David Faulkingham is charged with possession with intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute heroin. On the day of his arrest he made inculpatory statements to agents of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA). The agents did not give the required warning under
Miranda v. Arizona,
Faulkingham argued, and the district court agreed, that the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, common to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, should also apply to the derivative evidence, given the facts of this particular
Miranda
violation under the Fifth Amendment.
United States v. Faulkingham,
*87 Individuals in custody should, of course, be informed of their rights. But we disagree that in this case the concerns that animate the Fifth Amendment require the suppression of the derivative evidence, as opposed to the suppression of Faulking-ham’s own unwarned statements.
I.
We outline the facts in this case as found by the magistrate judge and adopted by the district judge, and supplemented from the record. On July 28, 2000, Mark Leonard, an agent of the MDEA, received information from a confidential informant that Faulkingham was a drug dealer who lived on Route 102 in Tremont, Maine, and drove a tan Lincoln Town Car. The confidential informant also told Leonard that Faulkingham’s driver’s license was suspended, a fact that Leonard confirmed later that day.
On August 1, Leonard and another MDEA agent, Robert Hutchings, set off for Tremont to follow up on the information Leonard received from the confidential informant. On their way, the agents obtained a 1996 jail photograph of Faulk-ingham from the Hancock County Sheriffs Department.
When the agents reached the residence, they observed it from their car, which was parked in a driveway not far away. At approximately 3:15 p.m., the agents saw a tan Lincoln Town Car leaving the driveway of the residence. They followed the Town Car, until it slowed down to a stop. Leonard and Hutchings thought the driver of the Town Car matched the person in the photograph of Faulkingham.
Hutchings approached the car, showed his identification shield, said he was an MDEA agent, and told the driver to “shut [his] car off, and get out of the car.” Faulkingham identified himself. Hutch-ings conducted a patdown search and found cash, heroin, and a syringe on Faulkingham. Hutchings then arrested Faulkingham for operating his vehicle after suspension of his license, handcuffed him, and seated him in the back seat of the agents’ car. Hutchings said to Faulking-ham: “[J]ust sit here. I don’t want you to say anything to me at this point. I have some paperwork we’re going to have to do. I have some paperwork I’m going to have to read to you.” Hutchings' also told Faulkingham that he was “seek[ing][his] cooperation.” Among the paperwork to which Hutchings referred was a form containing the, Miranda warning, which, if signed, would confirm that Faulkingham had received the warning.
Hutchings stored the evidence from the patdown search in the trunk of the car. When he returned to Faulkingham, he did not give him the
Miranda
warning, even though, as the magistrate judge noted, “Hutchings understood that he had a suspect in custody that he intended to interrogate.”
United States v. Faulkingham,
No. CRIM 01-04-B-S,
In the meantime, agent Leonard dealt with the two other passengers in the Town Car. After confirming that there were no warrants for the passengers, he told them they could leave, and they left the scene on foot.
Faulkingham told Hutchings that if he was going to cooperate, then the two pas *88 sengers who were walking away would pose a problem. One of the passengers, Faulkingham said, was the roommate of his supplier, and as soon as he returned to his home “the heroin will either be flushed or hidden or something.” Faulkingham also asked the agents what type of deal he could get if he decided to cooperate. The agents explained that they were not authorized to make any deals, but would pass on information about his cooperation to the prosecutor, who could work out a deal with Faulkingham’s attorney.
Leonard and Hutchings searched Faulk-ingham’s car, but found no other significant evidence. While they were searching the car, Faulkingham’s wife, who happened to drive by the scene, stopped in her red pickup truck. She was dismayed when Hutchings told her of Faulkingham’s arrest and said Faulkingham had recently completed a drug rehabilitation program. Hutchings gave Faulkingham’s wife permission to speak with him. Faulkingham apologized to her, and asked her to get some bail money and to call his attorney.
As the agents were finishing up their search of Faulkingham’s car, Faulkingham got the agents’ attention, and when they walked up to their car, he told them that if he was going to cooperate and be helpful to them, he would have to be on the phone with his supplier by 3:30 p.m. Hutchings and Leonard both realized that it was already 3:28 p.m. Leonard called the agents’ supervisor, Peter Arno, to get instructions on how to proceed. Arno gave the agents permission to have Faulkingham contact his supplier and record the phone call.
Faulkingham asked the agents to leave the roadside so that he would not be seen. After releasing Faulkingham from the handcuffs, Hutchings drove the agents’ car, with Faulkingham in it, to a marina about a mile away. Leonard followed them in the Town Car. At the marina, Faulkingham made a few attempts to contact his supplier, but he failed because of bad reception. Faulkingham also suspected that his supplier did not answer the phone because he did not recognize the caller ID number, or because the supplier’s roommate had already informed the supplier of Faulkingham’s arrest. The agents asked Faulkingham how he was feeling to be sure he was not yet sick. Faulkingham continued to appear normal.
Because Faulkingham could not reach his supplier from the marina, he persuaded the agents to go to his house and make the phone call from there. When they arrived at Faulkingham’s house, he did make contact with Mark Power, who he said was his supplier. 1 Faulkingham told Power that he had been stopped by the police just for “a driving thing,” and had been released by the police. He also told Power that he should come over to the Faulkingham residence with the heroin in order to hide it because MDEA agents were in the area. Eventually, Power arrived at the residence. After being confronted by the agents, Power also agreed to cooperate, and drugs were seized from Power’s residence.
Throughout the agents’ contact with Faulkingham, they did not administer the Miranda warning to him. At the suppression hearing, they conceded that they should have but had not done so. They explained that lack of time and the rapid pace of the events on the day of the arrest were the reasons for their omission.
*89 II.
Faulkingham, Power, and another co-conspirator were indicted for conspiracy to possess and distribute heroin and possessing heroin with the intent to distribute it, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), 21 U.S.C. § 846, and 18 U.S.C. § 2.
Faulkingham filed a motion to suppress the statements he made to the MDEA agents while in their custody, Mark Power’s testimony, and the heroin to which Power’s statements led the agents. The magistrate judge’s decision recommended the motion as to Faulkingham’s statements be granted because the agents did not give him the
Miranda
warning, but that the motion as to Power’s statements and the physical evidence be denied, because the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine does not apply to the
Miranda
exclusionary rule.
Faulkingham,
The district court modified the magistrate judge’s recommended decision by applying the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine to this
Miranda
violation, and suppressing not only Faulkingham’s custodial statements, but the derivative evidence of Power’s statements and the drugs.
Faulkingham,
The government now appeals from the suppression order. It argues that the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine does not apply to
Miranda
violations. The government also argues that this court’s opinion in
United States v. Byram,
III.
On an appeal of a disposition of a motion to suppress, “we accept the district
*90
court’s findings of fact unless clearly erroneous and evaluate its legal conclusions de novo.”
United States v. Chhien,
The requirement that a confession must be voluntary in order to be admitted into evidence rests on two constitutional bases: “the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Dickerson v. United States,
It is also clear, however, that Faulkingham’s statements were obtained in violation of the Fifth Amendment because he was not given a
Miranda
warning. As the district court correctly decided, his statements to the agents should therefore be suppressed. The question here is whether the reasons for mandating a
Miranda
warning to offset the impact of an inherently coercive custodial interrogation on an individual’s Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself,
Dickerson,
In
Elstad,
the Supreme Court reversed the suppression of derivative evidence in the form of a later warned and voluntary statement, after the initial statement was given without a
Miranda
warning, and was itself suppressed.
After the Supreme Court’s decision in
Elstad,
several circuits adopted a flat rule that a
Miranda
violation may never lead to suppression of derivative evidence.
See, e.g., United States v. Sterling,
By contrast, this court has expressed the tentative view, in the absence of further guidance from the Supreme Court, that
Elstad
“does not wholly bar the door to excluding evidence derived from a
Miranda
violation — at least where the
Miranda
violation is not merely technical, where there is a substantial nexus between the violation and the [fruits evidence], and
*91
where the [fruits evidence, in
Byram
a second statement made in open court,] is not itself preceded by an adequate
Miranda
warning.”
Byram,
There are at least three categories of evidence that may be derivative fruits of an un -Mirandized confession: physical evidence, statements by a witness who is not the unwarned defendant, and later statements by the defendant himself after an initial unwarned statement. Our decision in Byram and the Supreme Court’s decision in Elstad involved the third category — further statements by the defendant. This case involves, instead, only the first two categories — physical evidence and statements of another witness.
It is entirely plausible to think that the admissibility of these three different categories of evidence derived from un
-Miran-dized
custodial statements should be analyzed in different ways.
3
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court thus far has not differentiated in its analysis between the three categories of derivative evidence and, to the contrary, has used broad language, discouraging the use of the fruits doctrine following a
Miranda
violation, whatever the nature of the derivative evidence.
Elstad,
The most common application of the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is as a remedy for violations of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful arrests and searches. The Supreme Court first articulated the fruits doctrine in a case where the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
Wong Sun v. United States,
Elstad
drew a distinction between Fourth Amendment rights and Fifth Amendment rights, the latter being those that implicate
Miranda
warnings, and said that “a procedural
Miranda
violation differs in significant respects from violations of the Fourth Amendment.”
Elstad,
Faulkingham argues that Elstad’s continuing vitality has been called into question by
Dickerson,
which reaffirmed the status of Miranda’s warning requirement as a constitutional rule binding on the federal and state governments.
Dickerson,
We agree in part with Faulkingham:
Dickerson
does strengthen his claim. But
*93
Dickerson
does not itself win the day for him.
Dickerson
cited
Elstad,
without overruling it, stating that its “decision in that case — refusing to apply the traditional ‘fruits’ doctrine developed in Fourth Amendment cases — does not prove that
Miranda
is a nonconstitutional decision, but simply recognizes the fact that unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment are different from unwarned interrogation under the Fifth Amendment.”
Id.
at 440,
Unlike some other circuits, we are unwilling, at least until the Supreme Court addresses the issue, to say that the interest of deterrence may never lead to the suppression of derivative evidence from a
Miranda
violation. In
Byram,
this court suppressed both the original unwarned statements and later statements made at trial. The court considered the circumstances surrounding both the original confession and the later statement.
Byram,
But deterrence weighs less heavily on the Fifth Amendment legal scale, which balances the value of the derivative evidence to the truth seeking process against the protection of the défendant’s Fifth Amendment rights, once the defendant’s own statements are suppressed. The balance, to the extent the Supreme Court’s case law may permit balancing, necessarily involves weighing the reliability of the unwarned derivative evidence against the need for deterrence. Here, the derivative evidence is itself reliable. Further, the defendant’s own statements were not coerced and were not unreliable in the classic sense of involuntariness.
See Dickerson,
Faulkingham’s claim, taking all the surrounding circumstances into account, simply does not tip the balance toward a strong need for deterrence. Faulking-ham’s statement was not the result of “coercive official tactics.”
Faulkingham,
In fact, Faulkingham himself started talking without much questioning. Agent Hutchings requested Faulkingham’s cooperation, but Faulkingham, on his own, began to give the agents the information about Mark Power. When Faulkingham told the agents the crucial information that he must make the call to Power in the next few minutes, the agents were not even in their car with Faulkingham. They were in the process of searching Faulkingham’s ear, and Faulkingham got their attention because he wanted to speak to them.
The facts of this case also do not raise any of the concerns that are typically raised under other constitutional provisions that do trigger the fruits doctrine: there is no Fourth Amendment violation and no violation of the right to counsel. In addition, there is nothing to shock the conscience of the court and no fundamental unfairness. We do not say what the appropriate remedy would be if the facts surrounding the Miranda violation involved some of these other concerns or a very strong need for deterrence. Perhaps the Supreme Court will address those facts before we need to do so.
We do hold, on the facts here, that Faulkingham’s far weaker argument for recognition of a deterrence interest for suppression of derivative evidence arising from a negligent violation of his Miranda rights is insufficient to carry the day.
Accordingly, we reverse the grant of the suppression motion and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. So ordered.
Notes
. Power, who later cooperated with the government and became a witness against Faulk-ingham, denied this and claimed that Faulk-ingham himself was the supplier. In deciding the motion to suppress, the district court had no need to resolve this conflict, and neither do we.
. The district court in this case misapprehended
Byram
as setting down a hard and fast test that fruits evidence must be suppressed when "[flirst the
Miranda
violation [is] 'not merely technical.’ Second, there [is] 'a substantial nexus between the violation and the second statement.' Third ... 'the second statement is not itself preceded by an adequate
Miranda
warning.’ ”
Faulkingham,
. For example, it is arguable that further statements by a defendant himself should be most easily suppressed as the deterrence value of suppression is then high compared to the other two categories, and even later statements by a defendant may involve trustworthiness concerns. (But there is a counterargument that there is an intermediating opportunity for a later statement to be voluntary.
Cf. Elstad,
. The
Massiah
doctrine guarantees the defendant’s right to counsel once a criminal proceeding has been initiated, and forbids the government from " 'deliberately elicit[ing]' statements from the defendant, in the absence of counsel and without a proper waiver.”
United States
v.
LaBare,
. In fact, the requirement that a
Miranda
warning be administered by the police is often seen as a safe (though not impregnable) harbor for the police, benefitting the police, perhaps more than the defendant. R.A. Leo,
Questioning the Relevance of Miranda in the Twenty-First Century, 99
Mich. L.Rev. 1000, 1021-22 (2001) ("By creating the opportunity for police to read suspects their constitutional rights and by allowing police to obtain a signed waiver form that signifies consensual and non-coercive interrogation,
Miranda
has helped the police shield themselves from evi-dentiary challenges .... ”);
see also Dickerson,
