Opinion ID: 849291
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: application of the public safety exception

Text: This case presents the first occasion we have had to apply the Quarles public safety exception to Miranda. As an initial matter, the parties agree that defendant was in custody at the time of Officer West's questions. At the suppression hearing, West testified that defendant was in custody and had no right to leave. Moreover, defendant does not contend that his statements to the police were anything less than completely voluntary. Defendant voluntarily answered the officer's questions, knowing that the police were in his apartment to execute a warrant for his arrest in connection with the threats he made against his wife. Accordingly, there was no due process violation, see Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959), and no violation of the express language of the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause, see generally Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 304-309, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985); see also Daoud, supra at 637, 614 N.W.2d 152 (recognizing that the Fifth Amendment itself protects only against compelled self-incrimination). With respect to application of the public safety exception itself, we agree with the analysis of the Court of Appeals dissent. The Court of Appeals majority erred by limiting application of the public safety exception to questions necessary to protect the public other than the police themselves. See Quarles, supra at 658-659, n. 8, 104 S.Ct. 2626. It also erred in concluding that the situation did not pose an immediate danger. Viewed in an objective fashion as Quarles requires, once the officers allowed defendant to dress, and defendant began to rummage through his dresser drawers, any reasonable person in the officers' position would have been concerned for his own immediate safety. Not only did the officers know that the arrest warrant stemmed from an incident in which defendant threatened his wife with a gun, but they also knew that defendant had previously expressed homicidal and suicidal thoughts. [3] While the officers might have, in hindsight, mitigated the exigency by physically restraining defendant before he was allowed to dress, their failure to do so does not alter our analysis. The fact remains that an exigency existed. The logic underlying Quarles is based on the existence, rather than the cause of, a public safety exigency. Finally, contrary to defendant's argument, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Orozco, supra, does not command a different result. There, as noted above in the excerpt from Quarles, supra at 659, n. 8, 104 S.Ct. 2626, the sleeping suspect was awakened only after being surrounded by four police officers. He was then questioned vigorously while he remained in bed. Under the circumstances, the officers' questions did not in any way relate to an objectively reasonable need to protect the police or the public from any immediate danger associated with the weapon. Id . Here, however, defendant easily could have hidden the weapon in one of the dresser drawers to which he had immediate access. Thus, as in Quarles rather than Orozco, the officers' initial attempts to ascertain the location of the gun were directly related to an objectively reasonable need to secure protection from the possibility of immediate danger associated with the gun. Moreover, the pre-Miranda questioning in the present case related solely to neutralizing this danger. The officers only asked about the whereabouts of the gun and not other broader questions relating to investigation of the crime. This case is thus unlike Orozco, where the pre-Miranda questioning included general investigation, such as whether the suspect was at the scene of the crime, which was unrelated to any immediate danger to the officers or the public. Here, once the officers were satisfied that defendant posed no immediate threat of danger to them, they informed defendant of the Miranda rights and began their general investigation. For all of these reasons, the pre-Miranda questioning at issue in this case falls squarely within the public safety exception to Miranda. In sum, we hold that the officers were justified in forgoing immediate adherence to the Miranda rule, given the exigencies of the situation in defendant's apartment at the time of his arrest. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in refusing to suppress defendant's statement or the gun. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the judgment of the circuit court is reinstated.