Opinion

United States v. Patane

  • 542 U.S. 630
  • 124 S. Ct. 2620
  • 159 L. Ed. 2d 667
  • 2004 U.S. LEXIS 4577
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
Jun 28, 2004
Status
Published
Author
Souter
On the bench
Thomas, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer
Cited by
575 cases
Authority
More cited than 24.3%

explaining that the right against self-incrimination is a trial right and Miranda warnings are prophylactic, and therefore "police do not violate a suspect's constitutional rights (or the Miranda rule) by negligent or even deliberate failures to provide the suspect with the full panoply of warnings prescribed by Miranda. Potential violations occur, if at all, only upon the admission of unwarned statements into evidence at trial. And, at that point, '[t]he exclusion of unwarned statements ... is a complete and sufficient remedy' for any perceived Miranda violation.”

How later courts described this case

  • explaining that the right against self-incrimination is a trial right and Miranda warnings are prophylactic, and therefore "police do not violate a suspect's constitutional rights (or the Miranda rule) by negligent or even deliberate failures to provide the suspect with the full panoply of warnings prescribed by Miranda. Potential violations occur, if at all, only upon the admission of unwarned statements into evidence at trial. And, at that point, '[t]he exclusion of unwarned statements ... is a complete and sufficient remedy' for any perceived Miranda violation.”
  • finding that “police do not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights (or the Miranda rule) by negligent or even deliberate failures to provide the suspect with the full panoply of warnings prescribed by Miranda. Potential violations occur, if at all, only upon the admission of unwarned statements into evidence at trial.”
  • reasoning that since Miranda warnings are prophylactic, a failure to give them is not alone a Fifth Amendment violation, and that potential violations of a defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights “occur, if at all, only upon the admission of unwarned statements into evidence at trial”
  • explaining that "the Miranda rule 'does not require that the [otherwise voluntary] statements [taken without complying with the rule] and their fruits be discarded as inherently tainted' " (quoting Oregon v. Elstad , 470 U.S. 298 , 307, 105 S.Ct. 1285 , 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) )

Written by the judges who cited it.

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by United States v. Archuleta, 981 F. Supp. 2d 1080 (2013)

    Nevertheless, Patane is not universally applicable, and when applying Patane is inapposite, the courts have looked to a standard of actual voluntariness in the
    District Court, D. UtahOct 3, 2013Read it
  • Distinguished by Dye v. Commonwealth, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 300 (2013)

    Id. at 634, 124 S.Ct. 2620. Patane is distinguishable from the present case in that Appellant was read his Miranda rights but his confession was coerced, i.e., involuntary.
    Kentucky Supreme CourtJun 20, 2013Read it
  • Distinguished by State v. Venegas, 2012 Fla. App. LEXIS 2461 (2012)

    Because Patane is factually distinguishable from the instant case, it does not apply here.
    District Court of Appeal of FloridaFeb 17, 2012Read it

The opinion

Justice Souter,

with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

The plurality repeatedly says that the Fifth Amendment does not address the admissibility of nontestimonial evidence, an overstatement that is beside the point. The issue actually presented today is whether courts should apply the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine lest we create an incentive for the police to omit Miranda warnings, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), before custodial interrogation. 1 *646 In closing their eyes to the consequences of giving an eviden-tiary advantage to those who ignore Miranda , the plurality adds an important inducement for interrogators to ignore the rule in that case.

Miranda rested on insight into the inherently coercive character of custodial interrogation and the inherently difficult exercise of assessing the voluntariness of any confession resulting from it. Unless the police give the prescribed warnings meant to counter the coercive atmosphere, a custodial confession is inadmissible, there being no need for the previous time-consuming and difficult enquiry into voluntariness. That inducement to forestall involuntary statements and troublesome issues of fact can only atrophy if we turn around and recognize an evidentiary benefit when an unwarned statement leads investigators to tangible evidence. There is, of course, a price for excluding evidence, but the Fifth Amendment is worth a price, and in the absence of a very good reason, the logic of Miranda should be followed: a Miranda violation raises a presumption of coercion, Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S. 298, 306-307 , and n. 1 (1985), and the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination extends to the exclusion of derivative evidence, see United States v. Hubbell, 530 U. S. 27, 37-38 (2000) (recognizing “the Fifth Amendment’s protection against the prosecutor’s use of incriminating information derived directly or indirectly from ... [actually] compelled testimony”); Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 453 (1972); That should be the end of this case.

The fact that the books contain some exceptions to the Miranda exclusionary rule carries no weight here. In Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222 (1971), it was respect for the integrity of the judicial process that justified the admission *647 of unwarned statements as impeachment evidence. But Pa-tane’s suppression motion can hardly be described as seeking to “perver[t]” Miranda “into a license to use perjury” or otherwise handicap the “traditional truth-testing devices of the adversary process.” 401 U. S., at 225-226 . Nor is there any suggestion that the officers’ failure to warn Patane was justified or mitigated by a public emergency or other exigent circumstance, as in New York v. Quarles, 467 U. S. 649 (1984). And of course the premise of Oregon v. Elstad, supra, is not on point; although a failure to give Miranda warnings before one individual statement does not necessarily bar the admission of a subsequent statement given after adequate warnings, 470 U. S. 298 ; cf. Missouri v. Seibert, ante, at 614-615 (plurality opinion), that rule obviously does not apply to. physical evidence seized once and for all. 2

There is no way to read this case except as an unjustifiable invitation to law enforcement officers to flout Miranda when there may be physical evidence to be gained. The incentive is an odd one, coming from the Court on the same day it decides Missouri v. Seibert, ante, p. 600. I respectfully dissent.

In so saying, we are taking the legal issue as it comes to us, even though the facts give off the scent of a made-up case. If there was a Miranda failure, the most immediate reason was that Patane told the po *646 lice to stop giving the warnings because he already knew his rights. There could easily be an analogy in this case to the bumbling mistake the police committed in Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S. 298 (1985). See Missouri v. Seibert, ante, at 614-615 (plurality opinion).

To the extent that Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433 (1974) (admitting the testimony of a witness who was discovered because of an unwarned custodial interrogation), created another exception to Miranda , it is off the point here. In Tucker , we explicitly declined to lay down a broad rule about the fruits of unwarned statements. Instead, we “place[d] our holding on a narrower ground,” relying principally on the fact that the interrogation occurred before Miranda was decided and was conducted in good faith according to constitutional standards governing at that time. 417 U. S., at 447 -448 (citing Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964)).

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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