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Texas 'justice'.

Article Excerpt
In Kaupp v. Texas, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous per curiam opinion, reversed the murder conviction of a defendant because his confession had been illegally obtained. (1) The Court's decision is unremarkable. It applied well-established law to a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. What is remarkable is that this blatant violation of the law by the Houston police was upheld by the Texas Court of Appeals, causing the U.S. Supreme Court to abandon its usual role of resolving conflicts among the lower courts to instead right a wrong in an individual case.

The case began with the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl in Harris County, Texas. The police learned that she had had a sexual relationship with her 19-year-old half-brother, Nicholas Thetford, who had been with petitioner Robert Kaupp when the girl disappeared. The police questioned both Thetford and Kaupp, who was 17 at the time. Kaupp was cooperative, passed a polygraph test, and was permitted to leave. Thetford failed three polygraph tests and eventually confessed to stabbing his sister to death. He also implicated Kaupp. (2)

The police attempted to get a warrant to question Kaupp but failed. They nevertheless decided to "get [Kaupp] in and confront him" with Thetford's confession. Six officers went to his home at 3 a.m. After his father admitted them, three of the officers went to Kaupp's bedroom, woke him by shining a flashlight in his eyes, and told him, "We need to go and talk." They handcuffed him and led him, dressed only in boxer shorts and a T-shirt (in January), to a patrol car. He apparently was not told that he was free to decline...

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