Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 14 (2003)

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Cite as: 538 U. S. 760 (2003)

Opinion of Thomas, J.

Martinez was compelled to be a "witness" against himself defeats his core Fifth Amendment claim. The Ninth Circuit's view that mere compulsion violates the Self-Incrimination Clause, see 270 F. 3d, at 857; California Attorneys for Criminal Justice v. Butts, 195 F. 3d 1039, 1045-1046 (1999); Cooper, 963 F. 2d, at 1243-1244, finds no support in the text of the Fifth Amendment and is irreconcilable with our case law.4 Because we find that Chavez's alleged conduct did not violate the Self-Incrimination Clause, we reverse the Ninth Circuit's denial of qualified immunity as to Martinez's Fifth Amendment claim.

Our views on the proper scope of the Fifth Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause do not mean that police torture or other abuse that results in a confession is constitutionally permissible so long as the statements are not used at trial; it simply means that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, rather than the Fifth Amendment's Self-Incrimination Clause, would govern the inquiry in those cases and provide relief in appropriate circumstances.5

4 It is Justice Kennedy's indifference to the text of the Self-Incrimination Clause, as well as a conspicuous absence of a single citation to the actual text of the Fifth Amendment, that permits him to adopt the Ninth Circuit's interpretation.

Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385 (1978), on which Justice Kennedy and Justice Ginsburg rely in support of their reading of the Fifth Amendment, was a case addressing the admissibility of a coerced confession under the Due Process Clause. Mincey did not even mention the Fifth Amendment or the Self-Incrimination Clause, and refutes Justice Kennedy's and Justice Ginsburg's assertions that their interpretation of that Clause would have been known to any reasonable officer at the time Chavez conducted his interrogation.

5 We also do not see how, in light of Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386 (1989), Justice Kennedy can insist that "the Self-Incrimination Clause is applicable at the time and place police use compulsion to extract a statement from a suspect" while at the same time maintaining that the use of "torture or its equivalent in an attempt to induce a statement" violates the Due Process Clause. Post, at 795, 796 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Graham foreclosed the use of substantive due proc-

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