“Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand.”

—  Felix Frankfurter

Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 540-41 (1961).
Judicial opinions
Context: Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i. e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, …" by Felix Frankfurter?
Felix Frankfurter photo
Felix Frankfurter 67
American judge 1882–1965

Related quotes

Felix Frankfurter photo

“Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i. e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 540-41 (1961).
Judicial opinions

“We must therefore look with grave misgivings upon the psychology of the ‘crusade’ or on the notion that we can make the world over in our own image either by persuasion or by coercion.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), pp. 70-71

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.”
Qui tacet non utique fatetur, sed tamen verum est eum non negare.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Paulus, L, 17

Northrop Frye photo

“It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Formal Phase: Symbol as Image

Ronald David Laing photo

“Psychology is the logos of experience. Psychology is the structure of the evidence, and hence psychology is the science of sciences.”

Ronald David Laing book The Politics of Experience

Source: The Politics of Experience (1967), Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence
Context: I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience used to be called The Soul. Experience as invisibility of man to man is at the same time more evident than anything. Only experience is evident. Experience is the only evidence. Psychology is the logos of experience. Psychology is the structure of the evidence, and hence psychology is the science of sciences.

Earl Warren photo

“The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321 (1959)
1950s

Jane Roberts photo

“Energy projected into any kind of construction, psychic or physical, cannot be recalled, but must follow the laws of the particular form into which it has been for the moment molded.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 92, Page 36
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 3

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“I like to be candid in my admissions — it is so very disarming; you forestall the objection which you admit — at least your adversary has scarcely the heart to push to its utmost the advantage which you so meekly confess.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Aron Ra photo

“Theism is irrational by definition, because it is not based on reason and is not reasonable. There was no evidence indicating this conclusion, yet it is a firm conviction anyway, and believers are determined not to let any evidence change their minds either. The very purpose and existence of apologetics all by itself demonstrates how theism is irrational.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

“The invasion of psychology by cybernetics is making us realize that the ordinary concepts of psychology must be reformulated in the language of physics if a physical explanation of the ordinary psychological phenomena is to become possible. Some psychological concepts can be re-formulated more or less easily, but others are much more difficult, and the investigator must have a deep insight if the physical reality behind the psychological phenomena is to be perceived”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

W. Ross Ashby, "Review of Analytical Biology, by G. Sommerhoff." In: Journal of Mental Science Vol 98 (1952), p. 88; As cited in Peter M. Asaro (2008)

Related topics