NY Court of Appeals Rules Murder Confession Following 49-hour Interrogation is Inadmissible

On Tuesday, a six-judge panel of the New York State Court of Appeals criticized the Syracuse police for locking James Guilford in a small room, depriving him of food and sleep, and continuously questioning him for 49 hours, before providing him access to a lawyer.

And when after an eight-hour break they wanted to question him again, Guilford decided to appease them rather than repeat the ordeal. He confessed to the murder of his wife and putting the body in a dumpster. The police were jubilant - though they never found the body or the dumpster, and Guilford was sent to prison for 25 years.


Ordering a new trial for Guilford, the Court of Appeals observed that the eight-hour break before the confession did not "transform his coerced capitulation into a voluntary disclosure," and that the confession should have been suppressed.

In the instant case, the mother of Guilford's children disappeared and the police suspected murder. Court documents show Guilford was questioned for 49 ½ hours without a break, was not allowed to sleep and given only one sandwich to eat in more than two days. Rotating teams of police detectives kept up their sadistic schedule. By the time they were through, Guilford would have been ready to confess to anything they wanted him to say.

Only during the end of the 49 ½ hours of interrogation was Guilford informed that he would be charged with murder. He asked for a lawyer, and the lawyer told him to stop speaking to the police.

After an eight-hour break, when the police again wanted to start interrogation, Guilford told them he had committed the murder and put the victim's body into a dumpster. The police did not care that neither the body nor the dumpster could be found.

Later during his trial, Guilford recanted his confession and also argued that his confession should be suppressed. The trial judge did not agree and sentenced him to prison for 25 years.

Last year, a divided panel of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, upheld the conviction finding that the eight-hour break was sufficient to remove the horrors of what Guilford went through.

While reversing the conviction Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote that using Guilford's confession to implicate him "would raise the possibility that a conviction could be obtained by means demonstrably hazardous to the truth and an anathema to any truly adversarial system of justice."

All of the remaining five judges of the panel concurred fully with Lippman.

The case is the People v. James Guilford, New York State Court of Appeals, No. 103.