319, 327]

Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of that truth can be traced in our history, political and legal. So it has come about that the domain of liberty, withdrawn by the Fourteenth Amendment from encroachment by the states, has been enlarged by latter-day judgments to include liberty of the mind as well as liberty of action. [Footnote 5] The extension became, indeed, a logical imperative when once it was recognized, as long ago it was, that liberty is something more than exemption from physical restraint, and that even in the field of substantive rights and duties the legislative judgment, if oppressive and arbitrary, may be overridden by the courts. Cf. Near v. Minnesota, supra; De Jonge v. Oregon, supra. Fundamental too in the concept of due process, and so in that of liberty, is the thought that condemnation shall be rendered only after trial. Scott v. McNeal, 154 U.S. 34, 14 S.Ct. 1108; Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421, 52 S.Ct. 252. The hearing, moreover, must be a real one, not a sham or a pretense. Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, 43 S.Ct. 265; Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 55 S.Ct. 340, 98 A.L.R. 406. For that reason, ignorant defendants in a capital case were held to have been condemned unlawfully when in truth, though not in form, they were refused the aid of counsel. Powell v. Alabama, supra, 287 U.S. 45, at pages 67, 68, 53 S.Ct. 55, 63, 84 A.L.R. 527. The decision did not turn upon the fact that the benefit of counsel would have been guaranteed to the defendants by the provisions of the Sixth Amendment if they had been prosecuted in a federal court. The decision turned upon the fact that in the particular situation laid before us in the evidence the benefit of counsel was essential to the substance of a hearing.

[Page 302 U.S. 319, 329]

There is argument in his behalf that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the due process clause has been flouted by the judgment.

Maxwell v. Dow, supra, 176 U.S. 581, at page 584, 20 S.Ct. 448, 494, gives all the answer that is necessary.

The judgment is affirmed.

Mr. Justice BUTLER dissents. Footnotes

Footnote 1 'Sec. 6494. Appeals by the state in criminal cases. Appeals from the rulings and decisions of the superior court or of any criminal court of common pleas, upon all questions of law arising on the trial of criminal cases, may be taken by the state, with the permission of the presiding judge, to the supreme court of errors, in the same manner and to the same effect as if made by the accused.'

A statute of Vermont (G.L. 2598) was given the same effect and upheld as constitutional in State v. Felch, 92 Vt. 477, 105 A. 23.

Other statutes, conferring a right of appeal more or less limited in scope, are collected in the American Law Institute Code of Criminal Procedure, June 15, 1930, p. 1203.

Footnote 2 First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'

Sixth Anemdment: 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.'

Footnote 3 See, e.g. Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Book IX, Pt. 4, c. III; Glueck, Crime and Justice, p. 94. Cf. Wigmore, Evidence, vol. 4, 2251.

Compulsory self-incrimination is part of the established procedure in the law of Continental Europe. Wigmore, supra, p. 824; Garner, Criminal Procedure in France, 25 Yale L.J. 255, 260; Sherman, Roman Law in the Modern World, vol. 2, pp. 493, 494; Stumberg, Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of France, p. 184. Double jeopardy too is not everywhere forbidden. Radin, Anglo American Legal History, p. 228.

Footnote 4 'It is possible that some of the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments against national action may also be safeguarded against state action, because a denial of them would be a denial of due process of law. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581. If this is so, it is not because those rights are enumerated in the first eight Amendments, but because they are of such a nature that they are included in the conception of due process of law.'

Footnote 5 The cases are brought together in Warren, The New Liberty under the 14th Amendment, 39 Harv.L.Rev. 431.