When officers of the Polk County, Ore., Sheriff's Office picked up respondent at his home as a suspect in a burglary, he made an incriminating statement without having been given the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 . After he was taken to the station house, and after he was advised of and waived his Miranda rights, respondent executed a written confession. In respondent's subsequent prosecution for burglary, the state trial court excluded from evidence his first statement because he had not been given Miranda warnings, but admitted the written confession. Respondent was convicted, but the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the confession should also have been excluded. The court concluded that because of the brief period separating respondent's initial, unconstitutionally obtained statement and his subsequent confession, the "cat was sufficiently out of the bag to exert a coercive impact" on respondent's confession, rendering it inadmissible.
O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 318. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 364.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to decide whether an initial failure of law enforcement officers to administer the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), without more, "taints" subsequent admissions made after a suspect has been fully advised of and has waived his Miranda rights. Respondent, Michael James Elstad, was convicted of burglary by an Oregon trial court. The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed, holding that respondent's signed confession, although voluntary, was rendered inadmissible by a prior remark made in response to questioning without benefit of Miranda warnings. We granted certiorari, 465 U.S. 1078 (1984), and we now reverse.
In December 1981, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Gross, in the town of Salem, Polk Country, Ore., was burglarized. Missing were art objects and furnishings valued at $150,000. A witness to the burglary contacted the Polk County Sheriff's Office, implicating respondent Michael Elstad, an 18-year-old neighbor and friend of the Grosses' teenage son. Thereupon, Officers Burke and McAllister went to the home of respondent Elstad, with a warrant for his arrest. Elstad's mother answered the door. She led the officers to her son's room where he lay on his bed, clad in shorts and listening to his stereo. The officers asked him to get dressed and to accompany them into the living room. Officer McAllister asked respondent's mother to step into the kitchen, where he explained that they had a warrant for her [470 U.S. 298, 301] son's arrest for the burglary of a neighbor's residence. Officer Burke remained with Elstad in the living room. He later testified:
"I sat down with Mr. Elstad and I asked him if he was aware of why Detective McAllister and myself were there to talk with him. He stated no, he had no idea why we were there. I then asked him if he knew a person by the name of Gross, and he said yes, he did, and also added that he heard that there was a robbery at the Gross house. And at that point I told Mr. Elstad that I felt he was involved in that, and he looked at me and stated, `Yes, I was there.'" App. 19-20.
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Elstad was transported to the Sheriff's headquarters and approximately one hour later, Officers Burke and McAllister joined him in McAllister's office. McAllister then advised respondent for the first time of his Miranda rights, reading from a standard card. Respondent indicated he understood his rights, and, having these rights in mind, wished to speak with the officers. Elstad gave a full statement, explaining that he had known that the Gross family was out of town and had been paid to lead several acquaintances to the Gross residence and show them how to gain entry through a defective sliding glass door. The statement was typed, reviewed by respondent, read back to him for correction, initialed and signed by Elstad and both officers. As an afterthought, Elstad added and initialed the sentence, "After leaving the house Robby & I went back to [the] van & Robby handed [470 U.S. 298, 302] me a small bag of grass." App. 42. Respondent concedes that the officers made no threats or promises either at his residence or at the Sheriff's office.
Respondent was charged with first-degree burglary. He was represented at trial by retained counsel. Elstad waived his right to a jury, and his case was tried by a Circuit Court Judge. Respondent moved at once to suppress his oral statement and signed confession. He contended that the statement he made in response to questioning at his house "let the cat out of the bag," citing United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532 (1947), and tainted the subsequent confession as "fruit of the poisonous tree," citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963). The judge ruled that the statement, "I was there," had to be excluded because the defendant had not been advised of his Miranda rights. The written confession taken after Elstad's arrival at the Sheriff's office, however, was admitted in evidence. The court found:
"[H]is written statement was given freely, voluntarily and knowingly by the defendant after he had waived his right to remain silent and have counsel present which waiver was evidenced by the card which the defendant had signed. [It] was not tainted in any way by the previous brief statement between the defendant and the Sheriff's Deputies that had arrested him." App. 45.
Elstad was found guilty of burglary in the first degree. He received a 5-year sentence and was ordered to pay $18,000 in restitution....
Following his conviction, respondent appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals, relying on Wong Sun and Bayer. The State conceded that Elstad had been in custody when he made his statement, "I was there," and accordingly agreed that this statement was inadmissible as having been given without the prescribed Miranda warnings. But the State maintained that any conceivable "taint" had been dissipated prior to the respondent's written confession by McAllister's careful administration of the requisite warnings. The Court [470 U.S. 298, 303] of Appeals reversed respondent's conviction, identifying the crucial constitutional inquiry as "whether there was a sufficient break in the stream of events between [the] inadmissible statement and the written confession to insulate the latter statement from the effect of what went before." ... Because of the brief period separating the two incidents, the "cat was sufficiently out of the bag to exert a coercive impact on [respondent's] later admissions." ...
As we explained in Quarles and Tucker, a procedural Miranda violation differs in significant respects from violations of the Fourth Amendment, which have traditionally mandated a broad application of the "fruits" doctrine. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule is to deter unreasonable searches, no matter how probative their fruits....
The Miranda exclusionary rule, however, serves the Fifth Amendment and sweeps more broadly than the Fifth Amendment itself. It may be triggered even in the absence of a Fifth Amendment violation. 1 The Fifth Amendment prohibits [470 U.S. 298, 307] use by the prosecution in its case in chief only of compelled testimony. Failure to administer Miranda warnings creates a presumption of compulsion...
But the Miranda presumption, though irrebuttable for purposes of the prosecution's case in chief, does not require that the statements and their fruits be discarded as inherently tainted. Despite the fact that patently voluntary statements taken in violation of Miranda must be excluded from the prosecution's case, the presumption of coercion does not bar their use for impeachment purposes on cross-examination.... Where an unwarned statement is preserved for use in situations that fall outside the sweep of the Miranda presumption, "the primary criterion of admissibility [470 U.S. 298, 308] [remains] the `old' due process voluntariness test."
In deciding "how sweeping the judicially imposed consequences" of a failure to administer Miranda warnings should be, Tucker, 417 U.S., at 445 , the Tucker Court noted that neither the general goal of deterring improper police conduct nor the Fifth Amendment goal of assuring trustworthy evidence would be served by suppression of the witness' testimony. The unwarned confession must, of course, be suppressed, but the Court ruled that introduction of the third-party witness' testimony did not violate Tucker's Fifth Amendment rights....
We believe that this reasoning applies with equal force when the alleged "fruit" of a noncoercive Miranda violation is neither a witness nor an article of evidence but the accused's own voluntary testimony. As in Tucker, the absence of any coercion or improper tactics undercuts the twin rationales - trust worthiness and deterrence - for a broader rule. Once warned, the suspect is free to exercise his own volition in deciding whether or not to make a statement to the authorities....
If errors are made by law enforcement officers in administering the prophylactic Miranda procedures, they should not breed the same irremediable consequences as police infringement of the Fifth Amendment itself. It is an unwarranted extension of Miranda to hold that a simple failure to administer the warnings, unaccompanied by any actual coercion or other circumstances calculated to undermine the suspect's ability to exercise his free will, so taints the investigatory process that a subsequent voluntary and informed waiver is ineffective for some indeterminate period. Though Miranda requires that the unwarned admission must be suppressed, the admissibility of any subsequent statement should turn in these circumstances solely on whether it is knowingly and voluntarily made.....
There is a vast difference between the direct consequences flowing from coercion of a confession by physical violence or other deliberate means calculated to break the suspect's will and the uncertain consequences of disclosure of a "guilty secret" freely given in response to an unwarned but noncoercive question, as in this case. JUSTICE BRENNAN'S contention that it is impossible to perceive any causal distinction between this case and one involving a confession that is coerced by torture is wholly unpersuasive. 3 Certainly, in [470 U.S. 298, 313] respondent's case, the causal connection between any psychological disadvantage created by his admission and his ultimate decision to cooperate is speculative and attenuated at [470 U.S. 298, 314] best. It is difficult to tell with certainly what motivates a suspect to speak. A suspect's confession may be traced to factors as disparate as "a prearrest event such as a visit with a minister," Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S., at 220 (STEVENS, J., concurring), or an intervening event such as the exchange of words respondent had with his father. We must conclude that, absent deliberately coercive or improper tactics in obtaining the initial statement, the mere fact that a suspect has made an unwarned admission does not warrant a presumption of compulsion. A subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that precluded admission of the earlier statement. In such circumstances, the finder of fact may reasonably conclude that the suspect made a rational and intelligent choice whether to waive or invoke his rights.
Though belated, the reading of respondent's rights was undeniably complete. McAllister testified that he read the Miranda warnings aloud from a printed card and recorded [470 U.S. 298, 315] Elstad's responses. 4 There is no question that respondent knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to remain silent before he described his participation in the burglary. It is also beyond dispute that respondent's earlier remark was voluntary, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Neither the environment nor the manner of either "interrogation" was coercive. The initial conversation took place at midday, in the living room area of respondent's own home, with his mother in the kitchen area, a few steps away. Although in retrospect the officers testified that respondent was then in custody, at the time he made his statement he had not been informed that he was under arrest. The arresting officers' testimony indicates that the brief stop in the living room before proceeding to the station house was not to interrogate the suspect but to notify his mother of the reason for his arrest.....
Respondent, however, has argued that he was unable to give a fully informed waiver of his rights because he was unaware that his prior statement could not be used against him. Respondent suggests that Officer McAllister, to cure this deficiency, should have added an additional warning to those given him at the Sheriff's office. Such a requirement is neither practicable nor constitutionally necessary. In many cases, a breach of Miranda procedures may not be identified as such until long after full Miranda warnings are administered and a valid confession obtained. See, e. g., United States v. Bowler, 561 F.2d 1323, 1324-1325 (CA9 1977) (certain statements ruled inadmissible by trial court); United States v. Toral, 536 F.2d 893, 896 (CA9 1976); United States v. Knight, 395 F.2d 971, 974-975 (CA2 1968) (custody unclear). The standard Miranda warnings explicitly inform the suspect of his right to consult a lawyer before speaking. Police officers are ill-equipped to pinch-hit for counsel, construing the murky and difficult questions of when "custody" begins or whether a given unwarned statement will ultimately be held admissible.
When police ask questions of a suspect in custody without administering the required warnings, Miranda dictates that the answers received be presumed compelled and that they be excluded from evidence at trial in the State's case in chief. The Court has carefully adhered to this principle, permitting a narrow exception only where pressing public safety concerns demanded. See New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S., at 655 -656. The Court today in no way retreats from the bright-line rule of Miranda. We do not imply that good faith excuses a failure to administer Miranda warnings; nor do we condone inherently coercive police tactics or methods offensive to due process that render the initial admission involuntary and undermine the suspect's will to invoke his rights once they are read to him. A handful of courts have, however, applied our precedents relating to confessions obtained [470 U.S. 298, 318] under coercive circumstances to situations involving wholly voluntary admissions, requiring a passage of time or break in events before a second, fully warned statement can be deemed voluntary. Far from establishing a rigid rule, we direct courts to avoid one; there is no warrant for presuming coercive effect where the suspect's initial inculpatory statement, though technically in violation of Miranda, was voluntary. 5 The relevant inquiry is whether, in fact, the second statement was also voluntarily made. As in any such inquiry, the finder of fact must examine the surrounding circumstances and the entire course of police conduct with respect to the suspect in evaluating the voluntariness of his statements. The fact that a suspect chooses to speak after being informed of his rights is, of course, highly probative. We find that the dictates of Miranda and the goals of the Fifth Amendment proscription against use of compelled testimony are fully satisfied in the circumstances of this case by barring use of the unwarned statement in the case in chief. No further purpose is served by imputing "taint" to subsequent statements obtained pursuant to a voluntary and knowing waiver. We hold today that a suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals of Oregon is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
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JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, dissenting.
Even while purporting to reaffirm these constitutional guarantees, the Court has engaged of late in a studied campaign to strip the Miranda decision piecemeal and to undermine the rights Miranda sought to secure. Today's decision not only extends this effort a further step, but delivers a potentially crippling blow to Miranda and the ability of courts to safeguard the rights of persons accused of crime. For at least with respect to successive confessions, the Court today appears to strip remedies for Miranda violations of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine prohibiting the use of evidence presumptively derived from official illegality
Two major premises undergird the Court's decision. The Court rejects as nothing more than "speculative" the long-recognized presumption that an illegally extracted confession causes the accused to confess again out of the mistaken belief that he already has sealed his fate, and it condemns as "`extravagant'" the requirement that the prosecution affirmatively rebut the presumption before the subsequent confession [470 U.S. 298, 320] may be admitted. Ante, at 307, 313. The Court instead adopts a new rule that, so long as the accused is given the usual Miranda warnings before further interrogation, the taint of a previous confession obtained in violation of Miranda "ordinarily" must be viewed as automatically dissipated.
In the alternative, the Court asserts that neither the Fifth Amendment itself nor the judicial policy of deterring illegal police conduct requires the suppression of the "fruits" of a confession obtained in violation of Miranda, reasoning that to do otherwise would interfere with "legitimate law enforcement activity." Ante, at 312. As the Court surely understands, however, "[t]o forbid the direct use of methods . . . but to put no curb on their full indirect use would only invite the very methods deemed `inconsistent with ethical standards and destructive of personal liberty.'" Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 340 (1939)....
The threshold question is this: What effect should an admission or confession of guilt obtained in violation of an accused's Miranda rights be presumed to have upon the voluntariness of subsequent confessions that are preceded by Miranda warnings?
This Court has had long experience with the problem of confessions obtained after an earlier confession has been [470 U.S. 298, 325] illegally secured. Subsequent confessions in these circumstances are not per se inadmissible, but the prosecution must demonstrate facts "sufficient to insulate the [subsequent] statement from the effect of all that went before."... The question in each case is whether the accused's will was "overborne at the time he confessed," and the prosecution must demonstrate that the second confession "was an act independent of the [earlier] confession."...
Our precedents did not develop in a vacuum. They reflect an understanding of the realities of police interrogation and the everyday experience of lower courts. Expert interrogators, far from dismissing a first admission or confession as creating merely a "speculative and attenuated" disadvantage for a suspect, ante, at 313, understand that such revelations frequently lead directly to a full confession....
Where an accused believes that it is futile to resist because the authorities already have elicited an admission of guilt, the mere rendition of Miranda warnings does not convey the information most critical at that point to ensuring his informed and voluntary decision to speak again: that the earlier confession may not be admissible and thus that he need not speak out of any feeling that he already has sealed his fate. The Court therefore is flatly wrong in arguing, as it does repeatedly, that the mere provision of Miranda warnings prior to subsequent interrogation supplies the accused with "the relevant information" and ensures that a subsequent confession "ordinarily" will be the product of "a rational and intelligent choice" and "`an act of free will.'" Ante, at 311, 314. 16 [470 U.S. 298, 338]
The Court's new approach is therefore completely at odds with established dissipation analysis. A comparison of the Court's analysis with the factors most frequently relied on by lower courts in considering the admissibility of subsequent confessions demonstrates the practical and legal flaws of the new rule.
Advice that earlier confession may be inadmissible. The most effective means to ensure the voluntariness of an accused's subsequent confession is to advise the accused that his earlier admissions may not be admissible and therefore that he need not speak solely out of a belief that "the cat is out of the bag." ...
The Court's concessions are potentially significant, but its analysis is wholly at odds with established dissipation analysis. To begin with, the Court repeatedly suggests that a confession may be suppressed only if the police have used "improper tactics," ante, at 308; this obscure reasoning overlooks the fact that a violation of Miranda is obviously itself an "improper tactic," one frequently used precisely to undermine the voluntariness of subsequent confessions. See supra, at 329-332. The Court's negative implication that Miranda violations are not "improper tactics" is, to say the least, disquieting....
In sum, today's opinion marks an evisceration of the established fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, but its reasoning is sufficiently obscure and qualified as to leave state and federal courts with continued authority to combat obvious flouting by the authorities of the privilege against self-incrimination. I am confident that lower courts will exercise this authority responsibly, as they have for the most part prior to this Court's intervention....
Twice in the last 10 years, however, the Court has suggested that the Miranda safeguards are not themselves rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. In Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433 (1974), the Court stated that Miranda had only prescribed "recommended" procedural safeguards "to provide practical reinforcement for the right against compulsory self-incrimination," the violation of which may not necessarily violate the Fifth Amendment itself. 417 U.S., at 443 -444. And in New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984), the Court last Term disturbingly rejected the argument that a confession "must be presumed compelled because of . . . failure to read [the accused] his Miranda warnings." Id., at 655, n. 5 (emphasis in original).
Miranda clearly emphasized that warnings and an informed waiver are essential to the Fifth Amendment privilege itself. See supra, at 347 and this page. As noted in Tucker, Miranda did state that the Constitution does not require [470 U.S. 298, 349] "`adherence to any particular solution'" for providing the required knowledge and obtaining an informed waiver. 417 U.S., at 444 (quoting Miranda, supra, at 467). But to rely solely on this language in concluding that the Miranda warnings are not constitutional rights, as did the Court in Tucker, ignores the central issue....
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
The Court concludes its opinion with a carefully phrased statement of its holding:
"We hold today that a suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings." Ante, at 318.
I find nothing objectionable in such a holding. Moreover, because the Court expressly endorses the "bright-line rule of Miranda," which conclusively presumes that incriminating statements obtained from a suspect in custody without administering the required warnings are the product of compulsion, 1 and because the Court places so much emphasis on the special facts of this case, I am persuaded that the Court intends its holding to apply only to a narrow category of cases in which the initial questioning of the suspect was made in a totally uncoercive setting and in which the first confession obviously had no influence on the second. 2 I nevertheless [470 U.S. 298, 365] dissent because even such a narrowly confined exception is inconsistent with the Court's prior cases, because the attempt to identify its boundaries in future cases will breed confusion and uncertainty in the administration of criminal justice, and because it denigrates the importance of one of the core constitutional rights that protects every American citizen from the kind of tyranny that has flourished in other societies....
The decision in Miranda v. Arizona clarified the law in three important respects. First, it provided the prosecutor with a simple method of overcoming the presumption of coercion. 6 If the police interrogation is preceded by the warning specified in that opinion, the usual presumption does not attach. Second, it provided an important protection to the accused by making the presumption of coercion irrebuttable if the prescribed warnings are not given. Third, the decision [470 U.S. 298, 367] made it clear that a self-incriminatory statement made in response to custodial interrogation was always to be considered "compelled" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution if the interrogation had not been preceded by appropriate warnings. Thus the irrebuttable presumption of coercion that applies to such a self-incriminatory statement, like a finding of actual coercion, renders the resulting confession inadmissible as a matter of federal constitutional law.
In my opinion, the Court's attempt to fashion a distinction between actual coercion "by physical violence or other deliberate means calculated to break the suspect's will," ante, at 312, and irrebuttably presumed coercion cannot succeed....
But surely the fact that an earlier confession was obtained by unlawful methods should add force to the presumption of coercion that attaches to subsequent custodial interrogation and should require the prosecutor to shoulder a heavier burder [burden] of rebuttal than in a routine case. Simple logic, as well as the interest in not providing an affirmative incentive to police misconduct, requires that result....
For me, the most disturbing aspect of the Court's opinion is its somewhat opaque characterization of the police misconduct in this case. The Court appears ambivalent on the question whether there was any constitutional violation. 14 This ambivalence is either disingenuous or completely lawless.... If the Court does not accept that premise, it must regard the holding in the Miranda case itself, as well as all of the federal jurisprudence that has evolved from that decision, as nothing more than an illegitimate exercise of raw judicial power.
The source of respondent's constitutional protection is the Fifth Amendment's privilege against compelled self-incrimination that is secured against state invasion by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Like many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, that provision is merely a procedural safeguard. It is, however, the specific provision that protects all citizens from the kind of custodial interrogation that was once employed by the Star Chamber, by "the Germans of the 1930's and early 1940's," and by some of our own police departments only a few decades ago. 470 U.S. 298, 372] Custodial interrogation that violates that provision of the Bill of Rights is a classic example of a violation of a constitutional right.