It “Shocks the Conscience:” Police Forcibly Pump Suspect’s Stomach
The Supreme Court in Rochin v. California decided on this day unanimously overturned the conviction of Antonio Rochin, ruling that the methods used by the police, forcing him to vomit up some pills he had swallowed, “shocks the conscience” and violated the due process clause.
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies entered Rochin’s residence without a warrant in early July 1949. He swallowed some pills, and police took him to the emergency room where he was forcibly induced to vomit them up. The pills were morphine, and were later used to convict him.
The Court: ” . . . we are compelled to conclude that the proceedings by which this conviction was obtained do more than offend some fastidious squeamishness or private sentimentalism about combatting crime too energetically. This is conduct that shocks the conscience. Illegally breaking into the privacy of the petitioner, the struggle to open his mouth and remove what was there, the forcible extraction of his stomach’s contents – this course of proceeding by agents of government to obtain evidence is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities. They are methods too close to the rack and the screw to permit of constitutional differentiation.”
Learn more about the Rochin case: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1950-1959/1951/1951_83
Learn more about Rochin and the history of police misconduct: https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/aclu-history-fighting-police-misconduct
Read: Carolyn Long, Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures (2006)
Learn more: Stephen Schulhofer, More Essential Than Ever: The Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century (2012)
Read about the history of the police, criminal justice, and the Supreme Court: Samuel Walker, Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice, 2nd ed. (1998)