United States v. Jeffrey Jenkins
91 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 5322, 91 Daily Journal DAR 8107, 938 F.2d 934 (1991)
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Rule of Law:
A confession obtained following police brutality and death threats is involuntary and inadmissible under the Due Process Clause. A subsequent confession is also deemed involuntary unless the government can prove that the coercive taint of the initial misconduct has been sufficiently dissipated by intervening circumstances.
Facts:
- A Seattle narcotics task force obtained a warrant to search the residence of Jeffrey Jenkins and his brother in Inglewood, California.
- On May 11, 1988, when officers approached the home, Jenkins, allegedly believing them to be rival gang members, ran inside and fired a semi-automatic rifle at them.
- After being informed via a phone call that the men outside were police, Jenkins immediately surrendered and exited the house unarmed.
- Upon his surrender, arresting officers threw Jenkins to the ground, repeatedly kicked him, and one officer threatened him by saying, 'They should have killed you, but that’s okay, we’ll do it.'
- While being transported, officers stopped in a parking lot, displayed a gun, and discussed planting it on Jenkins and killing him, claiming he had tried to escape.
- A search of the residence revealed several firearms, including a sawed-off shotgun under Jenkins's mattress.
- At approximately 2:00 a.m., after a visit to the hospital for pain related to the beating, Jenkins was interrogated and confessed to owning the sawed-off shotgun.
- Five hours later, Jenkins was interrogated again by a different detective and again confessed to owning the shotgun.
Procedural Posture:
- Jeffrey Jenkins was charged in the U.S. District Court in a multi-count indictment that included possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun.
- Before trial, Jenkins filed a motion to suppress his post-arrest confessions, arguing they were coerced.
- The district court denied the motion to suppress.
- Following a trial, a jury acquitted Jenkins of all charges except for the sawed-off shotgun possession charge.
- Jenkins (appellant) appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
- The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court to make specific factual findings regarding Jenkins’s allegations of police brutality.
- On remand, the district court found that Jenkins had been beaten and threatened by police but nevertheless reaffirmed its conclusion that the confessions were voluntary.
- The case then returned to the Court of Appeals for a decision on the merits of the appeal.
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Issue:
Do police beatings and death threats render a suspect's subsequent confessions involuntary, and thus inadmissible, under the Due Process Clause?
Opinions:
Majority - Boochever, Circuit Judge
Yes, police beatings and death threats render a suspect's subsequent confessions involuntary and inadmissible. Confessions accompanied by physical violence are considered per se involuntary due to their inherent unreliability and the high probability that the suspect's will was overborne. The court found Jenkins's first confession, which occurred hours after he was beaten and threatened with death, was coerced because the implicit threat of further violence and the fear of death had not dissipated. No curative measures were taken to ameliorate the coercive environment before he was questioned. The second confession, made less than five hours later, was also involuntary because the taint of the initial coercion had not been purged. The court reasoned that insufficient time had passed, no significant intervening circumstances existed to dissipate the coercion, and the flagrancy of the police misconduct was severe, making the subsequent confession inadmissible as well.
Analysis:
This decision strongly reaffirms the constitutional principle against the use of confessions obtained through physical violence or threats, treating such conduct as creating a nearly irrebuttable presumption of involuntariness. The case distinguishes the profound, lingering effects of physical coercion from the lesser taint of a technical Miranda violation, as discussed in Oregon v. Elstad. By doing so, it clarifies that the government faces a substantial, if not insurmountable, burden to prove that the coercive atmosphere created by police brutality has been purged before any subsequent confession can be deemed voluntary and admissible.
