In the 1939 case White v. Texas, the U.S Supreme Court overturned a murder conviction on grounds that it violated due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The defendant, a black man named Joe White, was convicted for murdering a white woman in Texas and sentenced to death based solely on his confession which he claimed was coerced through physical abuse by police officers. No other evidence linked him to this crime. The court ruled that if indeed his confession had been obtained through torture as alleged, then it would be considered involuntary and therefore could not serve as sole basis for conviction without violating constitutional rights against self-incrimination and guaranteeing fair trial procedures.

In the dissenting opinion for White v. Texas, Justice Black argued that the defendant's constitutional rights were violated due to a coerced confession. He believed that the police used physical and psychological pressure to extract a confession from White, which was then used as evidence in his trial. This coercion included prolonged questioning over several days without legal counsel present and threats of violence if he did not confess. Justice Black maintained that such tactics were unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because they denied White a fair trial by using involuntary self-incolation against him. Furthermore, he contended that this case represented an opportunity for the Supreme Court to affirm its commitment to protecting individual liberties from state infringement by reversing lower court decisions upholding these coercive practices.