461 U.S. 649 (1984)
On September 11, 1980, at approximately 12:30 a.m., Officer Frank Kraft and Officer Sal Scarring were on road patrol in Queens, New York, when a young woman approached their car and reported that she had just been raped by a black male approximately six feet tall wearing a black jacket with the name "Big Ben" printed in yellow letters on the back.1
The woman told the officers that the man had just entered an A & P supermarket located nearby and that he was carrying a gun.2 This prompted the officers to drive her to the supermarket where Officer Kraft entered the store while Officer Scarring radioed for assistance.3
Officer Kraft quickly spotted respondent Quarles, who matched the description, approaching a checkout counter.4 Upon seeing the officer, Quarles turned and ran toward the rear of the store, leading Officer Kraft to pursue him with a drawn gun until he ordered Quarles to stop and put his hands over his head after losing sight of him briefly around a corner.5
Although more than three other officers had arrived by that time, Officer Kraft was the first to reach Quarles.6 He frisked him to discover an empty shoulder holster, and after handcuffing him asked where the gun was, to which Quarles nodded toward some empty cartons and responded that the gun was over there.7
Officer Kraft thereafter retrieved a loaded .38-caliber revolver from one of the cartons, formally placed respondent under arrest, and read him his Miranda rights from a printed card.8 After this, respondent indicated he would answer questions without an attorney and stated that he owned the gun and had purchased it in Miami, Florida.9
In the subsequent prosecution for criminal possession of a weapon, the trial judge excluded the statement and the gun because Miranda warnings had not been given before the question about the gun's location.10 The judge also excluded the later statements as tainted by the violation.11 The Appellate Division affirmed without opinion, and the New York Court of Appeals affirmed by a 4-3 vote.12
Whether overriding considerations of public safety justify a police officer's failure to provide Miranda warnings before asking questions devoted to locating an abandoned weapon?13
The Miranda warnings are not themselves rights protected by the Constitution but are instead measures to insure that the right against compulsory self-incrimination is protected.14 There is a public safety exception to the requirement that Miranda warnings be given before a suspect's answers may be admitted into evidence when police questions are reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety.15
Yes. Officer Kraft discovered an empty shoulder holster on Quarles inside a public supermarket after a report that the suspect was armed.16 The question about the gun's location was asked immediately after handcuffing and was prompted by an immediate concern that the loaded weapon had been discarded in cartons where a member of the public could find it.17 The police had every reason to believe the gun was loaded and recently discarded in a place posing danger to the public and officers themselves.18
The exception therefore applies and the statement along with the gun are admissible.19
Overriding considerations of public safety justified the officer's failure to provide Miranda warnings before asking about the location of the gun.20
Related opinions on this issue
Justice O’Connor concurred in the judgment but dissented in part from the opinion of the Court.21 She would suppress the initial statement because Miranda requires exclusion when warnings are not given and the Court has not justified departing from that precedent.22 At the same time she agreed the gun itself is admissible because the privilege against self-incrimination protects only testimonial evidence and does not require suppression of nontestimonial physical evidence derived from the unwarned statement.23
Joined by Justices Brennan And Stevens
Justice Marshall, joined by Justices Brennan and Stevens, dissented.24 He argued that the majority's public safety exception represents an unwarranted erosion of the Miranda safeguards established in that landmark decision.25 The New York Court of Appeals correctly determined that there was no immediate threat to public safety after Quarles was handcuffed and the officers had the situation under control.26 This conclusion was confirmed by Officer Kraft's own testimony at the suppression hearing.27
Marshall contended that the exception would destroy the clarity of the Miranda rule by requiring post hoc judicial determinations of whether an exigency existed, leading to uncertainty for police officers and the erosion of the bright-line rule.28 Furthermore, the decision permits the introduction into evidence of statements obtained through inherently coercive custodial interrogation without the required warnings, in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment's protection against compulsory self-incrimination.29