End Of Third Degree Interrogation

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 9

End Of Third Degree Interrogation

(From FRANK OLIVER. Special Correspondent—N Z P.A.) WASHINGTON, June 16. Third-degree interrogation of criminal suspects is now outlawed. That is the simplest short description of the 61-page decision which has been read by Chief Justice Earl Warren in the Supreme Court. It emphasises the suspicion, perhaps the belief, that there Is and long has been brutality in the police station and it seeks to shine the light of publicity into those buildings. The decision seems to be splitting the country as it obviously split the court. It is hard to remember, say the old-timers, any issue which has riven the court so deeply. Unusual emotion marked some parts of the decision reading by the Chief Justice and also the dissent voiced by Mr Justice Harlan. ’Many police officials and

some lawyers have been shocked by the decision and some have gone so far as to say they might as well go out of business. The decision undoubtedly makes the job of the police more difficult but organisations that are watchdogs for human rights are delighted and some even think the majority decision does not go far enough.

The Warren decision does at least two things that are of great importance. It breaks new constitutional ground. The fifth amendment to the constitution which protects a suspect from self-incrimina-tion has not in practice been applicable until the suspect has come into court

Now it will be applicable from the time of the arrest. The decision also helps to make the law similar for both poor and rich. Under the new decision an accused person need not talk without a lawyer being present and if he cannot afford one then the authorities must provide one.

In these circumstances it is doubtful whether the police will risk what is common

throughout the land, the interrogation method known as the third degree. Under the decision the rubber truncheon, the blazing lights in the suspects eyes and the prevention of sleep when suspects are at the point of exhaustion are finished. None can doubt the force of the arguments made by the dissenters that the Warren decision will serve to protect and help a lot of criminals—and maybe, as Justice Byron White said, “return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets ... to repeat his crime whenever it pleases him.” But, it is also argued, it will increase the weight of constitutional protections of offenders and suspected offenders. A third argument is that the decision will give greater protection to the criminal than to his victim. What makes these matters of prime public importance is that crime great and small has been on the increase for I years and shows no sign of diminution. Law enforcement authorities have long been I

discussing this vital problem and means to cope with it, and no-one has yet produced any satisfactory answer.

Now, they feel, they are going to be still further handicapped. In the Supreme Court decision those in support of it seem more concerned with the constitutional rights of all men while the dissenters seem to have been chiefly concerned with the current crime wave and means of coping with it. The court’s decision is described in the press as a

sweeping libertarian opinion that significantly changes police interrogation as it has long been practiced in most of the country. It has been expected (the decision arose out of four cases of appeal) that the court might compromise in the area of where a man’s protection against self-incrim-ination began but in the event it could scarcely have been more forthright. The protection must apply from the first police interrogation after a man is taken into custody.