Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.SUPREME COURT: Freedom of the Stomach
On the morning of July 1, 1949, three men from the Los Angeles County sheriff's office broke into the home of Antonio Rochin, a 22-year-old truck driver whom they suspected of carrying narcotics. Before they could stop him, Rochin swallowed the only evidence against him—two morphine capsules. The deputies choked him and pummeled him, trying unsuccessfully to make him cough them up. Then they dragged him to a hospital, forced him on to an operating table, where a doctor "pumped" out his stomach to get the evidence. The judge gave him 60 days.
A smart lawyer named David Marcus for...
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