Brown v. Mississippi
United States Supreme Court
297 U.S. 278 (1936)
Relevant factsFree
Brown (defendant) and two other men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death based solely on confessions obtained after local authorities severely beat them; witnesses corroborated the torture, and the men still bore visible physical scars from the whippings at trial, where they testified the confessions were false and coerced. The trial judge instructed the jury to disregard the confessions if it doubted their truthfulness, and the jury convicted anyway; the state supreme court affirmed.
IssueFree
Whether convictions resting solely on confessions extracted through violence by state actors are consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.