Cole v. Lane’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 602 , 81 S.Ct. 1860, 1879 , 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961) (citation omitted) defines “the test of voluntariness” this way: Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? If it is, if he has willed to confess, it may be used against him. If it is not, if his will has been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired, the use of his confession offends due process. In the Culombe -dictated process of “determining whether [Cole’s] will was overborne” (Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 226 , 93 S.Ct. 2041, 2047 , 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973)) this Court must assess (id., citations omitted): the totality of all the surrounding circumstances — both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation. Some of the factors taken into account have included the youth of the accused, ..his lack of education, ...; or his low intelligence, the lack of any advice to the accused of his constitutional rights, ..the length of detention, ..the repeated and prolonged nature of the questioning, ..and the use of physical punishments such as the deprivation of food and sleep....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Scarpelli

2. ““[Although it was at one time suggested that any indication of leniency was both a necessary and a sufficient condition of a finding of involuntariness (Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542-43 , 18 S.Ct. 183, 186-87 , 42 L.E.[Ed.] 568[, 573] (1897)), the law today is that such an indication is a necessary but not itself a sufficient condition. Or to borrow a familiar concept from another area of the law, it is not enough for the indication of leniency to bear a but-for relationship to the confession in a purely temporal sense (that is, simply to show the defendant would not have considered confessing had the police not raised the subject by speaking of potential benefits). Instead the but-for test is one of proximate cause in the overborne-will sense: whether the police promise caused a deprivation of free will on the part of the then suspect.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Reynolds v. State