Supreme Court on Confessions

Your editorial “Justices Open Pandora’s Box” (March 28) was a cogent reminder of just how precarious is the continued existence of our cherished constitutional rights. It simply shocks the conscience to think that our current Supreme Court could so easily overturn longstanding valued and respected precedent with such callous disregard for the pursuit of truth (“High Court Allows Forced Confessions in Criminal Trials,” front page, March 27).

One basis for having excluded coerced confessions was the fact that such statements are simply unreliable. The idea is that the person didn’t confess because he did what he confessed to do, but that he confessed out of proven and reasonable fear or duress. An equally important basis for the Supreme Court’s previous “consistent condemnation of coerced confessions” was to send a stinging message to those persons insulated by official state garb. That message was that police abuse would not be tolerated!

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, once again rising to the despicable occasion and writing for a hair-splitting majority, sends the opposite message. Abuse, such as the Rodney King fiasco, can now be tolerated if it results in a coerced confession that could have otherwise been proven--it is therefore “harmless.” It is anything but! Apparently the public has been misled to think that trials by tribulation are a thing of the past!

As a parent of three small children, my fear for them of rampant crime, while quite real, is far outweighed by my grim terror of this court’s constant attack on their constitutional rights!

MALKA LYNNE TASOFF, Tarzana