Twining v. State of New Jersey

In Justice Moody's majority opinion of 9 November, the Court affirmed the decisions of New Jersey's courts, allowing the convictions to stand. The Court's decision was unconcerned with the merits of the case against Twining and Cornell. The judge's instructions to the jury in the criminal case were entered as a matter of record, but the Court was more concerned with delineating the rights of defendants in state versus federal trials.

Twining and Cornell were convicted of breaking a state law. The Court found no reason to reverse the decisions of that state's courts just because state statutes did not include an exemption from self-incrimination. It was true that federal law provided such an exemption within the Fifth Amendment. All but two states included the exemption in their own laws. One state which did not specifically include the principles of the Fifth Amendment in its own constitution was Iowa. Unfortunately for Twining and Cornell, the other was New Jersey.

The two defendants were American citizens, but they were also citizens of the state of New Jersey. Citing the 1872 Slaughterhouse Cases, Justice Moody stated that citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a state were distinct from each other. The Court ruled that the first eight amendments to the U.S. Constitution applied only to action by federal authorities. However fundamental they might be, privileges found within the amendments were not specifically protections against action in state courts. The Court declared that the Fifth Amendment was reserved for use in federal trials only.

Twining's and Cornell's attorneys were aware that appealing the convictions by claiming the protection of the Fifth Amendment would be ineffective. Instead, all of their appeals were grounded in the argument that the judge's comments in the criminal trial violated an immunity from self-incrimination, not under the Fifth Amendment, but under the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "due process" under the law. This strategy was equally unsuccessful. Justice Moody pointed out that the framers of the Constitution had seen fit to enumerate the guarantees of the Fifth Amendment as a distinct and separate right, not as part of the general legal framework known as "due process."

Only Justice Harlan dissented from this opinion. Justice Harlan chided his associates for skirting the issue of whether or not Twining's and Cornell's rights had been infringed by the judge's comments in their trial. Harlan also differed from the majority in his belief that "exemption from testimonial compulsion" was protected by both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Finally, Harlan adamantly rejected the distinction the other justices made between individual privileges under state and federal law, which allowed differing interpretations of the right to silence.

"The declaration of the Court, in the opinion just delivered, that immunity from self-incrimination is of great value, a protection to the innocent, and a safeguard against tyrannical prosecutions, meets my cordial approval," Harlan wrote. But, he added, in view of the Court's long-held view that forcing defendants to testify against themselves "was in violation of universal American law, was contrary to the principles of free government and a weapon of despotic power which could not abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom, I cannot agree that a State may make that rule a part of its law and binding on citizens despite the Constitution of the United States."

Regardless of Justice Harlan's foresight in the matter, the majority decision in the Twining decision remained the policy of the Court for decades. In 1947, the decision's principles were reaffirmed in Adamson v. California. Not until the Court's 1964 Malloy v. Hogan decision did the guarantee against self-incrimination extend to defendants in both state and federal trials.