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#11 Colorado v. Connelly
24 Plays4 days ago
In this episode we re-argue the Supreme Court case Colorado v. Connelly.
A man walked up to a police officer who was minding his own business and announced that he wished to confess to a murder. The police repeatedly informed him of his rights, and he insisted upon making his statement. It turned out this man was experiencing acute symptoms of mental illness.
The question before the court: did taking FC’s statements and using them as evidence against him violate the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment?
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Transcript
Introduction to Relitigated Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
thank Hi there. Welcome to Relitigated, the show where five friends who are absolutely not lawyers attempt to retry a real Supreme Court case. I'm your host Nikki, and this is episode 11, Colorado versus Connolly.
00:00:15
Speaker
Two quick notes before we get started. First, as always, we try our best to represent the facts and decisions in the case as accurately as possible, but we're not lawyers and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice.
00:00:30
Speaker
Second, If you enjoy the podcast, please support us by subscribing, rating, leaving us a comment, and telling your friends. We could really use the help in getting the word out.
Podcast Platforms and Social Media
00:00:40
Speaker
If you like, you can also find us on YouTube, Instagram, and Blue Sky.
00:00:44
Speaker
Our handle is at Relitigated Podcast. Thank you so much for your support. With that out of the way, let's start the show.
00:00:54
Speaker
Peruk is what the old-timey powdered wig is called. Peruk? A peruke, a man's wig, particularly the popular type from the 17th to early 19th century, made of long hair, curls on the sides, drawing back on the nape of the neck. Exactly what I had in mind.
00:01:09
Speaker
Wow. I can't imagine a better place to start than that. Perfect. Well, in that case. us in, keyboard cat.
00:01:20
Speaker
So, hi there. Welcome to the Relitigated Podcast. I'm your host, Nikki, and I am joined by my co-host, Jarrett. Hello, Jarrett. Hello. We also have with us three friends who will be role-playing as our justices.
00:01:36
Speaker
First, we have Associate Justice Graham. Good evening. Happy to be here. Next, we have Associate Justice Mike. Yo. Hello. And lastly, we have our Chief Justice, Adam.
Introducing Colorado v. Connolly
00:01:51
Speaker
I promised I wasn't going let this go to my head, but when you call me Chief Justice, it's intoxicating.
00:01:59
Speaker
and So if you're new to the show, here's how this works. Jarrett and I have selected a real Supreme Court case, and our justices do not know what case we have selected. Jarrett will introduce the case to us and walk us through the facts so we can all get familiar with the details.
00:02:16
Speaker
The justices are free to ask factual questions during this time, and we will answer as best as we can. Next, we'll move into oral arguments, where Jarrett will role play as the petitioner, and I will role play as the respondent.
00:02:30
Speaker
We each get seven minutes to make our case, during which the justices can interrupt us and ask probing questions. When the arguments are over, the justices will deliberate and deliver their own opinions.
00:02:43
Speaker
The final rulings do not need to be unanimous. Majority opinion wins. Even if two or more justices agree in principle, they can disagree as to why. Once we've had our fun with our mock hearing, Jarrett and I will reveal what the Supreme Court actually decided and talk about how we feel about the actual results and why this case matters.
00:03:05
Speaker
Sound good to everyone? Roger that. Huzzah. Let's do it. Great. ah Now I'm going to turn it over to Jarrett. All right. Thank you much.
00:03:16
Speaker
ah Before I start, i do want to give a shout out ah to William Pizzi. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He's the gentleman who wrote ah the article from which most of the facts that you're about to hear. So I did want to ah give a shout out real quick. So here we go.
Connolly's Confession and Mental Health
00:03:34
Speaker
The case that we're going to discuss for this episode is Colorado v. Connolly. This case begins one day on the street outside a courthouse in Denver, Colorado, where a gentleman named FC walked up to a uniformed police officer, stuck out his hands, and asked to be arrested.
00:03:53
Speaker
The officer asked FC why he wanted to be arrested, and FC allegedly responded, quote, I killed someone. When the officer asked FC to explain further, FC said that he had stabbed a 14-year-old girl to death several months prior and described where in the city he had done so.
00:04:11
Speaker
At this point, the officer read FC his rights, handcuffed him, searched him for weapons, and called for a detective to come to the scene. While waiting for the detective to arrive, FC was informed by the officer again that he did not have to talk to the police.
00:04:27
Speaker
Undeterred, FC described more details about the victim, including her name, her age, and that they had traveled to Denver from Boston together. FC even offered to take the officer to the location of the alleged murder.
00:04:41
Speaker
In response, the officer asked FC if he was currently under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but FC reported that he was sober. When asked if he had ever been treated for a mental illness, FC confirmed that he had in fact been hospitalized five times.
00:04:57
Speaker
When the detective arrived, he requested that FC return with him to police headquarters for questioning, and FC agreed. At police headquarters, FC once again was read his rights and once again chose to discuss the murder.
00:05:10
Speaker
In the ensuing interview, FC repeated much of what he had said on the street, as well as added some additional details about the incident, including how he and the victim had traveled by bus from Boston together before getting into an argument that led FC to stab the girl.
00:05:27
Speaker
FC made good on his offer to take the officers to the scene of the crime, directing them from a police vehicle through the city and to an alley. It was in the same alley several months earlier that the body of a 14-year-old girl with multiple stab wounds had been discovered.
00:05:42
Speaker
Following FC's interview, the police conducted a full investigation, including traveling to Boston to prove the identity of the victim and the connection between her and FC. Through their work, they found the family of the young girl, positively identified her clothing, her name, and her disappearance, confirmed a match of her dental records, and confirmed with FC's family that he and the girl were seen together at a family function.
00:06:07
Speaker
With this corroboration of FC's story, he was formally charged with the crime of second-degree murder. While the police were investigating in Boston, F.C. was hospitalized at a state mental hospital.
00:06:19
Speaker
It turns out that before the end of the day on which he admitted to the murder, he had to be restrained and treated by a psychiatrist in the jail. In a meeting with a public defender, he was considered delusional and confused.
00:06:33
Speaker
F.C. described hearing the voice of God that commanded him to confess. After an examination, FC was ruled to be incompetent to stand trial and committed to the Colorado State Mental Hospital.
00:06:46
Speaker
It wasn't until five months later that a doctor at the hospital opined that FC was once again competent to stand trial. Ahead of the trial itself, FC's lawyer filed a motion to suppress his statements to the police on the day that he confessed to the murder, arguing that his mental illness meant that he was not capable of making a voluntary admission, which meant that his confession was, in fact, involuntary.
00:07:11
Speaker
They further argued that since the confession was involuntary, admitting it into evidence would violate FC's due process rights. The officer and the detective testified that FC did not present to them as a man in the throes of a mental illness.
00:07:27
Speaker
They noted that he was neatly dressed, spoke normally, and appeared to be in control of himself. They followed all of their procedures, including reading FC his rights numerous times, thus giving him multiple opportunities to remain quiet.
00:07:41
Speaker
The psychiatrist at the state psychiatric hospital testified that F.C. had reported hearing the voice of God demanding that he confess to the murder. He flew back to Denver that night following the command of the voice in his head.
00:07:54
Speaker
F.C. stated that he was not actually interested in confessing and had gone to the airport a few times with the intent of returning home. It wasn't until The Voice told him to confess or kill himself that F.C. chose to confess.
00:08:08
Speaker
From here, F.C. reported that he followed the commands of The Voice, including sending his remaining money home to his mother, which his mother confirmed she received. As a result of F.C.' 's story and his mother's corroboration, it was the opinion of the psychiatrist that F.C. suffered from schizophrenia, which caused command auditory hallucinations.
00:08:28
Speaker
While F.C. could function normally most of the time, he didn't have a choice in confessing, according to the psychiatrist. Ultimately, the trial judge ruled that FC's statements were not given voluntarily because they were not the result of his free will, and so they could not be entered into evidence and used against him in court.
00:08:48
Speaker
Furthermore, any evidence collected as a result of FC's statements also needed to be suppressed. This includes basically everything.
00:09:00
Speaker
Since this ruling essentially obliterated the prosecution's case, they appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, but the trial court's decision was upheld. Undeterred, the prosecution once again appealed, this time to the United States Supreme Court.
Legal Arguments and Appeal
00:09:15
Speaker
So now the question falls to our panel of justices. Did F.C.' 's mental illness mean his statements to the police were involuntary and their use at trial would be considered a violation of his due process rights?
00:09:30
Speaker
Not taking it easy on us. Welcome back. Oh man, I was hoping for another poop case. That's, that's like, yeah, I've just wanted like, man steals candy from child and they executed him the next day. Were they hasty? Should they have waited a week? Like that's, that's the kind of case I want to talk about.
00:09:50
Speaker
We're not even talking about guilt or innocence in this one. This is crazy. This is like second derivative right violations. Oh boy. I mean like, pretty much everyone's sure that he did it right. Like but that's the thing that, that doesn't even matter.
00:10:08
Speaker
That's not even in scope for us. Uh, but I digress. Sorry. We're only, yeah we've only heard half the case. we're We're so quick. We're so quick to jump to our jurisprudence. We're just so excitable.
00:10:21
Speaker
Once you put these wigs on us, are there any, uh, any factual questions I could address? um What happened in the five months that he was in the psychiatric facility?
00:10:34
Speaker
Do we have any info on that? ah He was presumably getting treatment and- were just shocking him every day. his um His mental status was getting you know stabilized. So he was receiving um treatment in the hospital.
00:10:47
Speaker
Was that like to, with the express of making sure that he was like competent enough to stand trial or- I mean, because it seems like the case could have gone to trial pretty quickly based on- They were tuning the amperage specifically to get him trial ready, yes.
00:11:03
Speaker
um If he's incompetent, then the case cannot move forward. The trial cannot move forward. He has to be competent and able to proceed and participate. So while he was in the hospital, they were basically paused and and waiting for him. Okay. And it took them five months to- seven months to determine that, no, he can't go to trial.
00:11:25
Speaker
um No, after the end of, ah was it seven months, ah Jarrett? I believe it was he he spent five months in the hospital before a psychiatrist opined yeah that he was now competent to stand trial.
00:11:36
Speaker
So he went underwent the treatment, was reevaluated, and then opined competent. And then the judge, I would presume, found him competent at that point.
00:11:46
Speaker
Okay. So they find him competent. And then when did it switch back to incompetent?
00:11:54
Speaker
It didn't. Yeah, he was it was um when he was charged. Retroactively, it doesn't matter that you're competent now. You weren't competent back when you confessed. That's the... That is the assertion of the defense. So he confessed, and then that night he had problems, he decompensated.
00:12:13
Speaker
And then the following day, I believe it was, he met his defense lawyer for the first time, and the defense lawyer had concerns. And then that led to the initial competency evaluation and his determination that he was incompetent.
00:12:28
Speaker
Was the fact that he had an episode or whatever, i don't know what the, you know, that he had some sort of, ah it became obvious that he was, something was going on on the day that he was arrested. Is that relevant? Or is it, are we saying that he can never be seen as competent at any point because he has chronic schizophrenia?
00:12:53
Speaker
ah He was assessed as ah as competent following his his treatment and stuff. um I think the issue was just, ah it turned out that at the time that he was confessing, he ah hadn't been treated and was acutely ill.
00:13:08
Speaker
And that became evident, you know, in the hours that followed. So if he was not acutely ill in the hours that followed, but was acutely ill at some point, maybe days later when it wasn't relevant, there would be no case here.
00:13:24
Speaker
I mean, it's up to the defense to really- Gotcha. You know, make that assertion. Yeah, because maybe I could see like, I confessed and then I went a little crazy because, oh my God, I just confessed to murder and showed the police where the body was and gave them all the evidence- They need to do a no-take-backsies on confessions. Yeah, that's what's missing.
00:13:43
Speaker
so I think that there's just one thing to clear up, ah because competency, ah kind the competency was, was he competent to stand trial? Competency doesn't have anything to do with the confession, as I understand it. right so Competency is a legal term, and...
00:14:03
Speaker
ah and so but i So what I want to make clear is is he confessed. The question is, ah was he competent to stand trial?
00:14:14
Speaker
That was just what delayed the case from going to trial. The question really is, can the state use his confession efforts if he was potentially not in control of himself when he confessed?
00:14:31
Speaker
But he did confess to a thing that he seems to have actually done without anyone forcing him to confess to the thing that he actually potentially did.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah potentially, right? To be fair, at this point, there has not been a trial that has convicted him, nor has a plea been accepted. And so, and the issue is in talking, he waived his right to remain silent. And so there's questions about, you know, the decision making behind his waiver um and whether he was capable of making such a decision and whether he was doing so voluntarily.
00:15:09
Speaker
Oh boy, I love that this trial basically boils down to in the absence of a proper state apparatus to take care of mentally ill people, ah do the constitutional rights afforded to you accidentally afford compassion?
00:15:22
Speaker
Let's see as you drop down the giant unfeeling plinko machine of the state and we'll find out. so so it So it's not that he made a confession, it's that he waived the Miranda rights and he might not have been in the right mind to understand the Miranda rights, even though he walked himself to the court to confess.
00:15:44
Speaker
Correct. ye Yeah. And we're gonna we're going to argue. right. Yeah. Either side of that issue. Any other questions before we get to the next part?
00:15:57
Speaker
Now, stir me up with emotional arguments. I'm ready to argue. Well, I think with that, we're going to start with the petitioner's argument, and that is going to be Jarrett on behalf of the state of Colorado.
00:16:12
Speaker
And Jarrett, I am putting seven minutes on the clock, and it will start when when you do. Thank you very much. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court,
00:16:25
Speaker
Though we concede that the defendant has a diagnosed mental illness, the actions of the state in responding to his voluntary admission of guilt did not violate his due process rights.
00:16:36
Speaker
In fact, I intend to show that the officers took great pains to protect FC's rights at every step of the process, and that is what due process rights are all about.
00:16:47
Speaker
To start, the state did not seek out FC. He was not wanted for questioning or a but suspect of any kind. Instead, FC approached a uniformed police officer on the street minding his own business and asked to be arrested for murder.
00:17:02
Speaker
FC was a free man. He was not detained or in police custody. He was just a person on the street who chose to approach law enforcement. As FC tried to confess to murder, the police officer stopped him and informed him of his Miranda rights before the conversation could continue any further.
00:17:18
Speaker
This is model behavior on the part of Denver law enforcement. To the officer, FC chose of his own free will to continue speaking to the officer in full knowledge of his rights and the risks.
00:17:32
Speaker
When a detective arrived, that detective again informed FC of his rights. At this point in the interaction between FC and law enforcement, FC had been informed of his rights twice and were both times and both times after both times chose to waive his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney.
00:17:50
Speaker
The information that FC provided to the officers over the course of the investigation was accurate. A girl had been murdered and FC knew the details, including the exact location of her body.
00:18:01
Speaker
So in any other case, all of this care to inform the defendant of his rights and confirm his understanding multiple times would be celebrated. The defendant would be held accountable for their actions and their confession admitted into evidence.
00:18:14
Speaker
But in this case, the defense argues that the actions of the officers were somehow not enough to actually protect FC's due process rights. They argue that he was compelled by his mental illness, and so it was not free will.
00:18:27
Speaker
This interpretation of due process rights is troublesome. There are many reasons that one may be compelled to confess to a crime that they committed, and it is not the business of the government to decide whose reason is valid and whose is invalid.
00:18:40
Speaker
Could a religious man, having spent years in a system that reinforced over and over again the requirement to confess since they were a child, claim that their confession was not truly free will?
00:18:50
Speaker
Could they say that they had been driven to confession by external forces or indoctrination? It was not their desire to confess, but a compulsion which ate at them. Did not the teachings of their God compel them above their own wishes?
00:19:04
Speaker
It needs to be made abundantly clear that having a conscience that drives you to do the right thing, no matter what its source, is not legally distinct from free will. The issue of this case is whether the government acted inappropriately given the scenario presented to them.
00:19:20
Speaker
It is our belief that the officers involved took great pains at every step to ensure that F.C. was informed of his rights and understood his rights. The reason for waiving his rights is known only to F.C.
00:19:32
Speaker
The Constitution protects F.C. from the government. It does not protect him from his own reasoning. You should also consider that according to the American Psychological psychological Association, at the time that this case happened, ah in the period when this case happened, less than 1% of people who have ah commanded to auditory hallucinations actually follow those commands, and only some of those people are following commands that contradict what they already wanted to do.
00:20:02
Speaker
Again, that's from an amicus brief from the American Psychological Association at the time that this case took place. Therefore, we believe that FC's confession was not forced out of him by the government, and so it is not a violation of his due process rights to use his confession against him in a court of law.
00:20:19
Speaker
I yield to questions. Man, that was compelling. Compelling evil. Usually you're on the straight end of the stick in terms of having to argue in favor of evil, but I find i find little false with what you just said there.
00:20:34
Speaker
Like this case would be very different if he had not initially marched himself to the police station to kick off this chain of events. I'm struggling with that part. That's, it really does feel like he abrogated his own rights. Yeah. I don't have any factual questions.
00:20:52
Speaker
Hypotheticals or deep seated feelings. Well, lot of not yeah, but they don't have anything to do with this case. Sure. yeah I mean, that's a different podcast. i I'll reserve my time. was I don't know how much time I have left, but I wonder if there is a threshold, ah definable or subjective, but at which the police would basically be like, no, this guy is too out there.
00:21:18
Speaker
Nothing. He says, we're not even going to record what this guy's saying because until he gets a lawyer, because like, it would be, it would be irresponsible of us to, uh, to even attempt to make the argument that we're making now, right. To, to even like force the legal system to consider whether this guy's testimony was, was made under duress or not. Like, is there a threshold at which the things this person is saying are so outlandish that the police decide like, you know what, we're just gonna let his lawyer handle this.
00:21:50
Speaker
Certainly. Yeah. it Go ahead. Sorry. They got the, the lawyer, After like he drove them to where the body and all that was or. Yes.
00:22:01
Speaker
On the other hand, it is kind of hard to ignore that chain of events.
00:22:08
Speaker
So he waived his right to the lawyer. he was informed that he had a right to remain silent, that anything he said could and would be used against him. And then he had the right to an attorney. And he said, i understand, but I have to get this off my chest.
00:22:24
Speaker
ah Multiple times, multiple times he was informed of this. It wasn't until after the confession that he began to exhibit any behavior that would make anybody question ah his mental state, which, you know, we don't know what his mental state was. It could very well be that after the, after he confessed, he did decompensate.
00:22:46
Speaker
but Oh yeah. I killed a girl. and I'm going to show you where I buried her is totally normal mental state. I mean, you could have just had like, it's really, really guilty conscious that, you know, you know, he I mean, it was considering potentially suicide or confessing. It might've just been, i mean, even if it's like, I guess there's something to be said for the stress involved with that finally getting to him.
00:23:06
Speaker
But like I, the whole compel thing, it's like, eating at them. Like, I don't like, I feel like compel is almost either you're in a mental state where you're totally discombobulated and like, but okay, we just don't listen to you.
00:23:21
Speaker
But things like I'm just wracked with guilt and I can show you where the body is. And okay. You said the Miranda rights. Like, I wonder if, you know, and then I could see a crash coming after the adrenaline or whatever. like Oops. Thanks down. I actually, here's a factual question.
00:23:40
Speaker
um At any point in the process, from the beginning through the end, did he ever talk on it again or appear in court again? Did he ever recant his confession or anything like that?
00:23:53
Speaker
My understanding is, and i I understand I'm at time, so I'm just answering the question as ah as it was asked. ah My understanding is... Everything went through his, law I assume everything went through his lawyer after that point. And so we, we never really heard from, from FC again, ah once he was committed to the state hospital.
00:24:16
Speaker
My presumption would be that once a lawyer got involved, the lawyer was like, stop talking. Yeah. Okay. Stop talking forever. But to your point, did he recant? I don't believe that happened either.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I'm not sure that a plea was it was was ever entered. So we don't even know if, well, it might be. and And I just don't have that information in front of me. Gotcha. All right. We're just taking for granted that he actually murdered this woman. And like the twist is that it was just a wacky set of misunderstandings that led to this point. yeah Will you tell us at the end whether or not he actually did it? Because I'm dying to know.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like this would be a whole different thing if he was talking nonsense and let him on this goose chase and like there was nothing there. but the fact Oddly specific, yeah. Yeah, and there's led the other corroborating evidence, you know, with the scene at the family function and all that.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's it for me. All right, so is it my turn? I miss Sarah. yeah Yes, ah it is your turn. And the the justice who is always most open-armed for you is is not here to protect you this time. oh you don't like this profound masculine energy? You got to actually work for it this time.
00:25:34
Speaker
right. All right. Now, I feel like I understand a little bit more what it's like to be Jarrett. Yes. Welcome to my world. I have seven minutes on the clock ah for whenever start.
Deliberation on Confession Admissibility
00:25:46
Speaker
Okay, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. The court has previously held that a decision to waive a fundamental constitutional right is a very serious decision.
00:26:02
Speaker
As such, the decision to waive has to be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. That is the person has to be informed of their rights. They must have the capacity to understand and to use the information about their rights to make a rational decision.
00:26:19
Speaker
And they have to make the decision freely without being subject to coercion. Even if police are not using whips or physical injury to extract a confession from a suspect, psychological pressure also impacts the voluntariness of a confession.
00:26:36
Speaker
Keep in mind that the police uniform, being in police custody, and being interrogated are inherently coercive. At this point, the world has shrunk to the interrogation room.
00:26:49
Speaker
The room consists of you and a police officer or multiple police officers who hold the full force of the law. This court has also previously ruled that a defendant's mental state can impact whether a confession is voluntary.
00:27:05
Speaker
It goes to follow that the individual who is unstable in their mental status is vulnerable, including to real or perceived pressures, suggestion, and coercion.
00:27:17
Speaker
All of this, the full circumstances, must be taken into account when considering whether confession is truly voluntary. In this case, it wasn't. If a confession is not given with full understanding, knowingness, intelligence, and voluntariness, then taking it and using it at trial for the purpose of depriving the individual of their liberty and subjecting them to criminal penalties undercuts the basis of a fair criminal trial.
00:27:47
Speaker
Even if the police did not engage in direct misconduct, the subsequent admission of the statement and is and using it as evidence against him is the government wrongdoing at issue here.
00:27:59
Speaker
The Colorado Supreme Court had it right in ruling that the admission of involuntary statements not made with the defendant's full free will and rational intellect and admitting them into evidence is a government act that violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
00:28:15
Speaker
This is not a matter of conscience. FC had a serious chronic mental illness. The evidence shows that he was not taking medications, he hadn't for months, and he was actively symptomatic at the time that he approached his officer and made his statements.
00:28:34
Speaker
He confessed because it was his belief, his delusional belief, that God was ordering him to, and he had to or die. This suggests that his mental illness was applying pressure that he was not in control of, and so his confession was not voluntary.
00:28:53
Speaker
The fact that he was following the commands of voices produced by his mental illness also raises questions about the validity of his confession. Indeed, he was shortly thereafter determined incompetent to stand trial due to this mental illness,
00:29:09
Speaker
So if he is incompetent to stand trial, meaning he is incompetent to navigate the criminal trial process and to make the decisions that are expected of criminal defendants, this means he could not have knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived his fundamental constitutional rights most relevant to this process.
00:29:33
Speaker
Once again, the admission of his statements, this taking advantage of his vulnerability, thus offends the dignity and the integrity of the court and its proceedings. And with that, I'll yield to the, well, actually I'll take questions.
00:29:49
Speaker
Offends the dignity of this court is a little strong. It's just an opening thought. i was trying to be like Jarrett. ah So I do have a question.
00:30:01
Speaker
What legally defines coercion? ah So basically, if there's some sort of misconduct that induces somebody, you know, to engage in some sort of behavior, that's not fully voluntary.
00:30:17
Speaker
So what is the case for coercion here? Because it seems like the cops yeah did the whole Miranda right thing twice,
00:30:32
Speaker
So I'm just curious, what is the argument for it being coercion? So in this case- So you say he said the argument was like the police had done something wrong. I'm curious, what would have been the right thing for the police to do?
00:30:46
Speaker
So in this case, the government wrongdoing was actually not so much the police, but of the court ah or of the prosecution um seeking to enter his statement into evidence and to use it against him.
00:31:00
Speaker
just Just for clarity, the statement that he voluntarily gave the court, the prosecution was in the wrong for entering the statement that he voluntarily gave into evidence?
00:31:10
Speaker
So it is our assertion that it was not voluntarily given. He was following the commands of voices that were produced by his mental illness. He was following those commands. he um And that was the compulsion.
00:31:24
Speaker
What evidence would be proper to enter into court in this case? a freely given ah voluntary confession by someone who was competent to make that decision to waive his Miranda rights and to provide a statement to police in the absence of his attorney.
00:31:41
Speaker
What about the other evidence about him knowing where the body was and the other evidence from his mom receiving the payment and him being at the function and them seeming to have traveled together? Would that also have to be thrown out or would that be viable evidence?
00:31:56
Speaker
Uh, so anything that is, that comes from the, uh, improperly admitted, uh, statement would have to then be, then be tossed. So anything that the, that the government used, uh, to try to further build a case against him that has its, uh, roots in the original statement.
00:32:17
Speaker
How do we solve this murder? Well, ah the police are expected to be ah investigators, and ah we don't want a legal system that is predicated entirely on confessions, ah because then that leads to undue weight on confessions and um ah basically this overdue, this undue reliance on confessions that um would then introduce a sort of um incentive to pressure people to confess.
00:32:50
Speaker
What about a confession with ah a complimentary accompanying corpse? ah the I suppose the police can, ah well, perhaps your honor could ah ah could rephrase that. So the guy brings the corpse with him?
00:33:10
Speaker
um I mean, I'm not being prescriptive here. I'm just saying like a confession in the absence of an actual dead body is one thing, but a confession in combination with a corpse that matches the material, you know, contents of said confession.
00:33:25
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. but Let's say he says, I just killed somebody and there's a fresh body over in that dumpster over there. Well, it would be. server And there's a dumpster and there's a body and there's.
00:33:39
Speaker
blood on the guy who made the confession that matches the corpse, but then it's ruled that the guy was insane wasn't in the right mind to waive his Miranda rights, even though he's covered in the blood of the recently found corpse. It's a little bit going over the top. but The blood would be physical evidence that would be independent of a statement that was provided.
00:34:05
Speaker
ah so The statement perhaps might not be usable, but officer observations, direct observations in any physical evidence, it would be up to the police to establish a direct link rather than relying on circumstances.
00:34:21
Speaker
Just to jump in real quick. we Time was about a minute ago, oh but the questions keep coming. um How about one more question? Okay. We'll call it that. a i just What would stop me or somebody else from doing the same and getting away with a murder in this instance by just confessing to the nearest police officer I saw and then saying that I was coerced into doing so?
00:34:48
Speaker
And therefore, all the evidence the police off the police find is inadmissible in court. I mean, where i'm I'm kind of agreeing with Mike's question, which is how do we solve this murder? Where where does this end? So it's funny. We're on the same wavelength. Cause I'm like, right. Notes. I'm like, I know how to get away with murder.
00:35:04
Speaker
but So if you if there are assertions about your mental state, then obviously that would be grounds to refer for an evaluation from a qualified professional who can ah engage in clinical observation, evaluation, and review of your past records and gathering of additional data to provide an informed opinion to the court with regard to whether you have a mental illness or any clinical reason to expect you to have um any impairments in your ability to...
00:35:31
Speaker
ah you know, make knowing and informed decisions. And time.
00:35:40
Speaker
I was going I let that go because it was actually only helping my kid.
00:35:46
Speaker
ah Oh, was that your honor? No, I'm fine with this. She could keep digging. It's cool.
00:35:54
Speaker
um But yeah, no, that's it for arguments. I'm afraid. I like to say that I do not appreciate being on the cop's side. Screw you people.
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah. So at this point, ah the judges can deliberate and we will now become clerks. And so any other factual questions, things of that nature, ah we are happy to answer.
00:36:25
Speaker
i had one that was maybe a stupid question. You said that he wasn't fit to be a criminal defendant. Is there a another version of that for someone who is not mentally fit to stand trial?
00:36:38
Speaker
Besides like Arkham Asylum or I mean... Sorry, could you say again? Well, he said he's not fit to be a criminal defendant. But if there's a lot of evidence that this person could have done this thing...
00:36:51
Speaker
is Is there another category of defendant he can be? I mean, the the option is really to to ah refer him to treatment and to wait for him to be restored to competency, if that is if that is even possible.
00:37:08
Speaker
It would not matter, though, because he has already confessed and the cops already investigated, prompted by said confession. So if the confession is no good, it doesn't really matter whether he's competent later. The police don't have any evidence. have any evidence and it's not like they could say okay well we'll pretend we didn't go get it in the first place and we'll just go get it again it's like no it's all gone oh i thought he was asking like what if there was evidence but the person was also unfit like then what happens and it's like let's bring up another question like so they have this evidence and it leads down a path but in this case they would just have to throw all the evidence out and just be like yeah yeah
00:37:52
Speaker
It all derives from the confession. the The term of art here is ah it's all fruit of the poisonous tree.
00:38:01
Speaker
That goes pretty hard. Yeah. That was crazy.
00:38:07
Speaker
This is annoying because like I get the spirit of the law and generally I agree, but I just, I don't know if it fits in this particular case. I'm struggling because at some point we have to like parse a definition of how crazy you need to be to not be able to abrogate your own rights.
00:38:29
Speaker
Like I can, if I go do something bad and I'm arrested and they say like, here's your rights, you have the right to remain silent. can be like, no, I'm going to talk about being a sovereign citizen and give you guys a bunch of ammo to prosecute me. And that's totally fine. and like I can do that.
00:38:45
Speaker
There's a certain threshold of like not well that I have to be for that suddenly to, you know, not be okay. And that feels slippery. That feels real slippery.
00:38:57
Speaker
Like a slope that I'm trying to slip up. um Yeah, I don't know. this is This is a tough one for me. um I'm all about limiting the power of the police to destroy your life capriciously, but Like they kind of tried and this guy was like, no, let me show you where I buried her. Okay. Like I feel if it came to nothing, it's one thing, but the fact that it seems to have led to like so much evidence and it's like, no, we just got to pretend that didn't happen.
00:39:30
Speaker
Like if he spent a year in prison over this while they waited for him to be sane and it turned out to be nothing, like that would be a violation of his rights. But like there was an actual corpse involved. So until you pull this twist out on us that it was actually he witnessed somebody else kill her and that's how he knew where she was. And then his delusions made him cop to it.
00:39:51
Speaker
Because I know you're just itching to teach us a lesson. You can feel it. Yeah, I'm just i'm'm wondering about the co- like the co- like the co- like the co- As not a mental health expert. It doesn't feel like coercion. just doesn't feel like coercion fits in this case. Like I can see so many times where i'd be like, that's coercion.
00:40:09
Speaker
i just, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it in this particular case. And I could be, someone could probably come back and tell me why I'm wrong. And I'd be like, okay, that makes sense. But right now I can't get it.
00:40:21
Speaker
It's, it's, Funny because Nikki made a point in her argument to mention that the police, it's the uniform that was, it's part of the whole coercive deal. you know, you go into ah police station and, you know, everything is kind of said against you.
00:40:37
Speaker
But in this case, it kind of feels like the police uniform is the reason for the season. The only reason he went to that specific person is because they were wearing a police uniform and he confessed.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so, yeah, I'm having a, I'm having a tough time with the coercion. it seemed like there were multiple steps before they actually got into the police station where they were like, are you sure, buddy? You know? Yeah. Like if they found the corpse and just started knocking on doors and this guy was being itchy and they're like, you're coming with us.
00:41:06
Speaker
And then all a sudden folded like completely different story. But when he's like, sir, I'm looking for a helper. And the helper's like, what's good? What's what's wrong? You man, he's like, I killed someone. Like that's a very different impetus for the chain. the cop's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a big thing. That's a trigger word for me.
00:41:21
Speaker
And then it happens twice with another. Like i I don't like being on the cop's side. I feel dirty. Because we are the Supreme Court, I also am interested in what Jarrett said about this all being fruit from the poisonous tree. And I'd like to think about pushing back on that.
00:41:46
Speaker
I would be willing to consider, and i I don't know what my fellow justices think, but I would be willing to consider or talk down, ah go down the path of figuring out, is the confession specifically what we're talking about? Does the confession specifically need to be removed?
00:42:04
Speaker
I think that there's conversation to be had there. But the confession leading to a whole bunch of other evidence that the police also find that also being inadmissible, that is where I'm really having trouble. i The fruit of the fruit of the poison tree, if you will. Correct. like i I am on board and can see why it it makes sense for us to say, okay, his confession specifically, we can't play the videotape from his ah it police interview in court because he did not give that confession voluntarily in the moment. even if i Regardless of, I'm not, as Mike said, not a mental health expert, so I don't know if I can agree or disagree about the meaning of the word voluntary versus involuntary.
00:42:52
Speaker
I don't think that that should impact the other evidence found in this case. I think that that's where it starts to go down that slippery slope. And I begin to ask the question, okay, where does this end?
00:43:04
Speaker
what How is this case supposed to be solved if it appears as though the police, and I can't believe I'm saying this, did everything right.
00:43:17
Speaker
And- It burns. It burns them.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i because that I'm kind of on the, I mean, and instead, okay, we can't use the confession, but it sounds like a lead that led to evidence.
00:43:37
Speaker
Right. Like if they' they're trying to put him in jail, just based on the way to the confession alone, like completely different story. But I just keep getting hung up on the fact that this, the road ended up in a corpse. I'm still waiting for this twist. with with ah With other evidence, right? Like they were seen at a gathering together soon by. It seemed like they traveled together. like that That's true. If they just found her where he said she would be, even that probably is not enough, really. Exactly, right. It was just because we've all seen Stand By Me, you know, that we I found the dead body and poked it with the stick, you know, and then maybe you have a break and you hallucinate that you did it. But there's so much other evidence that builds the case around it.
00:44:19
Speaker
And it doesn't seem like the police knew who this person was, ah this unidentified 14-year-old, until after he confessed. And it you know that piece then assisted in them contacting her family and seeing them leave a gathering together and figuring out you know the dental records, all of that information. And so, i yeah, I just have a hard time throwing all of that evidence out Because he was ah coerced into giving, coerced by the voices.
00:44:59
Speaker
You don't throw the fruit of the poison tree out with the bathwater. I was trying to find a way to do that. You go bobbing for poison fruit as our forefathers did.
00:45:12
Speaker
It sounds to me like you all know what you're going to say. but you don't want to say it.
00:45:23
Speaker
I hate learning things. Look what you've made me do. Question my own belief system. Can't stand it.
00:45:33
Speaker
Unfortunately, that that is correct for me. i I know the way that I am leaning in this case. I could be, I could quibble about the details about if the confession versus the larger pool of evidence, you know, the confession gets thrown out, um but the evidence stands. I could be put one way or the other there.
00:45:53
Speaker
So the question is, they can't, the whole thing hinges on his confession specifically, but then that They can't use his confession, then it starts the slope of, okay, well, then none of the evidence that derived from the confession is usable as well.
00:46:13
Speaker
Correct. Just making sure. Yeah, I mean, the the the specific question of the case is, would ah entering his confession into evidence violate his due to this? Okay. Right. it's But so there's no there's no option to not enter his confession, but also...
00:46:33
Speaker
enter the other evidence. Like that's not a possibility. Right. That feels like the King Solomon approach here. Right. Yeah. Like, uh, it's, uh, the court's prior doctrine fruit of the poisonous tree.
00:46:46
Speaker
I mean, if you wanted to overturn some stuff, I mean, we can't stop you, but. Oh, can we, I mean, shall we who's going to stop? I'm a sucker for precedent. Yeah. I feel like the, the motto of the show is who's going to stop you. Mm. Mm.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yep. Polite decorum is dead and buried. um Okay. So there's no option in which the confession is thrown out fine, whatever, but everything deriving from the confession is valid. It's all poison. If you start at root one, all roots thereafter are poison.
00:47:20
Speaker
Hmm.
00:47:24
Speaker
I don't think his confession was unconstitutionally obtained.
00:47:29
Speaker
I think there's a million circumstances that would change things slightly that would make it unconstitutional and and and make his rights have been violated. But like the frontline agents in charge of administering the constitution, in this case, the police officers, seemingly did everything right.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah. Let's see. So the trial judge said it doesn't matter that the state did everything right.
00:47:58
Speaker
And maybe it just comes down to the definition of what coercion is here.
00:48:05
Speaker
Yeah, congratulations. You found one that, like, I don't know how to decide this one.
00:48:11
Speaker
Usually, like, there's an answer that's obvious but painful, and, you know, you just don't want to come to terms with it, but I genuinely can't decide on this one.
00:48:22
Speaker
Oh, man, but you're our chief justice. Whipple's in the shape, Adam. I'm supposed to be your beacon of reason. I'm lost. You gave me this wig. The powdered of wigs. The most powdered. I've inhaled far too much talc, gentlemen.
00:48:41
Speaker
um
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, i i think that I think that his confession was obtained legally. I think that that evidence is admissible.
00:48:55
Speaker
I agree. Yeah, I kind of agree. I don't feel good saying it, but like- Spicable. Yeah.
00:49:03
Speaker
Now, again, this all comes down to the fact that there's just no like intake system for someone who's so mentally ill. like There's no ah equivalent to like the box you can drop your baby off at the fire station for someone who is so disturbed that they go to the length of killing someone.
00:49:20
Speaker
um to get intervention before they get swept up in the legal system and become a murder defendant. Just, uh, just to also want to point out that there is no assertions regarding the motivation or the connection between the mental illness and the killing. Yeah. He was probably fine, but he could have been fine when he did the killing. It was, yeah, it was not addressed, taken up by the court.
00:49:42
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. That's fair. I made that leap of inference, but was assuming they were connected in some way. I can see so many ways where coercion makes sense, where it's obviously crazy person. They get taken advantage of thrown to the back of a car real quickly and they're taken to the station and they go to his house there and pick them up there. like they're like intimidating, but like, it just it just feels like that didn't happen here unless there's something I'm completely missing.
00:50:07
Speaker
It sounds like he the only reason that we're even talking about this at all is because he walked up to a police officer and told him and told the police officer, I killed someone.
00:50:22
Speaker
And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for my voluntary confession numerous times. Not that I killed someone, but I know who she was, and here's where the body is, and here's where we traveled from. Yeah.
00:50:35
Speaker
If anything, he was coerced by God.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, and how can we rule on that? Come on. That's above that's above this court. You can't sue him, it turns out. That's the real Supreme Court. Oh, we found the one thing.
00:50:54
Speaker
That's where all the pat powder falls. Pure and white. Yeah.
00:51:02
Speaker
I just, the the question I keep on coming back to is what could have been done differently by the prosecution, by the state of Colorado, by the police force. And I'm having a hard time seeing anything in the facts that were given that should have, could have been done differently or correct correctly. Yeah. And in a Again, i cannot believe I'm saying this, but if the police and the state appeared to do everything correctly and the suspect or defendant was the one who kicked off the process, I have a hard time ruling in favor of this being coercive.
00:51:54
Speaker
And i have a hard time in saying that his confession should be suppressed.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think I agree.
00:52:07
Speaker
um is there any definition of coercion, like and like an acceptable, like a widely agreed upon and widely accepted definition of coercion that the Supreme Court at the time of this case might have looked to that was like widely agreed upon by the legal community? Or is the definition of coercion kind of like, you know, when you see it kind of thing.
00:52:29
Speaker
It's like pornography. um I think if it was probably probably just like dictionary definition. So there's no like, like special, like legal system definition of coercion that it would not, you know, correlate to what a lay person would understand it to be.
00:52:49
Speaker
If there is, again, not a lawyer, but if there is, my guess is that it is specific to the actions of the state in the doing the coercion. For example, if Nikki if nicki was to ah you know know or believe that I did something wrong and ah beat the crud out of me until I went to the cops,
00:53:14
Speaker
I don't know that that her actions would tie the hands of the state. Oh, that means ah I'm just free to beat up on Jarrett. As much as I want. Cool. All right.
00:53:27
Speaker
We'll have that blank check. If there's anything we've learned today. I realize. i realize I realize now my mistake. this court's verdict is that Nikki can throttle Jarrett and thrash it will without repercussion.
00:53:46
Speaker
I feel like, I feel like you're all dancing around providing a final verdict. Yeah, um I think that we have a rare unanimous consent on this one. um ah Sorry, unanimous consensus on this one. um I think that we all agree that this confession was legally obtained and is therefore admissible.
00:54:11
Speaker
No poison. The fruit, delicious.
00:54:16
Speaker
can be It can be packaged as apple cider vinegar. Yeah. Barrel it up, boys. lore. The lore. ah Justice Mike, Justice Graham, do you agree or do you have any, like, I agree, but also here's my caveats.
00:54:36
Speaker
In agreement. Yeah, in agreement. i Coercion is bad. I think we need to be strict about it, but I just, I don't see it in this particular case. My only regret is that we couldn't figure out a porqué no los dos for this case.
00:54:51
Speaker
Just... Just couldn't fit that that square in the circle. Okay, let's take a few minutes and think on this. Yeah, I'm sure I'll escalate her with this as soon as the episode is over. I'll i'll come up with something.
00:55:03
Speaker
I mean, the poor Canolo's dose would be throw out the confession to keep the evidence, right? I think that actually would be- That would make everybody happy. think right. think did identify it, actually. We just didn't name it as such. Wow.
00:55:14
Speaker
Most flexible doctrine ever. I mean, I just think we're wise and sage. Yeah, really.
00:55:23
Speaker
Excellent. Nikki, I think we've got it. Yeah. All right. Wow. Unanimous decision. Give us
Supreme Court Decision and Aftermath
00:55:31
Speaker
that twist. And so in the real Colorado colorado versus Connolly, it was ah argued in October 1986 and decided in December of 1986.
00:55:43
Speaker
And it was a seven to two decision. And ah the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Supreme Court of Colorado. So they ruled in favor of the state of Colorado.
00:55:55
Speaker
So the reasoning is that the due process protections around interrogations and confessions are purely based on police overreach or torture torture um or coercion.
00:56:09
Speaker
So basically, there needs to be it needs to come from external, not not from internally. ah So there needs to be some kind of state action for a claim of violation of due process to apply.
00:56:21
Speaker
if there was no police misconduct that directly caused the confession, there is no basis for concluding that the defendant was deprived of due process of law. um And just for you guys to know, there was nothing in the record to suggest that the police were like inappropriate.
00:56:37
Speaker
Like he literally walked up to the guy and the police tripped over themselves to read the guy his rights and be like, don't you want a lawyer? You know? Yeah. So if the police had exploited a suspect's unstable mental status to extract a confession against their will, then that would render the confession involuntary for court purposes. Yeah.
00:56:58
Speaker
But if the court was basically like, look, if the police didn't do anything and then we were to say that this confession is involuntary, it would be inventing, quote, a brand new constitutional right.
00:57:11
Speaker
um And then it would mean that, quote courts must divine a defendant's motivation for speaking or acting as he did, unquote. So as long as the confession was voluntary, can be considered given under free will as far as the constitution is concerned.
00:57:29
Speaker
So the constitution is only talking about what the police are up to in getting a confession. And if the police aren't doing anything, then it really kind of Doesn't matter. And then during the actual hearing of the case, there was a lot of questioning about, well, what if, you know, the guy's brother-in-law had beat him up and made him go to the police?
00:57:49
Speaker
Or what if the guy was really religious and the priest was like, oh, you got to confess. And he'd grown up in the, you know, in sort of with the expectation of confessing. You know, that sort of thing. So that was the main that was the main opinion.
00:58:01
Speaker
And then there was a lot of it looked like people were mostly agreeing, but then there were some extra little notes. So Justice Blackmun, you know, there there was some discussion of the state's burden of proof for proving that the that the defendant waived his Miranda rights. So they said the Supreme Court said that the state of Colorado is expecting too much.
00:58:20
Speaker
They wanted the prosecution approved by, i think it was clear and convincing evidence that the guy waived his rights and the court's like, you don't got to do all that. Just, you know, preponderance of the evidence. It's more likely than not.
00:58:31
Speaker
And the one justice was like, why are we even talking about this? Let's just stick to the main confession issue. Justice Stevens also agreed and agreed that, you know, it's, it doesn't violate the fifth amendment. They're not the product of state compulsion.
00:58:47
Speaker
However, he said that once police took him into custody, then they have this fundamentally different relationship with him. And at that point they shouldn't have continued questioning him without giving him a lawyer because basically he wasn't competent to waive his right to remain silent.
00:59:05
Speaker
was kind of saying earlier about like, is there a threshold by which they recognize that like he's so out there that like this guy needs some assistance from legal counsel? So I wonder if part of it was because the guy presented really well initially. He held it together and then he fell apart like afterwards. That seems like sane, upstanding murderer. We should listen to this.
00:59:23
Speaker
but Yeah, if he had he'd been like if he'd been really like disorganized and and whatever from the beginning, you know I think that that would have changed the approach and and and the treatment.
00:59:35
Speaker
Yeah. um Yeah. Also, Justice Stevens. so this must have been fairly contemporary. ah Yeah, 1986. So ah thirty nine years ago And then let's see. Yeah. Justice Brennan also, um he had, he had some issues with this because he was like, look, the guy wasn't well.
00:59:56
Speaker
And he went and like made a bunch of decisions that, you know, basically led to the deprivation of, of Liberty. And he was like, You know, a confession by somebody with a mental illness shouldn't be considered voluntary just because the police didn't do anything.
01:00:11
Speaker
Free will um and reliability are really important in deciding if a confession should be admitted. So the court really does need to investigate the circumstances around the confession and police behavior is only one part.
01:00:24
Speaker
of governmentance government conduct that should be considered. you know ah And then he was like, yeah, this guy had a mental illness. And so if you're taking this confession with a person with a mental illness, then this raises questions about the reliability of confessions of a whole.
01:00:39
Speaker
um You have to make sure that the confession is valid. And he threw in a line because actually I think you guys had a little bit more information than the real life justices did because he was like, the record doesn't show whether there was any corroboration of this confession.
01:00:53
Speaker
by other evidence. And he was kind of upset about it until, you know, and, and, uh, PZ, uh, wrote a whole article where he was like, no, this is what really happened. So, but basically the thrust of it is, you know, if the police, if the cops aren't doing anything to you to make you talk, then whatever reasons you have for talking to the police are your own and you can just deal with the consequences.
01:01:20
Speaker
Ah, USA. Yeah.
01:01:24
Speaker
Isn't that what freedom is all about? vindicate i thought you were going to come up with some random twist that was going to make me feel like a complete shithead for having the beliefs that I get about this. I was like, oh no, what's gonna what are they going to drop on us?
01:01:37
Speaker
Right. you beat up on the mentally ill and you're a bad man. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, he said it. And then it turned out DNA proved the real guy, et cetera. Now, um, in this case, the police, uh, did, you know, follow up and they did a lot of investigation and like got themselves a solid case.
01:01:53
Speaker
It's just that the defendant couldn't be tried for it initially. Um, but as we said, again, he was, uh, deemed competent after he got treatment. And according to PZ's article, um,
01:02:07
Speaker
Let's see. So after SCOTUS made this decision, ah they resolved the original criminal case, so the killing, by a plea bargain. So it was 1987.
01:02:18
Speaker
He pled guilty to second-degree murder in return for a sentence of 12 years and one day in prison. At that point, he had been held in custody for over four years while the case was pending.
01:02:31
Speaker
So he entered this guilty plea. The judge accepted it. He stayed in prison for another year and a half, and then he was released. So at that point, he'd been in custody for five years, 10 months.
01:02:42
Speaker
And he ended up getting paroled in Colorado and maybe two and a half, three years after that, the spring of 1990, he completed his parole and then left Colorado and returned to Massachusetts because that's where he's from.
01:02:57
Speaker
Of course. ah so And then, you know, as a, just some other side notes. um So Melton and colleagues noted in their book that came out in 2018, the most recent iteration,
01:03:12
Speaker
That psychological research essentially shows that even people who think they understand their Miranda rights, well, actually don't. And even if people appear to understand the warning, you know, there can be some concerns and questions about interrogation strategies that are commonly employed by police that can lead to false confessions. So that was just some notes.
01:03:35
Speaker
And then Jarrett made reference to the American Psychological Association's stance on command auditory hallucinations. So they published um an amicus brief um for the court to use in making this decision.
01:03:48
Speaker
And ah their stance prompted some disagreement because they had a very conservative estimate on the proportion of people who act on command auditory hallucinations. So they said it was less than 1%.
01:04:00
Speaker
More recent estimates suggest that a substantial portion of individuals who hear voices actually comply with the commands. And so ranges go from like 40 to 88% or more.
01:04:14
Speaker
But, you know, it really depends like the extent to which hallucinations can influence behavior. It it has it's. It gets connected to a lot of different factors. So like the amount of distress that they cause, ah whether there's other symptoms going on at the time, whether the voice is perceived as malevolent or benevolent, but how, whether they perceive themselves as powerless in relation to the voice,
01:04:39
Speaker
If they think that they know who the voice is or they can assign an identity to a voice, that can have an impact. um The nature of the command, because ah command hallucination, i mean, i guess and it can say confess to murder or hurt someone. But, you know, a lot of ah command hallucinations can just be like brush your teeth.
01:04:59
Speaker
And you don't, you know, so like you hear that, like, you know, that's it's kind of a low stakes decision and actually brushing your teeth is a thing that dentists want you to do for your own health. So, you know, ah um you know, and so, you know, and then it gets difficult to, you you know And then if there's like congruent delusions going along with it, their feelings about not complying, um you know and people can vary as to how compelled they feel you know to to follow what the voices say. and But this is difficult to study in part because this involves self-report and studies are complicated by lack of generalizability, um small sample sizes, variations in operational definitions, um you know the usual science.
01:05:45
Speaker
issues when you try to make a definitive pronouncement about human behavior. Next week, Mr. Connolly goes in front of the Senate to be confirmed as attorney general.
01:05:57
Speaker
Yes. This is why I said in my argument that you know the ape according to the APA at the time of this case, I didn't necessarily want to ascribe that to present day thinking, ah but also I couldn't tell you the date.
01:06:12
Speaker
So there you go. Yes. Of the 100 people who here who hear voices, only one of them actually acts on the voices. Seems...
01:06:24
Speaker
i I do most of what my voices say. Unlikely. Yes. The most fascinating thing I ever learned about about schizophrenia is that, and this is hearsay that I read on the internet, ah so I can't source it, but apparently people in other cultures outside of the United States have a much higher incidence of hearing schizophrenic voices that are encouraging or like...
01:06:44
Speaker
you know generally affirmative. And in the United States, you're far more likely to get voices that tell you to do bad things and bring you down and tell you you're worthless. isn Isn't that fun? Yeah. Culture, religion, all of that stuff.
01:06:59
Speaker
It's the fluoride. The fluoride. Yeah. is that Is that a situation where it's like, it's funny how only Christians ever seem to get possessed by the devil? That's exactly what I was thinking when you were saying That's true. I've never heard of a Scientologist getting possessed by the devil.
01:07:18
Speaker
Yes. Specifically. but ah by By a Christian deity. Yes. By the Christian devil, Mistoffelees. Yes. also like how there's a ah gradient of the voices. Like the voices that tell you to brush your teeth like that, you're you're fine. It's, you know, there's a threshold where the voices tell you to do some shadier stuff where...
01:07:35
Speaker
but And it's a helpful voice when it tells you to brush your teeth. But suddenly when it's like, hey man, tell the cops that you killed somebody. it's just like, whoa, hold on. Hold on, voice. Well, yeah. But what if you did kill somebody? I mean, OK, so actually, this is an interesting question.
01:07:52
Speaker
As someone who I don't think has had voices, what's difference between hearing voices and just like your inner monologue? I hear my own voice talking in my head all the time. Ultimately, i you know I was kind of thinking the same way that justices ended up thinking on this one, where it's just sort of like, i I want all the protections that could possibly be afforded to me from the actions of the state.
01:08:15
Speaker
But what are the police to do if they have no leads and then somebody comes and gives them a lead and they just start doing what they do And then it turns out that, you know, at the time the person gave them the lead, unbeknownst to them and impossible for them to have diagnosed or seen, it ruins the entire case.
01:08:37
Speaker
And it it really puts the state in an um an impossible find. It's almost exactly the same as the case from last season that I cannot remember the name of, but basic we decided basically that the state has no obligation to proactively go out of its way to try to protect people from themselves or from their loved ones. Like yeah the state can't proactively protect their child. Which I referenced in my argument. I said, you know, you're entitled to protection from the government, but not from your own internal reasoning.
01:09:05
Speaker
and ah And the government can't be an arbiter of your own internal. It can be, you know, there are psychologists and psychiatrists who get involved in the legal process and help with that. ah I also feel like the this this case this is is a bit of an edge case.
01:09:20
Speaker
It is a very particular yeah circumstance. I think all the justices would would agree that like, and you even said it yourselves, right? It's like, if just a one little bit of this case was slightly different, I would have a completely different way of thinking about it. It's just brought up the nightsticks in the confession room, them a little, little beat down. Like now we're talking about a different case altogether.
01:09:41
Speaker
Batman comes out of the shadows, smashes his head on the table, you know? Right. Like just gives him a devastating cranial injury just so they can get to the bottom of it. Clearly that can't be admissible court, but I will say that there is one thing that caught that gives me pause. And this is a feeling that I'm beginning to develop as we do more and more of these episodes. Cause I feel like the fifth amendment and the 14th amendment understandably come up a lot, right? Due process, right?
01:10:08
Speaker
i am I do wonder, if we think of the timing on this case, this is like the late mid to late 80s, so this is not that long ago. This is in the lifetime of just about everybody currently on this podcast episode. ah And it does feel like...
01:10:28
Speaker
Perhaps previously, in previous generations, the idea of your due process rights was a lot wider. By which I mean, I feel like maybe justices had wider latitude to tell the state okay, i I understand the wider, the the ideas, i understand the case law, but I'm also going to take into account this particular case that's in front of me right now.
01:11:00
Speaker
And it feels like every case that ends up in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is further limiting what the trial judges have as far as latitude. And they it's sort of this like, okay, originally there was a thousand things that could happen or an infinite number of things that could happen.
01:11:17
Speaker
And every case that comes before us, we take one away and we further constrain and further constrain. And you know and so i am beginning to wonder if the concept of due process is becoming very letter of the law, not spirit of the law.
01:11:35
Speaker
And that concerns me a little bit, but- no But it doesn't change my opinion on what the outcome of this case probably should be. Yeah. And yeah, I think part of the the issue with this case was the guy, once again, presented really well.
01:11:49
Speaker
um Because, you know, and that can happen, actually. um You know, ah symptoms can wax and wange and people, especially with motivation, can try to pull themselves together and look good.
01:12:02
Speaker
One thing I do also just want to add is I believe it was Brennan's ah dissent where he basically said, you know, oh, so a guy comes in and confesses that they don't even you know they don't even like have any evidence around it. It's just they're going to accept this guy's confession. And then it turns out he's got schizophrenia and we're still just going to like go ahead with that.
01:12:28
Speaker
So in the in the article that I used for the facts of the case written by Pizzi, he makes it very clear that the case that made it to the Supreme Court didn't have all the information the police collected after the confession because that wasn't necessarily relevant to the constitutional question of whether or not the confession was admissible because of because that question of what was happening at that time and the investigation was later.
01:13:02
Speaker
Also, apparently, the trial judge who was involved, the prosecutors, the defense, they all had that information and none of them disagreed on what the police found.
01:13:13
Speaker
So it wasn't important to them in their arguing when they went to the state Supreme Court and then the actual Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court justices felt like The cops you know arrested the guy on his confession and that and then that went to trial.
01:13:28
Speaker
And Pizzi, in his writing, wants to set the record straight because this has become kind of a thing that comes up with this case a lot when people think about it or when it when it comes up in popular culture is, wait, so so he said he was guilty and they were just like, okay.
01:13:45
Speaker
and And no, ah the cops put in a ton of legwork. They sent officers to Boston. They you know pounded the pavement to figure out who this woman was who had been murdered and the connection between the defendant and the the murdered girl. like There was a ton of work. So when so when you look at so when we presented it to you, you had that all that information to know that like not only...
01:14:12
Speaker
you know, did he confess, uh, but he, but the cops corroborated all of it. Although, yeah, if we, if that information hadn't been included, that would have been such a sticking point, I think yeah for this court session. Um, yeah.
01:14:32
Speaker
Did he end up getting prosecuted for the murder? Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, he ended up, uh, being well enough to plead guilty and he served a total of like five years, 10 months.
01:14:43
Speaker
I thought it was 14 years. No, no. He was sentenced to 12 years in one day, but after he did the plea and it was accepted, he only served another, I'd say like year and a, I can pull it up.
01:14:55
Speaker
Right. You said a year and a, a year and a half or a year and a half. And then he was released and there was a whole thing about where he going to be paroled. And he was in custody for four years waiting for the whole thing. So right right right yeah he didn't, he didn't have bail or anything like that.
01:15:10
Speaker
um Another thing that I feel like we need to mention, is that just having a mental illness does not make you a criminal. so correct just So just a reminder, there are a lot of people who are suffering and suffering is the exact correct word to use with schizophrenia. and people with schizophrenia are not murderers.
01:15:34
Speaker
They are people who are suffering from ah from a mental disorder. And, you know, plenty of people are murderers. It's not, it's not the schizophrenia necessarily that, that, that makes the murderer. Murder is an equal opportunity employment.
01:15:48
Speaker
ah That's what getting at. Yeah. I just want to make sure that we, we do not, we're not continuing any stigmas that are in, that would be inaccurate. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Violence, violence happens for a very wide variety of reasons. And it's actually a really small proportion of them that are attributable to mental illness specifically. Yeah.
01:16:09
Speaker
Uh, As far as from a society, you know how does this impact us our day to day? i think another one of my so what's is something that Adam hit on almost immediately, which was like, there's a mental health system that could have probably...
01:16:29
Speaker
multiple places along the line been an intervention that either would have stopped the murder or made it so this individual was healthy enough to present his confession without all of the cloud around it. I don't, I question whether that was, if he was transient, then no public mental health system would have been able to, you know, to snag him.
01:16:55
Speaker
i wasn't transient. he was a He was a full-time cab driver in Boston. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. He was well-known around the neighborhood. Everybody knew him. Oh, okay.
01:17:06
Speaker
But it's also- and some point, didn't you say that you know he was not taking his meds? So he had some care at some point and had medication. Until he dropped out, um treatment is fully voluntary. And in America, if an adult does not want mental health treatment, they are absolutely not getting it.
01:17:27
Speaker
All right. So in sum today, ah the Adam court has decided that the police are awesome and wonderful and are right in every single thing that they do.
01:17:38
Speaker
And that is my catchphrase. All cops are awesome. Yep. um And on that note, ah we're going to leave off here, everybody. And thank you very much for for your time. And so thank you to Associate Justice Graham.
01:17:55
Speaker
um just I'm just happy to be here. I'm just happy to be so pro cop on this episode. Happy to be here. Associate Justice Mike. I missed the horse poop.
01:18:08
Speaker
And our Chief Justice Adam. I'm just glad anyone cares about what I have to say. ah We're glad that we didn't just enrage all of you with, you know, whatever horrible thing is going on and the law today. It's the internet. Somebody's afraid of yourself.
01:18:27
Speaker
So um with that note, ah Jarrett and I are going to end things here. Thank you very much, everyone. Play us out, keyboard cat. Thanks all.
01:18:41
Speaker
Well, there you have it. By unanimous decision, the Adam Court decided the confession was voluntary and can be admitted. That's it for this episode, but before we go, thanks again to my co-host and to our justices.
01:18:54
Speaker
The music in this episode was written by Studio Columna and Toby Smith and provided by Pixabay. Audio mixing and producing was done by Jarrett. Research was done by me.
01:19:06
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and comment so other people can find us. You can also catch us on YouTube, Instagram, and Blue Sky. Our handle is at Relitigated Podcast.
01:19:18
Speaker
Please help us spread the word. Until next time, I'm Nikki, and this has been Relitigated. Bye.