People v. Roberts

(for affirmance). Defendant, a 15-year-old Negro boy, is charged with murder. This is an appeal, before trial, from the trial court’s order denying defendant’s motion to quash the information. The motion was based on the claim that defendant’s confession of guilt, received on preliminary examination through the testimony of the police officer to whom it was made, was not freely and voluntarily given. On appeal defendant contends (1) that the voluntariness of the confession presents a question of law for the court and not a question of fact for a jury when, as he contends here, the facts in…