Chaney v. State

A criminal justice system, by its very nature, frequently involves the delicate balancing of competing interests. A society dedicated to human liberty must be ever vigilant that a suspect never be compelled to incriminate himself. That same society, legitimately concerned with protecting itself from its predators, must also be sensitive to the value of an admission or confession, properly obtained, as sometimes indispensable evidence of guilt. But for the confession in the case at bar, a brutal sexual assault and strangulation of a ten-year-old girl might have gone forever unredressed.

On…