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Video Transcribed:
What is a Jackson Denno hearing? I’m a criminal defense attorney Tulsa, OK, James Wirth, and we’re talking about criminal defense and various cases that have made rules that we follow in them. And this is the Jackson Denno hearing that comes from the United States Supreme Court Case of Jackson V Denno, 878 US 368 case.
And that case deals with involuntary confession and specifically it allows and created this Jackson Denno hearing where if there is an alleged confession, the defendant can request a hearing to determine the admissibility of that confession based on whether it was voluntary or not prior to it being in front of a jury and being admitted.
Generally, that’s done as an in-camera hearing, outside the presence of the jury. So once you’re having the jury trial and the state is requesting to introduce that confession, a request for a Jackson Denno hearing would be made by the defendant and then the jury would be dismissed temporarily. And then there would be an in-camera hearing where arguments were made regarding the admissibility.
Because if it is an involuntary confession, it is not admissible and should not go before the jury, and we don’t want the jury prejudiced by what may be a non-true confession if it was involuntarily and forced upon the defendant.
So the language from the United States Supreme Court, in that case, provides some information on how these are handled and why it is done this way, and that is as follows. “It is now axiomatic that a defendant in a criminal case is deprived of due process of law if his confession is founded in whole, or in part upon involuntary confession, without regard to the truth or falsity of the confession.
Equally clear is the defendant’s constitutional right at some stage in the proceedings to object to the use of the confession and to have a fair hearing and a reliable determination on the issue of voluntariness and determination uninfluenced by the truth or falsity of the confession.”
So that’s when the United States Supreme Court, establishing the right to a Jackson Denno hearing that determined the voluntariness of a statement before it can be admitted into evidence as a confession. If you’ve got questions on how that rule may apply to your case or other rules of criminal procedure, you’re going to want to talk to an attorney about that specifically and confidentially. To get that scheduled with somebody in my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.