Mallory v. United States
354 U.S. 449 (1957)
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Rule of Law:
Under Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a confession is inadmissible if obtained during a period of unnecessary delay between a suspect's arrest and their initial appearance before a judicial officer.
Facts:
- On April 7, 1954, a woman was raped in the basement of her apartment building.
- Minutes before the attack, she had sought help from the janitor's apartment, where his 19-year-old half-brother, Andrew Mallory, was alone.
- The attacker was masked, but the victim identified his general features as resembling those of Mallory and his two grown nephews.
- Mallory was apprehended by police between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. the following day.
- Police questioned Mallory at headquarters for 30-45 minutes, during which he denied his guilt.
- Mallory was detained for several more hours and agreed to a polygraph test, which began after 8:00 p.m.
- After nearly an hour and a half of interrogation by the polygraph operator, Mallory confessed to the crime around 9:30 p.m.
- He subsequently repeated and dictated the confession to other officers over the next few hours, and was not brought before a Commissioner until the next morning.
Procedural Posture:
- Andrew Mallory was convicted of rape in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
- The jury imposed a death sentence as authorized by the District Code.
- Mallory (appellant) appealed the conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
- The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, with one judge dissenting.
- The United States Supreme Court granted Mallory's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the case.
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Issue:
Does the admission of a confession, obtained from a suspect after a prolonged period of police detention and interrogation before they are brought before a committing magistrate, violate Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requiring arraignment 'without unnecessary delay'?
Opinions:
Majority - Mr. Justice Frankfurter
Yes. The admission of a confession obtained during a period of unnecessary delay before arraignment violates Rule 5(a). The purpose of Rule 5(a)'s requirement to bring an arrested person 'without unnecessary delay' before a judicial officer is to prevent the use of secret interrogations to extract confessions and to ensure the suspect is promptly advised of their rights. The police are not permitted to arrest individuals and then use an extended period of detention and interrogation to build their case. In this instance, Mallory was arrested in the early afternoon in a location with numerous available magistrates, yet he was subjected to hours of questioning and a polygraph examination before confessing late that night. This delay was not for simple administrative booking but was designed to extract a confession, rendering it 'unnecessary' under the rule. Therefore, the confession obtained as a result of this unlawful detention is inadmissible.
Analysis:
This case solidifies the exclusionary rule established in McNabb v. United States, applying it to the newly adopted Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The McNabb-Mallory rule creates a bright-line procedural safeguard in federal criminal cases, making confessions obtained during an unnecessary pre-arraignment delay automatically inadmissible, regardless of whether the confession was voluntary under the Fifth Amendment's standards. This decision places significant pressure on federal law enforcement to promptly present arrested individuals to a magistrate, thereby limiting the window for prolonged, potentially coercive interrogation. It shifts the focus from the voluntariness of a confession to the legality of the detention during which it was obtained.
