Turner v. Pennsylvania (338 U.S. 62)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 27, 1949 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 338 U.S. 62 · 69 S. Ct. 1352
- Decided
- June 27, 1949
- Term
- October Term 1948
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Frankfurter
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Frankfurter announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which Mr. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Rutledge join. Our ruling in Watts v. Indiana, ante, p. 49, is decisive of the present case. It is also a capital case in which the petitioner claims that his conviction for first-degree murder resulted from the use of incriminatory-statements obtained under circumstances which should have barred their admission. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in affirming the conviction, rejected this claim. 358 Pa. 350, 58 A. 2d 61. We brought the case here to measure against the requirements of due process the circumstances giving rise to the claim. 334 U. S. 858. Again we take conflicts of testimony as they were resolved by the State’s adjudication. For six months the Philadelphia police had been investigating the felonious death of one Frank Andres. At 10:30 in the morning of June 3, 1946, they arrested Aaron Turner, the petitioner, on suspicion of the homicide and took him to the office of the Homicide Division at the City Hall Building. The officers making the arrest had no warrant and did not tell the petitioner why he was being arrested. These officers began to question the petitioner as soon as they reached the City Hall police station. One of them examined the petitioner for three hours on that afternoon and again that night from eight to eleven o’clock. From…
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