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Note: 

Criminal Law—Self-Incrimination—Threat of Job Loss to Transient Employee Does Not Render Subsequent Statements Inadmissible in Criminal Proceedings.  United States ex rel. Sanney v. Montanye, 500 F.2d 411 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 95 S. Ct. 506 (1974), 53 TEXAS L. REV. 597 (1975). 

In Sanney, the defendant submitted to a polygraph examination as a condition for employment as a driver’s assistant at an oil company.  During the examination, and with police secretly observing, the defendant admitted to striking the deceased victim.  The county court admitted the statement, which resulted in the defendant’s murder conviction.  The Supreme Court affirmed denial of a writ of habeas corpus challenging the admission of the statement.  Under the fifth amendment, courts test confessions challenged as coercive against two standards.  First, some circumstances are inherently coercive, meaning that the court will not admit the confession as a product of the defendant’s free choice to speak.  Second, if the circumstances are not inherently coercive, a court determines admissibility by examining the totality of the circumstances, balancing the defendant’s susceptibility to coercion against the coerciveness of the interrogation tactics.  In this note, the author argues that the Court should have held the economic sanction of threatened loss of a defendant’s job, even with no prospect of tenure, to be inherently coercive, rendering any statement taken under those circumstances involuntary as a matter of law.  The author contends that to hold otherwise gives lower constitutional protection to the poor.