Rochin V. California, 342 US

ROCHIN v. CALIFORNIA. 165 Syllabus. ROCHIN v. CALIFORNIA. CERTIORARI TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL FOR THE SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA. No. 83. Argued October 16, 1951.-Decided January 2, 1952. Having "some information" that petitioner was selling narcotics, three state officers entered his home and forced their way into the bedroom occupied by him and his wife. When asked about two capsules lying on a bedside table, petitioner put them in his mouth. After an unsuccessful struggle to extract them by force, the officers took petitioner to a hospital, where an emetic was forced into his stomach against his will. He vomited two capsules which were found to contain morphine. These were admitted in evidence over his objection and he was convicted in a state court of violating a state law forbidding possession of morphine. Held: The conviction is reversed, because it was obtained by methods violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 166-174. 101 Cal. App. 2d 140, 225 P. 2d 1, reversed. In a California state court, petitioner was convicted of violating a state law forbidding the possession of morphine. The District Court of Appeal affirmed. 101 Cal. App. 2d 140, 225 P. 2d 1. The State Supreme Court denied a review. This Court granted certiorari. 341. U. S. 939. Reversed, p. 174. Dolly Lee Butler and A. L. Wirin argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner. Howard S. Goldin, Deputy Attorney General of Cali- fornia, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Edmund G. Brown, Attorney General, Clarence A. Linn, Assistant Attorney General, and Frank W. Richards, Deputy Attorney General. Fred Okrand, A. L. Wirin, Edward J.. Ennis, Morris L. Ernst, Osmond K. Fraenkel, Arthur Garfield Hays, Her- bert M. Levy and Clore Warne filed a brief for the Ameri- can Civil Liberties Union, as amicus curiae, urging reversal. 972627 0-52-16 OCTOBER TERM, 1951. Opinion of the Court. 342 U. S. MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court. Having "some information that [the petitioner here] was selling narcotics," three deputy sheriffs of the County of Los Angeles, on the morning of July 1, 1949, made for the two-story dwelling house in which Rochin lived with his mother, common-law wife, brothers and sisters. Finding the outside door open, they entered and then forced open the door to Rochin's room, on the second floor. Inside they found petitioner sitting partly dressed on the side of the bed, upon which his wife was lying. On a "night stand" beside the bed the deputies spied two capsules. When asked "Whose stuff is this?" Rochin seized the capsules and put them in his mouth. A struggle ensued, in the course of which the three officers "jumped upon him" and attempted to extract the capsules. The force they applied proved unavailing against Rochin's resistance. He was handcuffed and taken to a hospital. At the direction of one of the officers a doctor forced an emetic solution through a tube into Rochin's stomach against his will. This "stomach pumping" pro- duced vomiting. In the vomited matter were found two capsules which proved to contain morphine. Rochin was brought to trial before a California Su- perior Court, sitting without a jury, on the charge of possessing "a preparation of morphine" in violation of the California Health and Safety Code, 1947, § 11,500. Rochin was convicted and sentenced to sixty days' im- prisonment. The chief evidence against him was the two capsules. They were admitted over petitioner's objection, although the means of obtaining them was frankly set forth in the testimony by one of, the deputies, sub- stantially as here narrated. On appeal, the District Court of Appeal affirmed the Conviction, despite .the finding that the officers "were ROCHIN v. CALIFORNIA. 165 Opinion of the Court. guilty of unlawfully breaking into and entering defendant's room and were guilty of unlawfully assaulting and battering defendant while in the room," and "were guilty of unlawfully assaulting, battering, torturing and falsely imprisoning the defendant at the alleged hospital." 101 Cal. App. 2d 140, 143, 225 P. 2d 1, 3. One of the three judges, while finding that "the record in this case reveals a shocking series of violations of constitutional rights," concurred only because he felt bound by decisions of his Supreme Court. These, he asserted, "have been looked upon by law enforcement officers as an encourage- ment, if not an invitation, to the commission of such law- less acts." Ibid. The Supreme Court of California denied without opinion Rochin's petition for a hearing.' Two justices dissented from this denial, and in doing so expressed themselves thus: ". a conviction which rests upon evidence of incriminating objects obtained from the body of the accused by physical abuse is as in- valid as a conviction which rests upon a verbal confession extracted from him by such abuse. Had the evidence forced from the defendant's lips consisted of an oral confession that he illegally possessed a drug . he would have the protection of the rule of law which ex- cludes coerced confessions from evidence. But because the evidence forced from his lips consisted of real objects the People of this state are permitted to base a conviction upon it. [We] find no valid ground of distinction be- tween a verbal confession extracted by physical abuse and a confession wrested from defendant's body by physical abuse." 101 Cal. App. 2d 143, 149-150, 225 P. 2d 913, 917-918. 1The petition for a hearing is addressed to the discretion of the California Supreme Court and a denial has apparently the same significance as the denial of certiorari in this Court. Cal. Const., Art. VI, §§ 4, 4c; "Rules on Appeal," Rulet 28, 29, 36 Cal. 2d 24-25 (1951). See 3 Stan. L. Rev. 243-269 (1951). OCTOBER TERM, 1951. Opinion of the Court. 342 U. S. This Court granted certiorari, 341 U. S. 939, because a serious question is raised as to the limitations which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposes on the conduct of criminal proceedings by the States. In our federal system the administration of criminal justice is predominantly committed to the care of the States. The power to define crimes belongs to Congress only as an appropriate means of carrying into execution its limited grant of legislative powers. U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 18. Broadly speaking, crimes in the United States are what the laws of the individual States make them, subject to the limitations of Art. I, § 10, cl. 1, in the original Constitution, prohibiting bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, and of the Thirteenth and Four- teenth Amendments. These limitations, in the main, concern not restrictions upon the powers of the States to define crime, except in the restricted area where federal authority has pre- empted the field, but restrictions upon the manner in which the States may enforce their penal codes. Ac- cordingly, in reviewing a State criminal conviction under a claim of right guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, from which is derived the most far-reaching and most frequent federal basis of challenging State criminal justice, "we must be deeply mindful of the responsibilities of the States for the enforcement of criminal laws, and exercise with due humil- ity our merely negative function in subjecting convictions from state courts to the very narrow scrutiny which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment au- thorizes." Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, 412, 418. Due process of law, "itself a historical product," Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U. S. 22, 31, is not to be turned into a destructive dogma against the States in the .administration of their systems of criminal justice. ROCHIN v. CALIFORNIA. 165 Opinion of the Court. However, this Court too has its responsibility. Regard for the requirements of the Due Process Clause "inescap- ably imposes upon this Court an exercise of judgment upon the whole course of the proceedings [resulting in a conviction] in order to ascertain whether they offend those canons of decency and fairness which express the no- tions of justice of English-speaking peoples even toward those charged with the most heinous offenses." Malinski v. New York, supra, at 416-417. These standards of justice are not authoritatively formulated anywhere as though they were specifics. Due process of law is a summarized constitutional guarantee of respect for those per- sonal immunities which, as Mr. Justice Cardozo twice wrote for the Court, are "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental," Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 105, or are "im- plicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Palko v. Con- necticut, 302 U. S. 319, 325.2 The Court's function in the observance of this settled conception of the Due Process Clause does not leave us without adequate guides in subjecting State criminal pro- cedures to constitutional judgment. In dealing not with the machinery of government but with human rights, the absence of formal exactitude, or want of fixity of mean- ing, is not an unusual or even regrettable attribute of constitutional provisions. Words being symbols do not speak without a gloss. On the one hand the gloss may be the deposit of history, whereby a term gains technical content. Thus the requirements of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments for trial by jury in the federal 2What is here summarized was deemed by a majority of the Court, in Malinski v.

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