Payne v. Arkansas

Petitioner, a 19-year-old Negro, was convicted by a jury in Jefferson County, Arkansas, of first degree murder and sentenced to dea/th by electrocution. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Arkansas he pressed two main contentions: (1) that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to suppress, and in receiving in evidence over his objection, a coerced and false confession, and that the error takes and deprives him of his life without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and (2) that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to quash the…