Opinion ID: 784545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Quarles Exception in the Circuits

Text: 23 We have had few opportunities to address the public safety exception. See, e.g., United States v. Khalil, 214 F.3d 111, 121-22 (2d Cir.2000) (affirming admission of defendant's responses to police questioning about a bomb that could have exploded before being disarmed). 24 Several other circuits, however, have applied the exception to facts similar to those presented here. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 181 F.3d 945, 953-54 (8th Cir.1999) (admitting statements of a narcotics defendant arrested in his apartment who was asked by police is there anything we need to be aware of?); United States v. Shea, 150 F.3d 44, 47-48 (1st Cir.1998) (upholding questioning of a bank robbery suspect about whether he had weapons or needles after being arrested and in anticipation of search incident to arrest); United States v. Carrillo, 16 F.3d 1046, 1049-50 (9th Cir.1994) (questioning whether narcotics defendant had needles on his person, asked as a matter of routine rather than as a result of specific information regarding the defendant, stemmed from objectively reasonable concern for officer safety); Fleming v. Collins, 954 F.2d 1109, 1111, 1114 (5th Cir.1992) ( en banc ) (upholding questioning of suspected bank robber regarding whether he had any weapons); United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377, 384 & n. 4 (7th Cir.1989) (upholding questioning of a suspected drug dealer as to whether he was armed because drug dealers are known to arm themselves, and the officers had an objectively reasonable need to protect themselves from the immediate danger that a weapon would pose, even though defendants had already been handcuffed and frisked); United States v. Brady, 819 F.2d 884, 887-88 (9th Cir.1987) (applying public safety exception to officer's inquiry regarding the presence of a gun in a suspect's car even though there was no ... indication that [the suspect] possessed a weapon or had placed an unguarded weapon in a public place where a crowd was gathering in a rough neighborhood). 25 In United States v. Lackey, 334 F.3d 1224 (10th Cir.2003), the Tenth Circuit relied on the public safety exception to affirm the denial of a suppression motion. In response to a witness's report that the defendant had fired shots at her home, police approached the defendant in the parking lot of his apartment building. Id. at 1225. The officer informed him that he was under arrest and asked: Do you have anything on you that would hurt me? and Do you have any guns or sharp objects on you? Id. The defendant responded: No, I don't have anything on me, but there [is] a gun in the car. Id. at 1225-26. 26 The Tenth Circuit found that the officers' focused questions addressed a real and substantial risk to the safety of the officers and were not designed to acquire incriminating evidence[, but] solely to protect the officers, as well as the arrestee, from physical injury. Id. at 1227-28. The court also observed that such questions would not typically be the sole source of the incriminating evidence because a search incident to an arrest would inevitably discover the evidence. Id. at 1228. Thus, [t]he risk of incrimination is limited to non-responsive answers (such as in this case, when the suspect provides more information than requested).... Id. 27 The cases relied on by the district court in excluding Reyes' statements are distinguishable. Reyes, 249 F.Supp.2d at 281-82, 281 n. 4 (citing United States v. Jones, 154 F.Supp.2d 617, 627 (S.D.N.Y.2001) (Lynch, J. ) (surveying case law applying Quarles )). In each, the suspect and the surrounding area had been secured and any threat to the officer or to public safety eliminated prior to the unwarned questioning. See United States v. Mobley, 40 F.3d 688, 690-94 (4th Cir.1994) (question whether there was anything in the apartment that could be of danger to the agents was improper because the apartment had already been secured, the defendant lived alone and had answered the door naked and unarmed); United States v. Raborn, 872 F.2d 589, 595 (5th Cir.1989) ( Quarles did not justify unwarned interrogation of a narcotics suspect about the location of a weapon in his vehicle, where police had already secured the vehicle).