New York v. Quarles

Justice Marshall,

with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens join,

dissenting.

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. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and condemns the American judiciary to a new era of post hoc inquiry into the propriety of custodial interrogations. More significantly and in direct conflict with this Court’s longstanding interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, the majority has endorsed the introduction of coerced self-incriminating statements in criminal prosecutions. I dissent.

I

Shortly after midnight on September 11, 1980, Officer Kraft and three other policemen entered an A & P supermarket in search of respondent Quarles, a rape suspect who was reportedly armed. After a brief chase, the officers cornered Quarles in the back of the store. As the other officers trained their guns on the suspect, Officer Kraft frisked Quarles and discovered an empty shoulder holster. Officer Kraft then handcuffed Quarles, and the other officers holstered their guns. With Quarles’ hands manacled behind *675 his back and the other officers standing close by, Officer Kraft questioned Quarles: “Where is the gun?” Gesturing towards a stack of liquid-soap cartons a few feet away, Quarles responded: “The gun is over there.” Behind the cartons, the police found a loaded revolver. The State of New York subsequently failed to prosecute the alleged rape, and charged Quarles on a solitary count of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. 1 As proof of the critical element of the offense, the State sought to introduce Quarles’ response to Officer Kraft’s question as well as the revolver found behind the cartons. The Criminal Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York ordered both Quarles’ statement and the gun suppressed. The suppression order was affirmed first by the Appellate Division, 85 App. Div. 2d 936, 447 N. Y. S. 2d 84 (1981), and again by the New York Court of Appeals, 58 N. Y. 2d 664, 444 N. E. 2d 984 (1982) (mem.).

The majority’s entire analysis rests on the factual assumption that the public was at risk during Quarles’ interrogation. This assumption is completely in conflict with the facts as found by New York’s highest court. Before the interrogation began, Quarles had been “reduced to a condition of physical powerlessness.” Id., at 667, 444 N. E. 2d, at 986 . Contrary to the majority’s speculations, ante, at 657, Quarles was not believed to have, nor did he in fact have, an accomplice to come to his rescue. When the questioning began, the arresting officers were sufficiently confident of their safety to put away their guns. As Officer Kraft acknowledged at the suppression hearing, “the situation was under control.” App. 35a. Based on Officer Kraft’s own testimony, the New York Court of Appeals found: “Nothing *676 suggests that any of the officers was by that time concerned for his own physical safety.” 58 N. Y. 2d, at 666, 444 N. E. 2d, at 985 . The Court of Appeals also determined that there was no evidence that the interrogation was prompted by the arresting officers’ concern for the public’s safety. Ibid.

The majority attempts to slip away from these unambiguous findings of New York’s highest court by proposing that danger be measured by objective facts rather than the subjective intentions of arresting officers. Ante, at 655-656. Though clever, this ploy was anticipated by the New York Court of Appeals: “[T]here is no evidence in the record before us that there were exigent circumstances posing a risk to the public safety . . . .” 58 N. Y. 2d, at 666, 444 N. E. 2d, at 985 .

The New York court’s conclusion that neither Quarles nor his missing gun posed a threat to the public’s safety is amply supported by the evidence presented at the suppression hearing. Again contrary to the majority’s intimations, ante, at 657, no customers or employees were wandering about the store in danger of coming across Quarles’ discarded weapon. Although the supermarket was open to the public, Quarles’ arrest took place during the middle of the night when the store was apparently deserted except for the clerks at the check-out counter. The police could easily have cordoned off the store and searched for the missing gun. Had they done so, they would have found the gun forthwith. The police were well aware that Quarles had discarded his weapon somewhere near the scene of the arrest. As the State acknowledged before the New York Court of Appeals: “After Officer Kraft had handcuffed and frisked the defendant in the supermarket, he knew with a high degree of certainty that the defendant’s gun was within the immediate vicinity of the encounter. He undoubtedly would have searched for it in the carton a few feet away without the defendant having looked in that direction and saying that it was there.” Brief for Appellant in No. 2512/80 (N. Y. Ct. App.), p. 11 (emphasis added).

*677 Earlier this Term, four Members of the majority joined an opinion stating: “[Questions of historical fact . . . must be determined, in the first instance, by state courts and deferred to, in the absence of ‘convincing evidence’ to the contrary, by the federal courts.” Rushen v. Spain, 464 U. S. 114, 120 (1983) (per curiam). In this case, there was convincing, indeed almost overwhelming, evidence to support the New York court’s conclusion that Quarles’ hidden weapon did not pose a risk either to the arresting officers or to the public. The majority ignores this evidence and sets aside the factual findings of the New York Court of Appeals. More cynical observers might well conclude that a state court’s findings of fact “deserv[e] a ‘high measure of deference,’” ibid, (quoting Sumner v. Mata, 455 U. S. 591, 598 (1982)), only when deference works against the interests of a criminal defendant.

I — I hH

The majority s treatment of the legal issues presented in this case is no less troubling than its abuse of the facts. Before today’s opinion, the Court had twice concluded that, under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), police officers conducting custodial interrogations must advise suspects of their rights before any questions concerning the whereabouts of incriminating weapons can be asked. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U. S. 291, 298-302 (1980) (dicta); Orozco v. Texas, 394 U. S. 324 (1969) (holding). 2 Now the majority departs from these cases and rules that police may withhold *678 Miranda warnings whenever custodial interrogations concern matters of public safety. 3

The majority contends that the law, as it currently stands, places police officers in a dilemma whenever they interrogate a suspect who appears to know of some threat to the public’s safety. Ante, at 657. If the police interrogate the suspect without advising him of his rights, the suspect may reveal information that the authorities can use to defuse the threat, but the suspect’s statements will be inadmissible at trial. If, on the other hand, the police advise the suspect of his rights, the suspect may be deterred from responding to the police’s questions, and the risk to the public may continue unabated. According to the majority, the police must now choose between establishing the suspect’s guilt and safeguarding the public from danger.

The majority proposes to eliminate this dilemma by creating an exception to Miranda v. Arizona for custodial interrogations concerning matters of public safety. Ante, at 658-659. Under the majority’s exception, police would be permitted to interrogate suspects about such matters before the suspects have been advised of their constitutional rights. Without being “deterred” by the knowledge that they have a constitutional right not to respond, these suspects will be likely to answer the questions. Should the answers also be incriminating, the State would be free to introduce them as evidence in a criminal prosecution. Through this “narrow exception to the Miranda rule,” ante, at 658, the majority proposes to protect the public’s safety -without jeopardizing the prosecution of criminal defendants. I find in this reasoning an unwise and unprincipled departure from our Fifth Amendment precedents.

*679 Before today’s opinion, the procedures established in Miranda v. Arizona had “the virtue of informing police and prosecutors with specificity as to what they may do in conducting custodial interrogation, and of informing courts under what circumstances statements obtained during such interrogation are not admissible.” Fare v. Michael C., 442 U. S. 707, 718 (1979); see Harryman v. Estelle, 616 F. 2d 870, 873-874 (CA5 1980) (en banc), cert. denied, 449 U. S. 860 (1980). In a chimerical quest for public safety, the majority has abandoned the rule that brought 18 years of doctrinal tranquility to the field of custodial interrogations. As the majority candidly concedes, ante, at 658, a public-safety exception destroys forever the clarity of Miranda for both law enforcement officers and members of the judiciary. The Court’s candor cannot mask what a serious loss the administration of justice has incurred.

This case is illustrative of the chaos the “public-safety” exception will unleash. The circumstances of Quarles’ arrest have never been in dispute. After the benefit of briefing and oral argument, the New York Court of Appeals, as previously noted, concluded that there was “no evidence in the record before us that there were exigent circumstances posing a risk to the public safety.” 58 N. Y. 2d, at 666, 444 N. E. 2d, at 985 . Upon reviewing the same facts and hearing the same arguments, a majority of this Court has come to precisely the opposite conclusion: “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. ...” Ante, at 657.

If after plenary review two appellate courts so fundamentally differ over the threat to public safety presented by the simple and uncontested facts of this case, one must seriously question how law enforcement officers will respond to the majority’s new rule in the confusion and haste of the real world. As The Chief Justice wrote in a similar context: “Few, if any, police officers are competent to make the kind *680 of evaluation seemingly contemplated . . . .” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U. S., at 304 (concurring in judgment). Not only will police officers have to decide whether the objective facts of an arrest justify an unconsented custodial interrogation, they will also have to remember to interrupt the interrogation and read the suspect his Miranda warnings once the focus of the inquiry shifts from protecting the public’s safety to ascertaining the suspect’s guilt. Disagreements of the scope of the “public-safety” exception and mistakes in its application are inevitable. 4

The end result, as Justice O’Connor predicts, 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.” Ante, at 663-664. In the meantime, the courts will have to dedicate themselves to spinning this new web of doctrines, and the country’s law enforcement agencies will have to suffer patiently through the frustations of another period of constitutional uncertainty.

I — I J-H

Though unfortunate, the difficulty of administering the “public-safety” exception is not the most profound flaw in the majority’s decision. The majority has lost sight ofthe fact that Miranda v. Arizona and our earlier custodial-interrogation cases all implemented a constitutional privilege against self-incrimination. The rules established in these cases were designed to protect criminal defendants against prosecutions based on coerced self-incriminating statements. The majority today turns its back on these constitutional consider *681 ations, and invites the government to prosecute through the use of what necessarily are coerced statements.

A

The majority’s error stems from a serious misunderstanding of Miranda v. Arizona and of the Fifth Amendment upon which that decision was based. The majority implies that Miranda consisted of no more than a judicial balancing act in which the benefits of “enlarged protection for the Fifth Amendment privilege” were weighed against “the cost to society in terms of fewer convictions of guilty suspects.” Ante, at 656-657. Supposedly because the scales tipped in favor of the privilege against self-incrimination, the Miranda Court erected a prophylactic barrier around statements made during custodial interrogations. The majority now proposes to return to the scales of social utility to calculate whether Miranda’s prophylactic rule remains cost-effective when threats to the public’s safety are added to the balance. The results of the majority’s “test” are announced with pseudo-scientific precision:

“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.” Ante, at 657.

The majority misreads Miranda . Though the Miranda dissent prophesized dire consequences, see 384 U. S., at 504, 516-517 (Harlan, J., dissenting), the Miranda Court refused to allow such concerns to weaken the protections of the Constitution:

“A recurrent argument made in these cases is that society’s need for interrogation outweighs the privilege. This argument is not unfamiliar to this Court. The whole thrust of our foregoing discussion demonstrates that the Constitution has prescribed the rights of the individual when confronted with the power of government *682 when it provided in the Fifth Amendment that an individual cannot be compelled to be a witness against himself. That right cannot be abridged.” Id., at 479 (citation omitted).

Whether society would be better off if the police warned suspects of their rights before beginning an interrogation or whether the advantages of giving such warnings would outweigh their costs did not inform the Miranda decision. On the contrary, the Miranda Court was concerned with the proscriptions of the Fifth Amendment, and, in particular, whether the Self-Incrimination Clause permits the government to prosecute individuals based on statements made in the course of custodial interrogations.

Miranda v. Arizona was the culmination of a century-long inquiry into how this Court should deal with confessions made during custodial interrogations. Long before Miranda , the Court had recognized that the Federal Government was prohibited from introducing at criminal trials compelled confessions, including confessions compelled in the course of custodial interrogations. In 1924, Justice Brandéis was reciting settled law when he wrote: “[A] confession obtained by compulsion must be excluded whatever may have been the character of the compulsion, and whether the compulsion was applied in a judicial proceeding or otherwise.” Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1, 14-15 (citing Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532 (1897)).

Prosecutors in state courts were subject to similar constitutional restrictions. Even before Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1 (1964), formally applied the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the States, the Due Process Clause constrained the States from extorting confessions from criminal defendants. Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227 (1940); Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936). Indeed, by the time of Malloy , the constraints of the Due Process Clause were almost as stringent as the requirements of the Fifth Amendment itself. 378 U. S., at 6-7 ; see, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503 (1963).

*683 When Miranda reached this Court, it was undisputed that both the States and the Federal Government were constitutionally prohibited from prosecuting defendants with confessions coerced during custodial interrogations. 5 As a theoretical matter, the law was clear. In practice, however, the courts found it exceedingly difficult to determine whether a given confession had been coerced. Difficulties of proof and subtleties of interrogation technique made it impossible in most cases for the judiciary to decide with confidence whether the defendant had voluntarily confessed his guilt or whether his testimony had been unconstitutionally compelled. Courts around the country were spending countless hours reviewing the facts of individual custodial interrogations. See Note, Developments in the Law — Confessions, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 935 (1966).

Miranda dealt with these practical problems. After a detailed examination of police practices and a review of its previous decisions in the area, the Court in Miranda determined that custodial interrogations are inherently coercive. The Court therefore created a constitutional presumption that statements made during custodial interrogations are compelled in violation of the Fifth Amendment and are thus inadmissible in criminal prosecutions. As a result of the Court’s decision in Miranda, a statement made during a custodial interrogation may be introduced as proof of a defendant’s guilt only if the prosecution demonstrates that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his constitutional rights before making the statement. 6 The *684 now-familiar Miranda warnings offer law enforcement authorities a clear, easily administered device for ensuring that criminal suspects understand their constitutional rights well enough to waive them and to engage in consensual custodial interrogation.

In fashioning its “public-safety” exception to Miranda , the majority makes no attempt to deal with the constitutional presumption established by that case. The majority does not argue that police questioning about issues of public safety is any less coercive than custodial interrogations into other matters. The majority’s only contention is that police officers could more easily protect the public if Miranda did not apply to custodial interrogations concerning the public’s safety. 7 But Miranda was not a decision about public safety; it was a decision about coerced confessions. Without establishing that interrogations concerning the public’s safety are less likely to be coercive than other interrogations, the majority cannot endorse the “public-safety” exception and remain faithful to the logic of Miranda v. Arizona .

B

The majority’s avoidance of the issue of coercion may not have been inadvertent. It would strain credulity to contend *685 that Officer Kraft’s questioning of respondent Quarles was not coercive. 8 In the middle of the night and in the back of an empty supermarket, Quarles was surrounded by four armed police officers. His hands were handcuffed behind his back. The first words out of the mouth of the arresting officer were: “Where is the gun?” In the majority’s phrase, the situation was “kaleidoscopic.” Ante, at 656. Police and suspect were acting on instinct. Officer Kraft’s abrupt and pointed question pressured Quarles in precisely the way that the Miranda Court feared the custodial interrogations would coerce self-incriminating testimony.

That the application of the “public-safety” exception in this case entailed coercion is no happenstance. The majority’s ratio decidendi is that interrogating suspects about matters of public safety will be coercive. In its cost-benefit analysis, the Court’s strongest argument in favor of a “public-safety” exception to Miranda is that the police would be better able to protect the public’s safety if they were not always required to give suspects their Miranda warnings. The crux of this argument is that, by deliberately withholding Miranda warnings, the police can get information out of suspects who would refuse to respond to police questioning were they advised of their constitutional rights. The “public-safety” exception is efficacious precisely because it permits police officers to coerce criminal defendants into making involuntary statements.

Indeed, in the efficacy of the “public-safety” exception lies a fundamental and constitutional defect. Until today, this Court could truthfully state that the Fifth Amendment is given “broad scope” “[w]here there has been genuine compul *686 sion of testimony.” Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 440 (1974). Coerced confessions were simply inadmissible in criminal prosecutions. The “public-safety” exception departs from this principle by expressly inviting police officers to coerce defendants into making incriminating statements, and then permitting prosecutors to introduce those statements at trial. Though the majority’s opinion is cloaked in the beguiling language of utilitarianism, the Court has sanctioned sub silentio criminal prosecutions based on compelled self-incriminating statements. I find this result in direct conflict with the Fifth Amendment’s dictate that “[n]o person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

The irony of the majority’s decision is that the public’s safety can be perfectly well protected without abridging the Fifth Amendment. If a bomb is about to explode or the public is otherwise imminently imperiled, the police are free to interrogate suspects without advising them of their constitutional rights. Such unconsented questioning may take place not only when police officers act on instinct but also when higher faculties lead them to believe that advising a suspect of his constitutional rights might decrease the likelihood that the suspect would reveal life-saving information. If trickery is necessary to protect the public, then the police may trick a suspect into confessing. While the Fourteenth Amendment sets limits on such behavior, nothing in the Fifth Amendment or our decision in Miranda v. Arizona proscribes this sort of emergency questioning. All the Fifth Amendment forbids is the introduction of coerced statements at trial. Cf. Weatherford v. Bursey, 429 U. S. 545 (1977) (Sixth Amendment violated only if trial affected).

To a limited degree, the majority is correct that there is a cost associated with the Fifth Amendment’s ban on introducing coerced self-incriminating statements at trial. Without a “public-safety” exception, there would be occasions when a defendant incriminated himself by revealing a threat to the *687 public, and the State was unable to prosecute because the defendant retracted his statement after consulting with counsel and the police cannot find independent proof of guilt. Such occasions would not, however, be common. The prosecution does not always lose the use of incriminating information revealed in these situations. After consulting with counsel, a suspect may well volunteer to repeat his statement in hopes of gaining a favorable plea bargain or more lenient sentence. The majority thus overstates its case when it suggests that a police officer must necessarily choose between public safety and admissibility. 9

But however frequently or infrequently such cases arise, their regularity is irrelevant. The Fifth Amendment prohibits compelled self-incrimination. 10 As the Court has explained on numerous occasions, this prohibition is the mainstay of our adversarial system of criminal justice. Not only does it protect us against the inherent unreliability of compelled testimony, but it also ensures that criminal investigations will be conducted with integrity and that the judiciary will avoid the taint of official lawlessness. See Murphy *688 v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52, 55 (1964). The policies underlying the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination are not diminished simply because testimony is compelled to protect the public’s safety. The majority should not be permitted to elude the Amendment’s absolute prohibition simply by calculating special costs that arise when the public’s safety is at issue. Indeed, were constitutional adjudication always conducted in such an ad hoc manner, the Bill of Rights would be a most unreliable protector of individual liberties.

IV

Having determined that the Fifth Amendment renders inadmissible Quarles’ response to Officer Kraft’s questioning, I have no doubt that our precedents require that the gun discovered as a direct result of Quarles’ statement must be presumed inadmissible as well. The gun was the direct product of a coercive custodial interrogation. In Silver-thome Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920), and Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963), this Court held that the Government may not introduce incriminating evidence derived from an illegally obtained source. This Court recently explained the extent of the Wong Sun rule:

“Although Silverthome and Wong Sun involved violations of the Fourth Amendment, the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine has not been limited to cases in which there has been a Fourth Amendment violation. The Court has applied the doctrine where the violations were of the Sixth Amendment, see United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), as well as of the Fifth Amendment.” Nix v. Williams, ante, at 442 (footnote omitted).

Accord, United States v. Crews, 445 U. S. 463, 470 (1980). 11 When they ruled on the issue, the New York courts were *689 entirely correct in deciding that Quarles’ gun was the tainted fruit of a nonconsensual interrogation and therefore was inadmissible under our precedents.

However, since the New York Court of Appeals issued its opinion, the scope of the Wong Sun doctrine has changed. In Nix v. Williams, supra, this Court construed Wong Sun to permit the introduction into evidence of constitutionally tainted “fruits” that inevitably would have been discovered by the government. In its briefs before this Court and before the New York courts, petitioner has argued that the “inevitable-discovery” rule, if applied to this case, would permit the admission of Quarles’ gun. Although I have not joined the Court’s opinion in Nix, and although I am not wholly persuaded that New York law would permit the application of the “inevitable-discovery” rule to this case, 12 *690 I believe that the proper disposition of the matter is to vacate the order of the New York Court of Appeals to the extent that it suppressed Quarles’ gun and remand the matter to the New York Court of Appeals for further consideration in light of Nix v. Williams.

Accordingly, I would affirm the order of the Court of Appeals to the extent that it found Quarles’ incriminating statement inadmissible under the Fifth Amendment, would vacate the order to the extent that it suppressed Quarles’ gun, and would remand the matter for reconsideration in light of Nix v. Williams.

Under New York law, any person who possesses a loaded firearm outside of his home or place of business is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. N. Y. Penal Law §265.02(4) (McKinney 1980).

The majority attempts to distinguish Orozco by stressing the fact that the interrogation in this case immediately followed Quarles’ arrest whereas the interrogation in Orozco occurred some four hours after the crime and was investigatory. Ante, at 655, n. 5. I fail to comprehend the distinction. In both cases, a group of police officers had taken a suspect into custody and questioned the suspect about the location of a missing gun. In both cases a dangerous weapon was missing, and in neither ease was there any direct evidence where the weapon was hidden.

Although the majority stresses the exigencies of Quarles’ arrest, it is undisputed that Quarles was in custody when Officer Kraft’s questioning began, ante, at 655, and there is nothing in the majority’s rationale — save the instincts of police officers — to prevent it from applying to all custodial interrogations.

One of the peculiarities of the majority’s decision is its suggestion that police officers can “distinguish almost instinctively” questions tied to public safety and questions designed to elicit testimonial evidence. Ante, at 658. Obviously, these distinctions are extraordinary difficult to draw. In many cases — like this one — custodial questioning may serve both purposes. It is therefore wishful thinking for the majority to suggest that the intuitions of police officers will render its decision self-executing.

There was, of course, still considerable confusion over whether the Sixth Amendment or the Fifth Amendment provided the basis for this prohibition. See Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964). But the matter was undeniably of constitutional magnitude.

Until today, the Court has consistently adhered to Miranda’s holding that, absent informed waiver, statements made during a custodial interrogation cannot be used to prove a defendant’s guilt. Admittedly, in Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222 (1971), the Court permitted such statements to be introduced to impeach a defendant, but their introduction was tolerated only because the jury had been instructed to consider the statements “only *684 in passing on [the defendant’s] credibility and not as evidence of guilt.” Id., at 223 .

The majority elsewhere attempts to disguise its decision as an effort to cut back on the overbreadth of Miranda’s prophylactic standard. Ante, at 654-655. The disguise is transparent. Although Miranda was overbroad in that its application excludes some statements made during custodial interrogations that are not in fact coercive, the majority is not dealing with a class of cases affected by Miranda’s overbreadth. The majority is exempting from Miranda’s prophylactic rule incriminating statements that were elicited to safeguard the public’s safety. As is discussed below, see infra, at 685-686, the majority supports the “public-safety” exception because “public-safety” interrogations can be coercive. In this respect, the Court’s decision differs greatly from Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433 (1974), in which the Court sanctioned the admission of the fruits of a Miranda violation, but only because the violation was technical and the interrogation itself noncoercive.

The majority’s reliance on respondent's failure to claim that his testimony was compelled by police conduct can only be disingenous. Before today’s opinion, respondent had no need to claim actual compulsion. Heretofore, it was sufficient to demonstrate that the police had conducted nonconsensual custodial interrogation. But now that the law has changed, it is only fair to examine the facts of the case to determine whether coercion probably was involved.

I also seriously question how often a statement linking a suspect to the threat to the public ends up being the crucial and otherwise unprovable element of a criminal prosecution. The facts of the current case illustrate this point. The police arrested respondent Quarles not because he was suspected of carrying a gun, but because he was alleged to have committed rape. Ante, at 651-652. Had the State elected to prosecute on the rape count alone, respondent’s incriminating statement about the gun would have had no role in the prosecution. Only because the State dropped the rape count and chose to proceed to trial solely on the criminal-possession charge did respondent’s answer to Officer Kraft’s question become critical.

In this sense, the Fifth Amendment differs fundamentally from the Fourth Amendment, which only prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. See Fisher v. United States, 425 U. S. 391, 400 (1976). Accordingly, the various exceptions to the Fourth Amendment permitting war-rantless searches under various circumstances should have no analogy in the Fifth Amendment context. Curiously, the majority accepts this point, see, ante, at 652, n. 2, but persists in limiting the protections of the Fifth Amendment.

As our decisions in Nix and Crews reveal, the treatment of derivative evidence proposed in Justice O’ConnoR’s opinion concurring in the judg *689 ment in part and dissenting in part, ante, p. 660, represents a much more radical departure from precedent than that opinion acknowledges. Although I have serious doubts about the wisdom of her proposal, I will not discuss them here. Petitioner never raised this novel theory of federal constitutional law before any New York court, see Brief for Appellant in No. 2512/80 (N. Y. Ct. App.); Brief for Appellant in No. 2512-80 (N. Y. App. Div.), and no New York court considered the theory sua sponte. The matter was therefore “not pressed or passed on in the courts below.” McGoldrick v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique, 309 U. S. 430, 434 (1940). Since petitioner’s derivative-evidence theory is of considerable constitutional importance, it would be inconsistent with our precedents to permit petitioner to raise it for the first time now. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 217-223 (1983). An independent reason for declining to rule on petitioner’s derivative-evidence theory is that petitioner may have been barred by New York procedures from raising this theory before the New York Court of Appeals. See n. 12, infra. Even if the claim were properly presented, it would be injudicious for the Court to embark on a new theory of derivative evidence when the gun in question might be admissible under the construction of Wong Sun just enunciated by the Court in Nix v. Williams. See, infra this page and 690.

At least two procedural hurdles could prevent petitioner from making use of the “inevitable-discovery” exception on remand. First, petitioner did not claim inevitable discovery at the suppression hearing. This case therefore contains no record on the issue, and it is unclear whether the question is preserved under New York’s procedural law. People v. Mar *690 tin, 50 N. Y. 2d 1029, 409 N. E. 2d 1363 (1980); People v. Tutt, 38 N. Y. 2d 1011, 348 N. E. 2d 920 (1976). Second, the New York Rules of Criminal Procedure have codified the “fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree” doctrine. N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 710.20(4) (McKinney 1980 and Supp. 1983-1984). Even after Nix v. Williams, Quarles’ gun may still be suppressed under state law. These issues, of course, are matters of New York law, which could be disposed of by the New York courts on remand.