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Supreme Court of the United States • 1947

Adamson v. California

332 U.S. 46 | 67 S. Ct. 1672 | 91 L. Ed. 1903 | 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2876 | 171 A.L.R. 1223

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Takeaway

In short, Adamson rejected total incorporation of the Bill of Rights and held that California could permit comment on a criminal defendant's silence without violating Fourteenth Amendment due process—a result later displaced on this point by Griffin v. California.

Background

Adamson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in California. The prosecution's case included fingerprints found on a broken door near the crime scene and evidence that Adamson later tried to sell a diamond ring resembling property missing from the victim.

Adamson did not testify. Under the California Constitution and Penal Code, the judge and prosecutor could comment on a defendant's failure to explain or deny evidence against him, and the jury could consider that silence. Adamson had admitted prior convictions before trial; although those convictions could not ordinarily be mentioned to the jury, California law permitted their use to impeach him if he took the stand.

The prosecutor commented on Adamson's failure to deny the evidence, and the trial court instructed the jury under the California provisions. The California Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence. Adamson appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that California's rule violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause makes the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination enforceable against the States.

Holding

No. The privilege against self-incrimination is not a privilege or immunity of national citizenship protected against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Reasoning

The Court reaffirmed the basic premise that the Bill of Rights originally restricted only the federal government. It treated the Slaughter-House Cases as establishing that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause protects rights of national citizenship, not the general privileges and immunities that arise from state citizenship.

Twining v. New Jersey had specifically held that the privilege against self-incrimination was not protected against the States through the Privileges or Immunities Clause, either as a right of national citizenship or merely because it appears in the federal Bill of Rights. The Court regarded that conclusion, later reaffirmed in Palko v. Connecticut, as settled doctrine consistent with federalism.

Issue #2

Whether California's authorization of prosecutorial and judicial comment on a defendant's failure to testify denied Adamson due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Holding

No. The Due Process Clause did not incorporate the Fifth Amendment privilege in its full federal scope, and California's limited rule allowing comment on silence did not make Adamson's trial fundamentally unfair.

Reasoning

The Court assumed, without deciding, that a comparable rule in a federal criminal trial would violate the Fifth Amendment. That assumption did not answer the Fourteenth Amendment question, however, because due process does not automatically incorporate every protection in the federal Bill of Rights against the States.

Under Palko, due process protects those rights that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, not every procedural rule contained in the first eight amendments. Due process forbids compelled testimony obtained through torture, fear, exhaustion, or other coercion that makes a proceeding fundamentally unfair, but it does not categorically prohibit a State from requiring or encouraging an accused to testify.

California did not create a presumption that silence proved guilt or that the prosecution's evidence was true. Rather, its rule allowed the judge and prosecutor to invite the jury to draw an inference from a defendant's failure to deny facts that were proved and were likely within the defendant's knowledge. The jury was instructed that the State retained the burden of proof and that Adamson remained presumed innocent.

Adamson's choice was difficult because testifying could expose his prior convictions on cross-examination, while remaining silent exposed him to adverse comment. But the Court concluded that this was not unconstitutional coercion. Defendants commonly must decide whether favorable testimony is worth the risk of damaging impeachment, and a State could regulate that choice under its own approach to criminal procedure so long as the resulting conviction was not unfair.

The Court also rejected the claim that the prosecutor's comments shifted the burden of proof. Under California law, silence could not supply a missing element of the prosecution's case; it could only bear on the force of evidence already introduced. The California Supreme Court had found it unlikely that the prosecutor's near-borderline argument caused the jury to infer guilt solely from silence, and the Supreme Court declined to disturb that conclusion.

Concurrences

Justice Frankfurter

Reasoning

Justice Frankfurter would have affirmed principally on the authority of Twining v. New Jersey, which he regarded as a deeply considered and long-settled decision. In his view, the difference between direct compulsion to testify and California's permission to comment on a defendant's silence did not create a new constitutional question.

He maintained that it is ordinarily reasonable for factfinders to regard a person's silence in the face of evidence as significant, especially where the person could explain or deny the facts. The possibility that Adamson stayed silent to avoid impeachment by prior convictions did not erase the evidentiary significance of that choice; a defendant could seek an instruction explaining why he elected not to testify.

Frankfurter rejected both total and selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights through due process. The Due Process Clause has independent force and requires fundamental fairness, but it does not silently impose specific eighteenth-century federal procedural rules on the States. The constitutional inquiry should instead examine the whole proceeding to determine whether it offended settled standards of decency and justice.

Dissents

Justice Black

Reasoning

Justice Black, joined by Justice Douglas, argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to make the entire Bill of Rights applicable to the States. On that view, California had to honor the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination exactly as the federal government must honor it.

He relied extensively on the history of the Fourteenth Amendment, particularly statements by Representative John Bingham and Senator Jacob Howard. In Black's reading, the Amendment's framers sought to overturn Barron v. Baltimore and to prevent States from violating the personal liberties set out in the Bill of Rights.

Black criticized Twining's selective, evolving due-process approach as a form of natural-law decisionmaking that gave judges excessive discretion to decide which liberties were sufficiently fundamental. That method, he argued, had both weakened explicit civil-liberty guarantees and enabled courts to invalidate economic regulation according to their own policy preferences.

Because the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination applied in full, Black would have held that California could not penalize Adamson's refusal to testify by permitting an inference of guilt from his silence. He would have reversed the conviction.

Justice Murphy

Reasoning

Justice Murphy, joined by Justice Rutledge, agreed with Black that the specific protections of the Bill of Rights should apply intact to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. Unlike Black, however, Murphy also believed that due process could independently condemn state procedures that fall fundamentally below basic standards of fairness even when no precise Bill of Rights provision governs.

Murphy concluded that California's comment rule violated the privilege against self-incrimination itself. If Adamson remained silent, the jury could use his silence against him; if he testified to avoid that inference, he subjected himself to cross-examination and possible disclosure of his prior convictions. Either route, Murphy reasoned, compelled him to furnish evidence against himself.

The constitutional protection, Murphy explained, respects the choice of an accused person to remain silent. An innocent defendant may be too nervous, timid, or inarticulate to testify effectively, and policy arguments favoring comment on silence could not override the Fifth Amendment's clear command. He would have reversed.