NEW YORK v. HARRIS
No. 88-1000
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 10, 1990-Decided April 18, 1990
495 U.S. 14
Peter D. Coddington argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Robert T. Johnson, Anthony J. Girese, Stanley R. Kaplan, and Karen P. Swiger.
Barrington D. Parker, Jr., by invitation of the Court, 492 U. S. 934, argued the cause as amicus curiae in support of the judgment below. With him on the brief was Ronald G. Blum.*
JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
On January 11, 1984, New York City police found the body of Ms. Thelma Staton murdered in her apartment. Various facts gave the officers probable cause to believe that the respondent in this case, Bernard Harris, had killed Ms. Staton. As a result, on January 16, 1984, three police officers went to Harris’ apartment to take him into custody. They did not first obtain an arrest warrant.
When the police arrived, they knocked on the door, displaying their guns and badges. Harris let them enter.
Once inside, the officers read Harris his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). Harris acknowledged that he understood the warnings, and agreed to answer the officers’ questions. At that point, he reportedly admitted that he had killed Ms. Staton.
Harris was arrested, taken to the station house, and again informed of his Miranda rights. He then signed a written inculpatory statement. The police subsequently read Harris the Miranda warnings a third time and videotaped an incriminating interview between Harris and a district attorney, even though Harris had indicated that he wanted to end the interrogation.
The trial court suppressed Harris’ first and third statements; the State does not challenge those rulings. The sole issue in this case is whether Harris’ second statement-the written statement made at the station house-should have been suppressed because the police, by entering Harris’ home without a warrant and without his consent, violated Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980), which held that the
A divided New York Court of Appeals reversed, 72 N. Y. 2d 614, 532 N. E. 2d 1229 (1988). That court first accepted the trial court‘s finding that Harris did not consent to the police officers’ entry into his home and that the warrantless arrest therefore violated Payton even though there was probable cause. Applying Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975), and its progeny, the court then determined that the station house statement must be deemed to be the inadmissible fruit of the illegal arrest because the connection between the statement and the arrest was not sufficiently attenuated.
The court noted that some courts had reasoned that the “wrong in Payton cases ... lies not in the arrest, but in the unlawful entry into a dwelling without proper judicial authorization” and had therefore declined to suppress confessions that were made following Payton violations. 72 N. Y. 2d, at 623, 532 N. E. 2d, at 1234. The New York court disagreed with this analysis, finding it contrary to Payton and its own decisions interpreting Payton‘s scope. We granted certiorari to resolve the admissibility of the station house statement. 490 U. S. 1018 (1989).
For present purposes, we accept the finding below that Harris did not consent to the police officers’ entry into his home and the conclusion that the police had probable cause to arrest him. It is also evident, in light of Payton, that arresting Harris in his home without an arrest warrant violated the
Payton itself emphasized that our holding in that case stemmed from the “overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic.” 445 U. S., at 601. Although it had
Nothing in the reasoning of that case suggests that an arrest in a home without a warrant but with probable cause somehow renders unlawful continued custody of the suspect once he is removed from the house. There could be no valid claim here that Harris was immune from prosecution because his person was the fruit of an illegal arrest. United States v. Crews, 445 U. S. 463, 474 (1980). Nor is there any claim that the warrantless arrest required the police to release Harris or that Harris could not be immediately rearrested if momentarily released. Because the officers had probable cause to arrest Harris for a crime, Harris was not unlawfully in custody when he was removed to the station house, given Miranda warnings, and allowed to talk. For
This case is therefore different from Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975), Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200 (1979), and Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U. S. 687 (1982). In each of those cases, evidence obtained from a criminal de-
Harris’ statement taken at the police station was not the product of being in unlawful custody. Neither was it the fruit of having been arrested in the home rather than someplace else. The case is analogous to United States v. Crews, supra. In that case, we refused to suppress a victim‘s in-court identification despite the defendant‘s illegal arrest. The Court found that the evidence was not “‘come at by exploitation’ of ... the defendant‘s
We do not hold, as the dissent suggests, that a statement taken by the police while a suspect is in custody is always admissible as long as the suspect is in legal custody. Statements taken during legal custody would of course be inadmissible, for example, if they were the product of coercion, if Miranda warnings were not given, or if there was a violation of the rule of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981). We do hold that the station house statement in this case was admissible because Harris was in legal custody, as the dissent concedes, and because the statement, while the product of an arrest and being in custody, was not the fruit of the fact that the arrest was made in the house rather than someplace else.
To put the matter another way, suppressing the statement taken outside the house would not serve the purpose of the rule that made Harris’ in-house arrest illegal. The warrant requirement for an arrest in the home is imposed to protect the home, and anything incriminating the police gathered from arresting Harris in his home, rather than elsewhere, has been excluded, as it should have been; the purpose of the rule has thereby been vindicated. We are not required by the Constitution to go further and suppress statements later made by Harris in order to deter police from violating Payton. “As cases considering the use of unlawfully obtained evidence in criminal trials themselves make clear, it does not follow from the emphasis on the exclusionary rule‘s deterrent value that ‘anything which deters illegal searches is thereby commanded by the
We hold that, where the police have probable cause to arrest a suspect, the exclusionary rule does not bar the State‘s use of a statement made by the defendant outside of his home, even though the statement is taken after an arrest made in the home in violation of Payton. The judgment of the court below is accordingly
Reversed.
JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN, JUSTICE BLACKMUN, and JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting.
Police officers entered Bernard Harris’ home and arrested him there. They did not have an arrest warrant, he did not consent to their entry, and exigent circumstances did not exist. An arrest in such circumstances violates the
The majority answers this question by adopting a broad and unprecedented principle, holding that “where the police have probable cause to arrest a suspect, the exclusionary rule does not bar the State‘s use of a statement made by the defendant outside of his home, even though the statement is taken after an arrest made in the home in violation of Payton.” Ante, this page. The majority‘s conclusion is wrong. Its reasoning amounts to nothing more than an analytical sleight of hand, resting on errors in logic, misreadings of our cases, and an apparent blindness to the incentives the Court‘s
I
In recent years, this Court has repeatedly stated that the principal purpose of the
Because deterrence is a principal purpose of the exclusionary rule, our attenuation analysis must be driven by an understanding of how extensive exclusion must be to deter violations of the
When faced with a statement obtained after an illegal arrest, then, a court will have occasion to engage in the attenuation inquiry only if it first determines that the statement is “voluntary,” for involuntary statements are suppressible in any event. Attenuation analysis assumes that the statement is “voluntary” and asks whether the connection between the illegal police conduct and the statement nevertheless requires suppression to deter
We have identified the last factor as “particularly” important. 422 U. S., at 604. When a police officer intentionally violates what he knows to be a constitutional command, exclusion is essential to conform police behavior to the law. Such a “flagrant” violation is in marked contrast to a violation
An application of the Brown factors to this case compels the conclusion that Harris’ statement at the station house must be suppressed. About an hour elapsed between the illegal arrest and Harris’ confession, without any intervening factor other than the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). This Court has held, however, that “Miranda warnings, alone and per se, ... cannot assure in every case that the
As to the flagrancy of the violation, petitioner does not dispute that the officers were aware that the
“the police went to defendant‘s apartment to arrest him and, as the police conceded, if defendant refused to talk to them there they intended to take him into custody for questioning. Nevertheless, they made no attempt to obtain a warrant although five days had elapsed between the killing and the arrest and they had developed evidence of probable cause early in their investigation. Indeed, one of the officers testifed that it was departmental policy not to get warrants before making arrests in the home. From this statement a reasonable inference can be drawn ... that the department‘s policy was a device used to avoid restrictions on questioning a suspect until after the police had strenthened their case with a confession. Thus, the police illegality was knowing and intentional, in the language of Brown, it ‘had a quality of purposefulness,’ and the linkage between the illegality and the confession is clearly established.” 72 N. Y. 2d 614, 622, 532 N. E. 2d 1229, 1233-1234 (1988) (citation omitted).2
In short, the officers decided, apparently consistent with a “departmental policy,” to violate Harris’
II
Had the Court analyzed this case as our precedents dictate that it should, I could end my discussion here--the dispute would reduce to an application of the Brown factors to the constitutional wrong and the inculpatory statement that followed. But the majority chooses no such unremarkable battleground. Instead, the Court redrafts our cases in the service of conclusions they straightforwardly and explicitly reject. Specifically, the Court finds suppression unwarranted on the authority of its newly fashioned per se rule. In the majority‘s view, when police officers make a warrantless home arrest in violation of Payton, their physical exit from the suspect‘s home necessarily breaks the causal chain between the illegality and any subsequent statement by the suspect, such that the statement is admissible regardless of the Brown factors.3
The Court purports to defend its new rule on the basis of the self-evident proposition that the
A
Certainly, the police were not required to release Harris or forgo his prosecution simply because officers arrested him in violation of Payton. But it is a dramatic leap from that unexceptionable proposition to the suggestion that the Payton violation thus had no effect once the police took Harris from his home. The Court‘s view to the contrary appears to rest on a cramped understanding of the purposes underlying Payton. The home is a private place, more private than any other. An invasion into the home is therefore the worst kind of invasion of privacy. An intrusion into that sanctum is an assault on the individual‘s solitude and on the family‘s communal bonds. As we said in Payton:
“The
Fourth Amendment protects the individual‘s privacy in a variety of settings. In none is the zone of privacy more clearly defined than when bounded bythe unambiguous physical dimensions of an individual‘s home-a zone that finds its roots in clear and specific constitutional terms: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their ... houses ... shall not be violated.’ That language unequivocally establishes the proposition that ‘[a]t the very core [of the Fourth Amendment ] stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.‘” 445 U. S., at 589-590 (ellipses in original) (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961)).
See also California v. Ciraolo, 476 U. S. 207, 212-213 (1986) (“The protection afforded the curtilage is essentially a protection of families and personal privacy in an area intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically, where privacy expectations are most heightened“).
The majority‘s per se rule in this case fails to take account of our repeated holdings that violations of privacy in the home are especially invasive. Rather, its rule is necessarily premised on the proposition that the effect of a Payton violation magically vanishes once the suspect is dragged from his home. But the concerns that make a warrantless home arrest a violation of the
B
The majority‘s reading of our cases similarly lacks foundation. In the majority‘s view, our attenuation cases are not concerned with the lingering taint of an illegal arrest; rather, they focus solely on whether a subsequently obtained statement is made during an illegal detention of the suspect. Ante, at 18-19 (quoting 72 N. Y. 2d, at 625, 532 N. E. 2d, at 1235 (Titone, J., concurring)). In the Court‘s view, if (and only if) the detention is illegal at the moment the statement is made will it be suppressed. Unlike an arrest without probable cause, a Payton violation alone does not make the subsequent detention of the suspect illegal. Thus, the Court argues, no statement made after a Payton violation has ended is suppressible by reason of the
The majority‘s theory lacks any support in our cases. In each case presenting issues similar to those here, we have asked the same question: whether the invasion of privacy occasioned by the illegal arrest taints a statement made after the violation has ended-stated another way, whether the arrest caused the statement. See, e. g., Wong Sun, 371 U. S., at 485-488; Brown, 422 U. S., at 591-592, 599, 603; Dunaway,
Indeed, such an approach would render irrelevant the first and second of the Brown factors, which focus, respectively, on the passage of time and the existence of intervening factors between the illegality and the subsequently obtained statement. If, as the majority claims, the Brown analysis does not even apply unless the illegality is ongoing at the time the evidence is secured, no time would ever pass and no circumstance would ever intervene between the illegality and the statement.
The only Supreme Court case in which the majority even attempts to find support is United States v. Crews, 445 U. S. 463 (1980). Crews, however, is inapposite. In that case, the defendant moved to suppress a witness‘s in-court identification of him on the ground that he had been illegally arrested. Crews’ theory was that he was the fruit of his own illegal arrest-that he himself should have been “suppressed.” Because no identification of him could have been made if he were not in the courtroom, his argument proceeded, that identification had to be suppressed in turn. The Court rejected Crews’ argument:
“Insofar as [Crews] challenges his own presence at trial, he cannot claim immunity from prosecution simply because his appearance in court was precipitated by an unlawful arrest. An illegal arrest, without more, has never been viewed as a bar to subsequent prosecution, nor as a defense to a valid conviction. The exclusionary
principle of Wong Sun and Silverthorne Lumber Co. [v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920),] delimits what proof the Government may offer against the accused at trial, closing the courtroom door to evidence secured by official lawlessness. [Crews] is not himself a suppressible ‘fruit,’ and the illegality of his detention cannot deprive the Government of the opportunity to prove his guilt through the introduction of evidence wholly untainted by the police misconduct.” 445 U. S., at 474 (citations omitted; footnote omitted; emphases added).
Seen in context, the majority‘s misuse of Crews is apparent. As in Wong Sun, Brown, and Taylor, Harris seeks to suppress evidence-a statement he made one hour after his arrest. He does not contend that he cannot be tried because he was arrested illegally, nor does he in any way link his demand for suppression of his statement to a claim that his presence at trial, or anywhere else, should somehow be suppressed. Crews is therefore irrelevant. The only authority the majority cites that directly supports its novel view of Brown is a concurring opinion in the New York Court of Appeals, ante, at 19, which is hardly a sufficient basis on which to reject almost 30 years of cases.
C
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the Court‘s ruling is its practical consequences for the deterrence of Payton violations. Imagine a police officer who has probable cause to arrest a suspect but lacks a warrant. The officer knows if he were to break into the home to make the arrest without first securing a warrant, he would violate the
More important, the officer knows that if he breaks into the house without a warrant and drags the suspect outside, the suspect, shaken by the enormous invasion of privacy he has just undergone, may say something incriminating. Before today‘s decision, the government would only be able to use that evidence if the Court found that the taint of the arrest had been attenuated; after the decision, the evidence will be admissible regardless of whether it was the product of the unconstitutional arrest.5 Thus, the officer envisions the following best-case scenario if he chooses to violate the Constitution: He avoids a major expenditure of time and effort, ensures that the suspect will not escape, and procures the most damaging evidence of all, a confession. His worst-case scenario is that he will avoid a major expenditure of effort, ensure that the suspect will not escape, and will see evidence in the house (which would have remained unknown absent the constitutional violation) that cannot be used in the prosecution‘s case in chief. The Court thus creates powerful incentives for police officers to violate the
I dissent.