Forty Hours Without Food

An elderly lumber dealer was beaten to death and more than $450 was taken. Police arrested a 19-year-old man with a fifth-grade education without a warrant. He was never taken before a magistrate, as state law required, and was held incommunicado for three days without a lawyer or contact with his family. He was given no food for more than forty hours and was driven 45 miles without breakfast or shoes. Before he confessed, the police chief told him that thirty or forty people outside wanted to get to him. His confession was used at his murder trial, and he was sentenced to death. The defence argued that the confession had been coerced by hunger, isolation and the threat of mob violence, and that using it violated due process.