Beecher v. Alabama (408 U.S. 234)

Supreme Court of the United States

408 U.S. 234

Beecher  v.  Alabama

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Alabama

No. 71-6497.  Argued: N/A --- Decided: June 26, 1972

After this Court reversed petitioner's 1964 murder conviction on the ground that written convictions used as evidence in his trial were involuntary as the products of gross coercion and thus violated due process, petitioner was reindicted, retried, and convicted after an oral confession had been admitted into evidence. That confession had been made to a hospital doctor one hour after petitioner's arrest while he was in extreme pain from a gunshot wound and under the influence of morphine.

Held: Petitioner's oral confession was also invalid, having been the product of gross coercion and part of the same "stream of events" that necessitated invalidation of the written confessions.

Certiorari granted; 288 Ala. 1, 256 So. 2d 154, reversed.


PER CURIAM.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.