Miranda v. Arizona · ¶154

The earliest confession cases in this Court emerged from federal prosecutions and were settled on a nonconstitutional basis, the Court adopting the common-law rule that the absence of inducements, promises, and threats made a confession voluntary and admissible. Hopt v. Utah, 110 U. S. 574; Pierce v. United States, 160 U. S. 355. While a later case said the Fifth Amendment privilege controlled admissibility, this proposition was not itself developed in subsequent decisions. The Court did, however, heighten the test of admissibility in federal trials to one of voluntariness “in fact,” Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1, 14 (quoted, ante, p. 462), and then by and large left federal judges to apply the same standards the Court began to derive in a string of state court cases.

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