New york quarles

Following is the case brief for New York v. Quarles, U. A woman approached two police officers on road patrol. The woman told the officers that she had been raped, she described her assailant, and she told them that the man had just entered a nearby grocery store with a gun. One of the officers went into the grocery store and ordered respondent Quarles to stop and put his hands over his head.

The officer frisked Quarles, discovering that Quarles was wearing an empty shoulder holster. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Issues The U. Government U. Foreign Policy U. Liberal Politics U. Elianna Spitzer. Law Expert. Elianna Spitzer is a legal studies writer and a former Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism research assistant.

Updated April 29, Fast Facts: New York v. Majority Decision: Justices Burger, White, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist Dissenting: Justices O'Connor, Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens Ruling: The Supreme Court ruled that, due to a public safety concern, Quarles' statement regarding the location of his gun could be used against him in court even though he had not been read his Miranda rights at the time.

Cite this Article Format. Spitzer, Elianna. New York v. Dickerson v. Missouri v. Escobedo v. Brewer v. Miranda Rights: Your Rights of Silence. Rhode Island v. Current Justices of the U. Supreme Court. Furman v. Schmerber v. Buckley v. Whatever the motivation of individual officers in such a situation, we do not believe that the doctrinal underpinnings of Miranda require that it be applied in all its rigor to a situation in which police officers ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety.

The Miranda decision was based in large part on this Court's view that the warnings which it required police to give to suspects in custody would reduce the likelihood that the suspects would fall victim to constitutionally impermissible practices of police interrogation in the presumptively coercive environment of the station house. The dissenters warned that the requirement of Miranda warnings would have the effect of decreasing the number of suspects who respond to police questioning.

The Miranda majority, however, apparently felt that whatever the cost to society in terms of fewer convictions of guilty suspects, that cost would simply have to be borne in the interest of enlarged protection for the Fifth Amendment privilege. The police in this case, in the very act of apprehending a suspect, were confronted with the immediate necessity of ascertaining the whereabouts of a gun which they had every reason to believe the suspect had just removed from his empty holster and discarded in the supermarket.

So long as the gun was concealed somewhere in the supermarket, with its actual whereabouts unknown, it obviously posed more than one danger to the public safety: an accomplice might make use of it, a customer or employee might later come upon it. In such a situation, if the police are required to recite the familiar Miranda warnings before asking the whereabouts of the gun, suspects in Quarles' position might well be deterred from responding.

Procedural safeguards which deter a suspect from responding were deemed acceptable in Miranda in order to protect the Fifth Amendment privilege; when the primary social cost of those added protections is the possibility of fewer convictions, the Miranda majority was willing to bear that cost.

Here, had Miranda warnings deterred Quarles from responding to Officer Kraft's question about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting Quarles.

Officer Kraft needed an answer to his question not simply to make his case against Quarles but to insure that further danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area. We conclude that the need for answers to questions in a situation posing a threat to the public safety outweighs the need for the prophylactic rule protecting the Fifth Amendment 's privilege against self-incrimination.

We decline to place officers such as Officer Kraft in the untenable position of having to consider, often in a matter of seconds, whether it best serves society for them to ask the necessary questions without the Miranda warnings and render whatever probative evidence they uncover inadmissible, or for them to give the warnings in order to preserve the admissibility of evidence they might uncover but possibly damage or destroy their ability to obtain that evidence and neutralize the volatile situation confronting them.

In recognizing a narrow exception to the Miranda rule in this case, we acknowledge that to some degree we lessen the desirable clarity of that rule. At least in part in order to preserve its clarity, we have over the years refused to sanction attempts to expand our Miranda holding. See, e. Murphy, U. Michael C. As we have in other contexts, we recognize here the importance of a workable rule "to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront.

New York, U. But as we have pointed out, we believe that the exception which we recognize today lessens the necessity of that on-the-scene balancing process. The exception will not be difficult for police officers to apply because in each case it will be circumscribed by the exigency which justifies it.

We think police officers can and will distinguish almost instinctively between questions necessary to secure their own safety or the safety of the public and questions designed solely to elicit testimonial evidence from a suspect.

The facts of this case clearly demonstrate that distinction and an officer's ability to recognize it. Officer Kraft asked only the question necessary to locate the missing gun before advising respondent of his rights.

It was only after securing the loaded revolver and giving the warnings that he continued with investigatory questions about the ownership and place of purchase of the gun. The exception which we recognize today, far from complicating the thought processes and the on-the-scene judgments of police officers, will simply free them to follow their legitimate instincts when confronting situations presenting a danger to the public safety.

We hold that the Court of Appeals in this case erred in excluding the statement, "the gun is over there," and the gun because of the officer's failure to read respondent his Miranda rights before attempting to locate the weapon.

Accordingly we hold that it also erred in excluding the subsequent statements as illegal fruits of a Miranda violation.

In Miranda v. Today, the Court concludes that overriding considerations of public safety justify the admission of evidence oral statements and a gun—secured without the benefit of such warnings.

Ante, at In so holding, the Court acknowledges that it is departing from prior precedent, see ante, at , and that it is "lessen[ing] the desirable clarity of [the Miranda] rule," ante, at Were the Court writing from a clean slate, I could agree with its holding. But Miranda is now the law and, in my view, the Court has not provided sufficient justification for departing from it or for blurring its now clear strictures.

Accordingly, I would require suppression of the initial statement taken from respondent in this case. On the other hand, nothing in Miranda or the privilege itself requires exclusion of nontestimonial evidence derived from informal custodial interrogation, and I therefore agree with the Court that admission of the gun in evidence is proper. In these circumstances, the issue of admissibility turned, not on whether the accused had waived his privilege against self-incrimination, but on whether his statements were "voluntary" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.

Arkansas, U. Florida, U. Mississippi, U. Under this approach, the "totality of the circumstances" were assessed. If the interrogation was deemed unreasonable or shocking, or if the accused clearly did not have an opportunity to make a rational or intelligent choice, the statements received would be inadmissible. The Miranda Court for the first time made the Self-Incrimination Clause applicable to responses induced by informal custodial police interrogation, thereby requiring suppression of many admissions that, under traditional due process principles, would have been admissible.

More specifically, the Court held that. Those safeguards included the now familiar Miranda warnings namely, that the defendant must be informed. The defendant could waive these rights, but any waiver had to be made "knowingly and intelligently," id.

If the Miranda warnings were not properly administered or if no valid waiver could be shown, then all responses to interrogation made by the accused "while in custody. The Miranda Court itself considered objections akin to those raised by the Court today.

In dissent, Justice WHITE protested that the Miranda rules would "operate indiscriminately in all criminal cases, regardless of the severity of the crime or the circumstances involved. But the Miranda Court would not accept any suggestion that "society's need for interrogation [could] outweig[h] the privilege. Since the time Miranda was decided, the Court has repeatedly refused to bend the literal terms of that decision.

To be sure, the Court has been sensitive to the substantial burden the Miranda rules place on local law enforcement efforts, and consequently has refused to extend the decision or to increase its strictures on law enforcement agencies in almost any way.

Mosley, U. Edwards v. Similarly, where "statements taken in violation of the Miranda principles [have] not be[en] used to prove the prosecution's case at trial," the Court has allowed evidence derived from those statements to be admitted. But wherever an accused has been taken into "custody" and subjected to "interrogation" without warnings, the Court has consistently prohibited the use of his responses for prosecutorial purposes at trial. Smith, U. Texas, U. Harris v. As a consequence, the "meaning of Miranda has become reasonably clear and law enforcement practices have adjusted to its strictures.

Innis, U. In my view, a "public safety" exception unnecessarily blurs the edges of the clear line heretofore established and makes Miranda's requirements more difficult to understand. In some cases, police will benefit because a reviewing court will find that an exigency excused their failure to administer the required warnings. But in other cases, police will suffer because, though they thought an exigency excused their noncompliance, a reviewing court will view the "objective" circumstances differently and require exclusion of admissions thereby obtained.

The end result will be a finespun new doctrine on public safety exigencies incident to custodial interrogation, complete with the hair-splitting distinctions that currently plague our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. It [has] afforded police and courts clear guidance on the manner in which to conduct a custodial investigation: if it was rigid, it was also precise. The justification the Court provides for upsetting the equilibrium that has finally been achieved—that police cannot and should not balance considerations of public safety against the individual's interest in avoiding compulsory testimonial self-incrimination—really misses the critical question to be decided.

See ante, at Miranda has never been read to prohibit the police from asking questions to secure the public safety. Rather, the critical question Miranda addresses is who shall bear the cost of securing the public safety when such questions are asked and answered: the defendant or the State.

Miranda, for better or worse, found the resolution of that question implicit in the prohibition against compulsory self-incrimination and placed the burden on the State. When police ask custodial questions without administering the required warnings, Miranda quite clearly requires that the answers received be presumed compelled and that they be excluded from evidence at trial. See Michigan v. Texas, supra, U. The Court concedes, as it must, both that respondent was in "custody" and subject to "interrogation" and that his statement "the gun is over there" was compelled within the meaning of our precedent.

In my view, since there is nothing about an exigency that makes custodial interrogation any less compelling, a principled application of Miranda requires that respondent's statement be suppressed. The court below assumed, without discussion, that the privilege against self-incrimination required that the gun derived from respondent's statement also be suppressed, whether or not the State could independently link it to him.

Citizens in our society have a deeply rooted social obligation "to give whatever information they may have to aid in law enforcement. Except where a recognized exception applies, "the criminal defendant no less than any other citizen is obliged to assist the authorities.

The privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is one recognized exception, but it is an exception nonetheless. Only the introduction of a defendant's own testimony is proscribed by the Fifth Amendment 's mandate that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.

See Fisher v. The distinction between testimonial and nontestimonial evidence was explored in some detail in Schmerber v. California, U. The defendant in Schmerber had argued that the privilege against self-incrimination barred the State from compelling him to submit to a blood test, the results of which would be used to prove his guilt at trial. The State, on the other hand, had urged that the privilege prohibited it only from compelling the accused to make a formal testimonial statement against himself in an official legal proceeding.

This Court rejected both positions. It favored an approach that protected the "accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature. The blood tests were admissible because they were neither testimonial nor communicative in nature.

In subsequent decisions, the Court relied on Schmerber in holding the privilege inapplicable to situations where the accused was compelled to stand in a lineup and utter words that allegedly had been spoken by the robber, see United States v.

Wade, U. See United States v. Dionisio, U. Mara, U. California, supra, U. The gun respondent was compelled to supply is clearly evidence of the "real or physical" sort. What makes the question of its admissibility difficult is the fact that, in asking respondent to produce the gun, the police also "compelled" him, in the Miranda sense, to create an incriminating testimonial response.

In other words, the case is problematic because police compelled respondent not only to provide the gun but also to admit that he knew where it was and that it was his. It is settled that Miranda did not itself determine whether physical evidence obtained in this manner would be admissible. But the Court in Schmerber, with Miranda fresh on its mind, did address the issue. In concluding that the privilege did not require suppression of compelled blood tests, the Court noted:.

Such incriminating evidence may be an unavoidable by-product of the compulsion to take the test, especially for an individual who fears the extraction or opposes it on religious grounds. If it wishes to compel persons to submit to such attempts to discover evidence, the State may have to forgo the advantage of any testimonial products of administering the test—products which would fall within the privilege.

Thus, Schmerber resolved the dilemma by allowing admission of the nontestimonial, but not the testimonial, products of the State's compulsion. The Court has applied this bifurcated approach in its subsequent cases as well. For example, in United States v. Likewise, in Michigan v. Tucker, where evidence derived from a technical Miranda violation was admitted, the Court noted that no statement taken without Miranda warnings was being admitted into evidence. See U. California v. Byers, U. Thus, based on the distinction first articulated in Schmerber, "a strong analytical argument can be made for an intermediate rule whereby[,] although [the police] cannot require the suspect to speak by punishment or force, the nontestimonial [evidence derived from] speech that is [itself] excludable for failure to comply with the Miranda code could still be used.

Friendly, Benchmarks To be sure, admission of nontestimonial evidence secured through informal custodial interrogation will reduce the incentives to enforce the Miranda code. But that fact simply begs the question of how much enforcement is appropriate. There are some situations, as the Court's struggle to accommodate a "public safety" exception demonstrates, in which the societal cost of administering the Miranda warnings is very high indeed.

Rather, the warnings and waiver are only required to ensure that "testimony" used against the accused at trial is voluntarily given. Therefore, if the testimonial aspects of the accused's custodial communications are suppressed, the failure to administer the Miranda warnings should cease to be of concern. Weatherford v. Bursey, U. The harm caused by failure to administer Miranda warnings relates only to admission of testimonial self-incriminations, and the suppression of such incriminations should by itself produce the optimal enforcement of the Miranda rule.

There are, of course, decisions of this Court which suggest that the privilege against self-incrimination requires suppression not only of compelled statements but also of all evidence derived therefrom. Meyers, U. Arndstein, U. Hitchcock, U. In each of these cases, however, the Court was responding to the dilemma that confronts persons asserting their Fifth Amendment privilege to a court or other tribunal vested with the contempt power.

In each instance, the tribunal can require witnesses to appear without any showing of probable cause to believe they have committed an offense or that they have relevant information to convey, and require the witnesses to testify even if they have formally and expressly asserted a privilege of silence. Individuals in this situation are faced with what Justice Goldberg once described as "the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury, or contempt.

Waterfront Comm'n, U. If the witness' invocation of the privilege at trial is not to be defeated by the State's refusal to let him remain silent at an earlier proceeding, the witness has to be protected "against the use of his compelled answers and evidence derived therefrom in any subsequent criminal case.

Turley, U. By contrast, suspects subject to informal custodial police interrogation of the type involved in this case are not in the same position as witnesses required to appear before a court, grand jury, or other such formal tribunal.

Where independent evidence leads police to a suspect, and probable cause justifies his arrest, the suspect cannot seriously urge that the police have somehow unfairly infringed on his right "to a private enclave where he may lead a private life. Waterfront Comm'n, supra, U. Moreover, when a suspect interjects not the privilege itself but a post hoc complaint that the police failed to administer Miranda warnings, he invokes only an irrebuttable presumption that the interrogation was coercive.

He does not show that a privilege was raised and that the police actually or overtly coerced him to provide testimony and other evidence to be used against him at trial.

See Johnson v. New Jersey, U. He could have remained silent and the interrogator could not have punished him for refusing to speak. Indeed, the accused is in the unique position of seeking the protection of the privilege without having timely asserted it.

United States v. Kordel, U. The person in police custody surely may sense that he is in "trouble," Oregon v. Hass, U. He therefore has a much less sympathetic case for obtaining the benefit of a broad suppression ruling. New Jersey v. Portash, U. Indeed, whatever case can be made for suppression evaporates when the statements themselves are not admitted, given the rationale of the Schmerber line of cases.

Certainly interrogation which provides leads to other evidence does not offend the values underlying the Fifth Amendment privilege any more than the compulsory taking of blood samples, fingerprints, or voice exemplars, all of which may be compelled in an "attempt to discover evidence that might be used to prosecute [a defendant] for a criminal offense. Use of a suspect's answers "merely to find other evidence establishing his connection with the crime [simply] differs only by a shade from the permitted use for that purpose of his body or his blood.

The values underlying the privilege may justify exclusion of an unwarned person's out-of-court statements, as perhaps they may justify exclusion of statements and derivative evidence compelled under the threat of contempt. But when the only evidence to be admitted is derivative evidence such as a gun—derived not from actual compulsion but from a statement taken in the absence of Miranda warnings—those values simply cannot require suppression, at least no more so than they would for other such nontestimonial evidence.

On the other hand, if a suspect is subject to abusive police practices and actually or overtly compelled to speak, it is reasonable to infer both an unwillingness to speak and a perceptible assertion of the privilege. See Mincey v. Thus, when the Miranda violation consists of a deliberate and flagrant abuse of the accused's constitutional rights, amounting to a denial of due process, application of a broader exclusionary rule is warranted.

Of course, "a defendant raising [such] a coerced-confession claim. By contrast, where the accused proves only that the police failed to administer the Miranda warnings, exclusion of the statement itself is all that will and should be required. In Miranda, the Court looked to the experience of countries like England, India, Scotland, and Ceylon in developing its code to regulate custodial interrogations. See Miranda v. Those countries had also adopted procedural rules to regulate the manner in which police secured confessions to be used against accused persons at trial.

Confessions induced by trickery or physical abuse were never admissible at trial, and any confession secured without the required procedural safeguards could, in the courts' discretion, be excluded on grounds of fairness or prejudice. But nontestimonial evidence derived from all confessions "not blatantly coerced" was and still is admitted. Friendly, supra, at ; see also Commissioners of Customs and Excise v. Harz, 1 All E. Warickshall, 1 Leach , Eng. Admission of nontestimonial evidence of this type is based on the very sensible view that procedural errors should not cause entire investigations and prosecutions to be lost.

United States and Escobedo v. Illinois, 49 Minn. The learning of these countries was important to development of the initial Miranda rule. It therefore should be of equal importance in establishing the scope of the Miranda exclusionary rule today.

But because nontestimonial evidence such as the gun should not be suppressed, I join in that part of the Court's judgment that reverses and remands for further proceedings with the gun admissible as evidence against the accused. The police in this case arrested a man suspected of possessing a firearm in violation of New York law. Once the suspect was in custody and found to be unarmed, the arresting officer initiated an interrogation.

Without being advised of his right not to respond, the suspect incriminated himself by locating the gun. The majority concludes that the State may rely on this incriminating statement to convict the suspect of possessing a weapon. I disagree. The arresting officers had no legitimate reason to interrogate the suspect without advising him of his rights to remain silent and to obtain assistance of counsel.

By finding on these facts justification for unconsented interrogation, the majority abandons the clear guidelines enunciated in Miranda v.