Adamson v. California

All you want to know about Adamson v. California

Adamson v. Cali

Argued January 15–16, 1947
Decided June 23, 1947

Full case name:	Adamson v. People of the State of California
Citations:	332 U.S. 46 (see more...); 67 S. Ct. 1672; 91 L. Ed. 1903; 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2876; 171 A.L.R. 1223
Prior history:	On appeal from the Supreme Court of California. 27 Cal.2d 478, 165 P.2d 3
Subsequent history:	As amended. Rehearing denied by Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 784, 68 S. Ct. 27, 92 L. Ed. 367, 1947 U.S. LEXIS 1986 (1947)

Holding

The Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause did not extend to defendants a Fifth Amendment right not to bear witness against themselves in state courts.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson
Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, Robert H. Jackson, Wiley Blount Rutledge, Harold Hitz Burton

Case opinions

Majority by: Reed
Joined by: Vinson, Jackson, Burton
Concurrence by: Frankfurter
Dissent by: Black
Joined by: Douglas
Dissent by: Murphy
Joined by: Rutledge

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV

Overruled by

In part by cases such as Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964) Benton v. Maryland 395 U.S. 784 (1969)

Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947) was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the incorporation of the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Background

In Adamson v. California, Admiral Dewey Adamson was charged with first-degree murder but chose not to testify on his own behalf because he knew the prosecutor would impeach him with questions about his prior criminal record. The prosecutor then argued that this refusal to testify could be seen as an admission of guilt under a California statute that allowed the jury to infer guilt in such cases. On appeal, however, Adamson’s attorney Morris Lavine argued that Adamson’s freedom against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment had been violated. He argued that because the prosecutor had drawn attention to Adamson’s refusal to testify, Adamson’s freedom against self-incrimination had been violated.

In the majority opinion written by Justice Stanley Reed, the Supreme Court found that while Adamson’s rights may have been violated had the case been tried in federal court, the rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment did not extend to state courts based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also found that while the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all rights under the first ten amendments to people under the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment did not guarantee all of these rights to defendants under the individual state governments. While some of these rights held in states, the Court felt that the Fourteenth Amendment could not and was not intended to apply all of these rights to states without limitations.

Justice Hugo Black, however, had strong convictions against this decision and wrote a lengthy dissenting opinion,in which he argued for total incorporation of the Bill of Rights by the states, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment should be read as guaranteeing that “no state could deprive its citizens of the privileges and protections of the Bill of Rights.” Black believed that the framers of the Constitution had intended for the Bill of Rights to apply to all citizens and advocated applying all of the Bill of Rights to the states. In his opinion, he wrote:

“

If the choice must be between the selective process of [ Palko v. Connecticut ] applying some of the Bill of Rights to the States or the Twining rule applying none of them, I would choose the Palko selective process. But rather than accept either of these choices, I would follow what I believe was the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment- to extend to all of the people of the nation the complete protection of the Bill of Rights. To hold that this Court can determine what, if any, provisions, of the Bill of Rights will be enforced, and if so to what degree, is to frustrate the great design of a written Constitution.

”

Justice William O. Douglas joined Black's dissenting opinion. Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge also agreed with Black that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the rights listed in the Bill of Rights (via the Privileges or Immunities Clause), but Murphy and Rutledge also argued that other fundamental "procedural" rights apply against the states (via the Due Process Clause).

The Court eventually reversed itself on the issue in later cases, and today the protections of the Fifth Amendment (except the grand jury clause) apply to the states as well as the federal government. However, the Court has applied these protections via the Due Process Clause instead of (as Black would have) via the Privileges or Immunities Clause.