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Transcript

Ashcraft vs. Tennessee

Prezi by: Lilly Burress

Saturday, 1944

Vol XCIII, No. 311

How do the Amendments affect this case?

Amendments involved and the Case:

Brief Summary & Facts

If Ashcraft and Ware knew their rights then they could have had a better chance with getting a shorter sentence if one at all. Pleading the fifth could have bought them time to get a lawyer, and if they asked for one at the beginning of the interrogation, it could have kept them from their 99 year sentence in the state penitentiary.

Petitioner was questioned for more than 36 hours without a break for sleep or rest by a chain of experienced officers, resulting in a confession and conviction of murder and accessory before the fact.

A confession obtained after interrogating a subject for 36 straight hours without rest will be held to have been made involuntarily, and thus a denial of due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The 5th Amendment: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

The 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed.

Victim Zelma Ashcraft was found dead on the side of the road and later that night, officers talked to the petitioner husband. On a Saturday nine days later, the petitioner was taken by police to an office at their jail where they sat him at a table with a light overhead, and proceeded to question him in relays until the following Monday morning. The petitioner was never given the opportunity to rest during this interrogation and claimed that after much suggestion that he was to confess, the state ended up admitting into evidence a statement by Ashcraft that he had paid the other petitioner Ware to murder his wife. The petitioners were convicted of murder and accessory before the fact and the Supreme Court of Tennessee affirmed. The petitioners were granted certiorari claiming that their confessions had been extorted from them in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Work cited

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/322/143/case.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ashcraft-v-Tennessee

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