reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response

On November 23, 1982, the Flagstaff Police Department received a telephone call from a local K mart store stating that a man had entered claiming to have killed his son. When officers arrived, respondent William Mauro freely admitted that he had killed his son, directed the officers to the child's body, and was arrested. He was advised of his Miranda rights at the scene and again after being taken to the police station. At the station Mauro told the officers that he did not wish to make any more statements without a lawyer present, and all questioning ceased. Because no secure detention area was available, Mauro was held in the office of the police captain. At the same time Detective Manson was questioning Mauro's wife in another room. After finishing with Manson, Mrs. Mauro asked if she could speak to her husband. Manson was reluctant but, after she insisted, discussed the request with Sergeant Allen, who saw no harm in allowing the meeting and suggested that Manson tape-record the conversation while remaining present. Manson told both Mr. and Mrs. Mauro that they could speak together only if an officer were present in the room to observe and hear what was going on. He then seated himself at a desk with a tape recorder in plain sight and recorded their brief conversation. During the recorded conversation Mrs. Mauro expressed despair about their situation and Mauro told his wife not to answer questions until a lawyer was present. At trial on charges of murder and child abuse, where Mauro's defense was insanity, the prosecution played the tape in rebuttal to demonstrate that Mauro was sane. Mauro sought suppression of the recording on the ground that it was the product of police interrogation in violation of his Miranda rights. The trial court refused to suppress the recording after finding that the officers had yielded to Mrs. Mauro's insistent demands, that the procedure was not a ruse or subterfuge created as an indirect means of avoiding Miranda, and that the officers had legitimate security and safety concerns. Mauro was convicted and sentenced to death. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In November 1984, Richard Stephenson was murdered in a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois, and the murder remained unsolved for over a year. In March 1986, Donald Charlton, an inmate at the Graham Correctional Facility serving a sentence for burglary, told police he had learned about a homicide from fellow inmate Lloyd Perkins, and Charlton provided details that police recognized as matching the Stephenson murder. Perkins had been released from Graham by that time. Police traced him to the Montgomery County jail, where he was being held pending trial on a charge of aggravated battery unrelated to the Stephenson murder. The police wanted to investigate Perkins' connection to the murder further, but they decided to place an undercover agent in the cellblock with Perkins and Charlton rather than use an eavesdropping device. Undercover agent John Parisi, using the alias Vito Bianco, and Charlton were placed in the cellblock with Perkins. Both were clothed in jail garb and posed as escapees from a work release program who had been arrested during a burglary. The cellblock consisted of 12 separate cells opening onto a common room. Parisi suggested the three of them escape, and respondent replied that the jail was rinky-dink and they could break out. Later that evening the trio met in Perkins' cell to refine their plan. Perkins said his girlfriend could smuggle in a pistol. After Charlton said he was a burglar and not a murderer, Parisi asked Perkins if he had ever done anybody, and Perkins proceeded to describe at length the events of the Stephenson murder. Parisi did not give Perkins Miranda warnings before the conversations. Perkins was charged with the Stephenson murder. Before trial he moved to suppress the statements made to Parisi. The trial court granted the motion to suppress, and the Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the Miranda issue.

On the evening of March 31, 1980, Trooper Williams of the Ohio State Highway Patrol observed respondent's car weaving in and out of a lane on Interstate Highway 270. After following the car for two miles, Williams forced respondent to stop and asked him to get out of the vehicle. When respondent complied, Williams noticed that he was having difficulty standing. At that point, Williams concluded that respondent would be charged with a traffic offense and therefore his freedom to leave the scene was terminated. Williams then asked respondent to perform a field sobriety test, commonly known as a balancing test, which respondent could not do without falling. While still at the scene of the traffic stop, Williams asked respondent whether he had been using intoxicants. Respondent replied that he had consumed two beers and had smoked several joints of marijuana a short time before. Respondent's speech was slurred, and Williams had difficulty understanding him. Williams thereupon formally placed respondent under arrest and transported him in the patrol car to the Franklin County Jail. At the jail, respondent was given an intoxilyzer test to determine the concentration of alcohol in his blood. The test did not detect any alcohol whatsoever in respondent's system. Williams then resumed questioning respondent to obtain information for the Alcohol Influence Report. Respondent answered affirmatively a question whether he had been drinking. When then asked if he was under the influence of alcohol, he said, "I guess, barely." Williams next asked respondent to indicate on the form whether the marihuana he had smoked had been treated with any chemicals. In the section of the report headed "Remarks," respondent wrote, "No ang[el] dust or PCP in the pot. Rick McCarty." At no point in this sequence of events did Williams or anyone else tell respondent that he had a right to remain silent, to consult with an attorney, and to have an attorney appointed for him if he could not afford one. Respondent was charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs in violation of Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §4511.19, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment for up to six months with mandatory incarceration for a minimum of three days. Respondent moved to exclude the incriminating statements he had made to Trooper Williams regarding his consumption of alcohol and marijuana on the ground that he had not been informed of his constitutional rights prior to his interrogation. When the trial court denied the motion, respondent pleaded "no contest" and was found guilty. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 80 of which were suspended, and was fined $300, $100 of which were suspended. On appeal to the Franklin County Court of Appeals, the court rejected respondent's constitutional claim and affirmed his conviction, relying on a prior decision by the Ohio Supreme Court holding that the rule announced in Miranda is not applicable to misdemeanors. The Ohio Supreme Court dismissed respondent's appeal on the ground that it failed to present a substantial constitutional question. Respondent then filed an action for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, which dismissed the petition. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.