Mapp v. Ohio · ¶96

The point, then, must be that in requiring exclusion of an involuntary statement of an accused, we are concerned not with an appropriate remedy for what the police have done, but with something which is regarded as going to the heart of our concepts of fairness in judicial procedure. The operative assumption of our procedural system is that “Ours is the accusatorial as opposed to the inquisitorial system. Such has been the characteristic of Anglo-American criminal justice since it freed itself from practices borrowed by the Star Chamber from the Continent whereby the accused was interrogated in secret for hours on end.” Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 54. See Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 541. The pressures brought to bear against an accused leading to a confession, unlike an unconstitutional violation of privacy, do not, apart from the use of the confession at trial, necessarily…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 367, at 643 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
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