Cardwell et al. v. Taylor (461 U.S. 571)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 23, 1983 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 461 U.S. 571 · 103 S. Ct. 2015
- Decided
- May 23, 1983
- Term
- October Term 1982
- Vote
- 7–2
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. The respondent, Louis Cuen Taylor, was convicted of 28 counts of first-degree murder arising out of a fire set in a hotel in 1970. He received a sentence of life imprisonment on each count. After the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentences, State v. Taylor, 112 Ariz. 68, 537 P. 2d 938 (1975), cert. denied, 424 U. S. 921 (1976), he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. The District Court denied the writ, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, remanding for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether certain statements made by Taylor and introduced in evidence against him were voluntary. 579 F. 2d 1380 (1978). On remand, the District Court decided that the statements were voluntary and again denied the writ. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed once more. 692 F. 2d 765 (1982). It relied on Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200 (1979), decided after the first appeal to the Ninth Circuit but before the hearing on remand. In Dunaway, this Court required the exclusion of custodial statements following an arrest that violated the Fourth Amendment, unless the circumstances showed the attenuation of the taint of the illegal arrest. The Court of Appeals stated that the District Court “should have permitted the petitioner to argue the Fourth Amendment issue.” App.…
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