Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that added behavior that "shocks the conscience" into tests of what violates due process clause of the 14th Amendment. This balancing test is often criticized as having subsequently been used in a particularly subjective manner.
Background
On July 1, 1949, three Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs entered the Rochins' residence without a search warrant and forcibly entered Rochin's room on the second floor.
Upon entering the room, the deputies noticed two capsules on the night stand. Richard Rochin immediately swallowed the capsules after Deputy Jack Jones asked him, "Whose stuff is this?" Jones then grabbed and squeezed Rochin by the neck, as well as shoving his fingers in Rochin's mouth as he attempted to eject the capsules. The deputies, unable to obtain the capsules, handcuffed and took Rochin to Angeles Emergency Hospital where he was strapped to an operating table and had a tube forcibly placed in his mouth and into his stomach and given an emetic solution, whereupon he vomited the capsules into a bucket. The deputies then retrieved the capsules and tested them to be morphine.
The court quoted from the decision of the California Supreme Court, in which two justices dissented, saying,
Justice Douglas and Black both wrote concurring opinions in which they argued that the lower court's decision should have been overturned based on the Fifth Amendment liberty from self-incrimination. Both justices believed that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "due process" incorporated that right. The justices' opinions also offered much criticism of Frankfurter's opinion for the court.
Douglas rebuked the court for suddenly declaring that the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, which had not been an issue up until then, suddenly violated the "decencies of civilized conduct". Black disagreed with the logic in the majority as being contradictory. He argued the opinion enabled the court to nullify the California state law of using illegal evidence based on due process because its application "shocks the conscience", but then admonishes judges to be impartial and use the society's standards in judgment.