12
JALLOH v. GERMANY JUDGMENT
official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or
suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”
Article 15
“Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been
made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except
against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.”
Article 16 § 1
“Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction
other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not
amount to torture as defined in Article 1, when such acts are committed by or at the
instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person
acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in Articles 10,
11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to
other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
(b) Case-law of United States courts
49. In Rochin v. California (342 US 165 (1952)), the United States
Supreme Court reversed the petitioner’s conviction for unlawful possession
of drugs. On the basis of information that the petitioner was selling
narcotics, three state officers entered his home and forced their way into his
bedroom. They unsuccessfully attempted to extract by force drug capsules
which the petitioner had been observed to put into his mouth. The officers
then took him to a hospital, where an emetic was forced through a tube into
his stomach against his will. He regurgitated two capsules which were
found to contain morphine. These were admitted in evidence in the face of
his objection. The Supreme Court held on 2 January 1952 that the
conviction had been obtained by methods in violation of the Due Process
Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.
50. Mr Justice Frankfurter, delivering the opinion of the Court, found:
“Applying these general considerations to the circumstances of the present case, we
are compelled to conclude that the proceedings by which this conviction was obtained
do more than offend some fastidious squeamishness or private sentimentalism about
combating crime too energetically. This is conduct that shocks the conscience.
Illegally breaking into the privacy of the petitioner, the struggle to open his mouth and
remove what was there, the forcible extraction of his stomach’s contents – this course
of proceeding by agents of government to obtain evidence is bound to offend even
hardened sensibilities. They are methods too close to the rack and the screw to permit
of constitutional differentiation.
It has long since ceased to be true that due process of law is heedless of the means
by which otherwise relevant and credible evidence is obtained. This was not true even
before the series of recent cases enforced the constitutional principle that the States
may not base convictions upon confessions, however much verified, obtained by
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents