High Court OKs Jailhouse Confession as Impeachment Evidence
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling today supporting prosecutors who seek to introduce jailhouse confessions at trial.
The court ruled that an inmate’s statements to an informant recruited by police can be used to impeach the defendant’s later court testimony, even though the arrangement violated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
The 7-2 decision (PDF) held that a jailhouse confession by Donnie Ray Ventris is admissible for impeachment purposes, but not to prove the government’s case in chief, the Associated Press reports. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion, according to SCOTUSblog.
At trial, Ventris had blamed the fatal shooting during a robbery on another man, and the government sought to introduce the informant’s testimony. The prosecution conceded that Ventris’ statements were likely made in violation of his right to counsel since the informant was acting as an agent of the state. Ventris was acquitted of murder but convicted of robbery and burglary.
A footnote in Scalia’s opinion notes an argument in an amicus brief that jailhouse informants are so unreliable that the court should adopt a broad exclusionary rule for uncorroborated statements obtained by that means. Scalia rejected the idea, saying it is up to the jury to weigh the credibility of witnesses.
“It would be especially inappropriate to fabricate such a rule in this case, where it appears the jury took to heart the trial judge’s cautionary instruction on the unreliability of rewarded informant testimony by acquitting Ventris of felony murder,” he wrote.
The case is Kansas v. Ventris.
Scalia has supported Sixth Amendment claims in contexts involving the right to trial by a jury. He dissented in January when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment does not require juries, rather than judges, to find the facts for consecutive sentencing decisions.
