Opinion ID: 784545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Public Safety Exception

Text: 19 In Quarles, a woman informed the police that she had been raped at gunpoint. Id. at 651-52, 104 S.Ct. 2626. She provided a description of her attacker. Id. The police entered a nearby supermarket and spotted a man fitting her description. Id. at 652, 104 S.Ct. 2626. After a brief pursuit, the officers caught the suspect and discovered that he was wearing an empty shoulder holster. Id. Before advising him of his Miranda rights, the officers asked the suspect where his gun was. Id. The suspect nodded in the direction of some empty cartons and responded, `the gun is over there.' Id. 20 Reversing the state court's suppression of both the statement and the firearm, the Supreme Court held that Miranda warnings need not precede questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety or for the safety of the arresting officers. Id. at 656, 658-59, 104 S.Ct. 2626. 21 Although the Court cautioned that the public safety exception was narrow, id. at 658, 104 S.Ct. 2626, it emphasized that the purpose of the exception was to allow officers to follow their legitimate instincts when confronting situations presenting a danger to the public safety, id. at 659, 104 S.Ct. 2626, because spontaneity ... is necessarily the order of the day, id. at 656, 104 S.Ct. 2626. The Court realistically observed that officers can and will distinguish almost instinctively between questions necessary to secure their own safety or the safety of the public and questions designed solely to elicit testimonial evidence from a suspect. Id. at 658-59, 104 S.Ct. 2626. 22 The public safety exception permits questions reasonably prompted by a concern for safety and in each case will be circumscribed by the exigency which justifies it. Id. at 656, 658, 104 S.Ct. 2626. Like the reasonableness standard itself, the public safety exception is a function of the facts of cases so various that no template is likely to produce sounder results than examining the totality of the circumstances in a given case. United States v. Banks, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 124 S.Ct. 521, 525, 157 L.Ed.2d 343 (2003).