Arizona v. Fulminante
- Decided
- May 20, 1991
- Docket
- 89-839
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 6,060 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- recognizing that the current standard for determining the voluntariness of a confession is the totality of the circumstances test — State v. Coombs (1998)
- holding that "structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism” are per se prejudicial — Virgil v. Dretke (2006)
- holding that constitutional “trial errors,” such as the admission of an involuntary confession, can be harmless — Quinn v. Commonwealth (1997)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
[*282] Justice White delivered an opinion, Parts I, II, and IV of which are the opinion of the Court, and Part III of which is a dissenting opinion.[†] The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in this case that respondent Oreste Fulminante’s confession, received in evidence at his trial for murder, had been coerced and that its use against him was barred by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The court also held that the harmless-error rule could not be used to save the conviction. We affirm the judgment of the Arizona court, although for different reasons than those upon which that court relied.
I
Early in the morning of September 14, 1982, Fulminante called the Mesa, Arizona, Police Department to report that his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Jeneane Michelle Hunt, was missing. He had been caring for Jeneane while his wife, Jeneane’s mother, was in the hospital. Two days later, Je-neane’s body was found in the desert east of Mesa. She had been shot twice in the head at close range with a large caliber weapon, and a ligature was around her neck. Because of the decomposed condition of the body, it was impossible to tell whether she had been sexually assaulted.
Cite this
Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991)Read the full opinion
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