Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case clarifying the standard of review of a criminal defendant's allegedly coerced confession.

[1] In October, police uncovered that he had a felony criminal record, and had traded a rifle for a spare revolver barrel on September 13.

[1] After this information was shared with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Fulminante was arrested in Newark for illegally possessing a weapon.

[1] While in Ray Brook prison (now in 1983), Fulminante met Anthony Sarivola, a fellow inmate, who was also a confidential informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[1] Fulminante agreed, confessing to Sarivola that he murdered his stepdaughter; he admitted to driving her out to the desert on his motorcycle, sexually assaulting her, choking her, making her plead for her life, and shooting her with his .357 revolver.

[1] After his release in May 1984, he made a comment in front of Sarivola's wife that "he could not return to his home because he had killed a little girl in Arizona.

[1] However, it noted that the second confession, made casually to Sarivola as he was being released, lacked the coercion of the first, and was separate enough not to be implicated by the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.

However, White said that the Arizona court's opinion had properly reviewed an array of relevant factors, and although it was "close," he agreed that Fulminante faced "a credible threat of physical violence.

Today, a majority of the Court, without any justification, overrules this vast body of precedent without a word and in so doing dislodges one of the fundamental tenets of our criminal justice system.

[citations to 16 cases omitted]In Part II of his opinion, joined by O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter, Chief Justice Rehnquist argued that the harmless error rule should apply to the use of involuntary confessions as evidence.

While it was true that the Chapman decision acknowledged that some violations of the constitution could never be harmless, Rehnquist argued that it did not make sense to lump involuntary confessions in with the others:[3] The admission of an involuntary confession—a classic "trial error"—is markedly different from the other two constitutional violations referred to in the Chapman footnote as not being subject to harmless-error analysis.

These are structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which defy analysis by "harmless-error" standards.In Part I of his opinion, Rehnquist (joined by Kennedy and Souter) argued that the first confession was voluntary, and thus there was no problem with its use as evidence.