Word: brennan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions," said Justice William Brennan, speaking for the slim 5-to-4 majority that was obviously determined to defend the court's earlier admonitions to police, urging them to make more use of scientific crime-detection equipment. For that was just what a Los Angeles policeman was doing after a 1964 auto accident, when he caught a whiff of booze on Armando Schmerber's breath and ordered a doc tor to give Schmerber a blood test, even though...
Ample Reason. But what about Schmerber's contention that the whole procedure abridged his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure? The Fifth, answered Brennan, only prohibits "the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications" from a person. It does not exclude the "body as evidence when it may be material." Lie-detector tests, Brennan went on, might very well be improper because they involve questioning and verbal testimony...
...Fourth Amendment, Brennan said simply that all searches and seizures are not prohibited-only those "not justified in the circumstances" or "made in an improper manner." In this case, he said, the policeman who ordered the blood test had ample reason to believe the defendant was drunk. Had he taken time to get a warrant, the evidence might have vanished. Besides, the blood was taken in a hospital, under hygienic conditions...
Speaking for a slim 5-to-4 majority, Warren made it clear that he, along with Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas and William Brennan, was convinced that questioning in the back room of a police station-the kind of questioning that led to all four confessions under consideration last week-is inherently coercive. Even if there is no physical intimidation, said the Chief Justice, the suspect in "police custody, surrounded by antagonistic forces, and subjected to the techniques of persuasion" that are the stock in trade of the modern interrogator, "cannot be otherwise than under compulsion...
...Brennan assured Councillor Cornelia B. Wheeler that police would also ticket cars which failed to stop at crosswalks without traffic signals...