Miranda v. Arizona · ¶13

An understanding of the nature and setting of this in-custody interrogation is essential to our decisions today. The difficulty in depicting what transpires at such interrogations stems from the fact that in this country they have largely taken place incommunicado. From extensive factual studies undertaken in the early 1930’s, including the famous Wickersham Report to Congress by a Presidential Commission, it is clear that police violence and the “third degree” flourished at that time. In a series of cases decided by this Court long after these studies, the police resorted to physical brutality — beating, hanging, whipping — and to sustained and protracted questioning incommunicado in order to extort confessions. The Commission on Civil Rights in 1961 found much evidence to indicate that “some policemen still resort to physical force to obtain confessions,” 1961 Comm’n on Civil Rights…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 384, at 436 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
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