JALLOH v. GERMANY JUDGMENT
13
coercion. ... It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of
constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to convict a man
the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his
stomach.
To attempt in this case to distinguish what lawyers call ‘real evidence’ from verbal
evidence is to ignore the reasons for excluding coerced confessions. Use of
involuntary verbal confessions in State criminal trials is constitutionally obnoxious
not only because of their unreliability. They are inadmissible under the Due Process
Clause even though statements contained in them may be independently established as
true. Coerced confessions offend the community’s sense of fair play and decency. So
here, to sanction the brutal conduct which naturally enough was condemned by the
court whose judgment is before us, would be to afford brutality the cloak of law.
Nothing would be more calculated to discredit law and thereby to brutalize the temper
of a society.”
51. In State of Ohio v. Dario Williams (2004 WL 1902368 (Ohio App. 8
Dist.)), the Ohio Court of Appeals held on 26 August 2004 that the pumping
of the defendant’s stomach in the face of his objections was not an
unreasonable search and seizure. The defendant was observed engaging in a
hand-to-hand transaction typical of drug dealing. When police officers
ordered the defendant to their vehicle, he put something in his mouth and
ran off. In the opinion of the court, flushing out the defendant’s stomach by
gastric lavage by a physician in a hospital setting was not an unreasonable
measure, even though the defendant violently objected to the procedure and
had to be sedated. Swallowing the cocaine, which had been seen in the
defendant’s mouth, put his life in jeopardy and he was destroying evidence.
52. Mr Justice T.E. McMonagle, delivering the Court of Appeals’
opinion, found:
“19. Williams directs us to Rochin v. California, 342 US 165 (1952), ... one of the
prominent cases on intrusive searches.
...
21. Rochin is not dispositive, however. After Rochin, the United States Supreme
Court decided Schmerber v. California, 384 US 757 (1966), 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16
L.Ed.2d 908, in which a police officer ordered an individual suspected of driving
while intoxicated to submit to a blood test at the hospital where he was being treated
for injuries sustained in an automobile collision. The Supreme Court noted that ‘the
Fourth Amendment’s proper function is to constrain, not against all intrusions as such,
but against intrusions which are not justified in the circumstances, or which are made
in an improper manner’. ... Finding no Fourth Amendment violation, the Court set
forth several criteria to be considered in determining the reasonableness of an
intrusive search: 1) the government must have a clear indication that incriminating
evidence will be found; 2) the police officers must have a warrant, or, there must be
exigent circumstances, such as the imminent destruction of evidence, to excuse the
warrant requirement; and 3) the method used to extract the evidence must be
reasonable and must be performed in a reasonable manner.
...
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