# Dunaway v. New York > Supreme Court of the United States · June 5, 1979 · 442 U.S. 200 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427601 ## Case - **Full name:** Dunaway v. New York - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 5, 1979 - **Citations:** 442 U.S. 200; 99 S. Ct. 2248; 60 L. Ed. 2d 824; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 126 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stevens - **Judges:** Brennan, White, Stevens, Rehnquist, Powell - **Cited by:** 3,069 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - **Yellow flag:** Declined to follow by People v. Wise, 82 A.D.2d 869 (1981). - Negative treatments: 1 - Distinguished by: 10 - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427601 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - finding that detention for custodial interrogation “intrude[d] so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest,” and finding that officers “violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments when… - holding that, while an inculpatory statement given after Miranda warnings may be voluntary under the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination, the statement violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures if the defendant’s a… - finding Fourth Amendment violation where police lacked probable cause but made functional equivalent of arrest because, instead of "question[ing] [suspect] briefly where he was found," police took him "from a neighbor's home to a police car, transported [him] to a police stati… - holding that the petitioner was seized without probable cause based only on a tip from a jail inmate that admittedly did not supply enough information to obtain a warrant, brought to police headquarters and placed in an interrogation room where he was questioned “in the hope t… - holding that police transporting the defendant involuntarily to the police station for questioning was an unconstitutional de facto arrest lacking probable cause where police would have physically restrained the defendant had he tried to leave and where police failed to inform… ## Opinion text Mr. Justice Stevens, concurring. Although I join the Court’s opinion, I add this comment on the significance of two factors that may be considered when determining whether a confession has been obtained by exploitation of an illegal arrest. The temporal relationship between the arrest and the confession may be an ambiguous factor. If there are no relevant intervening circumstances, a prolonged detention may well be a more serious exploitation of an illegal arrest than a short one. Conversely, even an immediate confession may have been motivated by a prearrest event such as a visit with a minister. The flagrancy of the official misconduct is relevant, in my judgment, only insofar as it has a tendency to motivate the defendant. A midnight arrest with drawn guns will be equally frightening whether the police acted recklessly or in good faith. Conversely, a courteous command has the same effect on the arrestee whether the officer thinks he has probable cause or knows that he does not. In either event, if the Fourth Amendment is violated, the admissibility question will turn on the causal relationship between that violation and the defendant’s subsequent confession. I recognize that the deterrence rationale for the exclusion *221 ary rule is sometimes interpreted quite differently. 1 Under that interpretation, exclusion is applied as a substitute for punishment of the offending officer; if he acted recklessly or flagrantly, punishment is appropriate, but if he acted in good faith, it is not. 2 But when evidence is excluded at a criminal trial, it is the broad- societal interest in effective law enforcement that suffers. The justification for the exclusion of evidence obtained by improper methods is to motivate the law enforcement profession as a whole — not the aberrant individual officer — to adopt and enforce regular procedures that will avoid the future invasion of the citizen’s constitutional rights. For that reason, exclusionary rules should embody objective criteria rather than subjective considerations. See, e. g., MR. Justice RehNquist, dissenting, post, at 226. I would agree that the officer’s subjective state of mind is relevant when he is being sued for damages, but this case involves the question whether the evidence he has obtained is admissible at trial. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427601. Public record. Not legal advice.