233) New York vs.

Quaries, 104 U.S. 2626

(1984)

FACTS:
A police officer pursued
a respondent in a
supermarket after a
woman identified him as
the man who raped her.
The officer frisked
respondent and
discovered that he was
wearing an empty gun
holster. After handcuffing
respondent, the officer
asked him where the gun
was. Respondent said,
"the gun is over there."
After the officer retrieved
the loaded gun, he
placed respondent under
arrest and read him his
Miranda rights. In the
subsequent prosecution
of respondent for
criminal possession of a
weapon, the lower courts
excluded the statement
and the gun because the
officer had not given
respondent his Miranda
warnings before asking
him where the gun was
located.

ISSUE:
Did the exigencies of the
situation justify the
officer’s failure to read
respondent his Miranda
rights until after he had
located the gun?
ANSWER:
Yes. 

CONCLUSION:
The Court held that in
this case, it presented a
situation where concern
for public safety must be
paramount compared to
adherence to the literal
language of the rules
enunciated in Miranda.
According to the Court,
the doctrinal
underpinnings of the
Miranda case did not
require that it be applied
rigorously to a situation
in which police officers
ask questions
reasonably prompted by
a concern for the public
safety. In the present
case, the Court held that
so long as the gun was
concealed somewhere in
the supermarket, it
posed more than one
danger to the public
safety: an accomplice
might make use of it, or a
customer or employee
might later come upon it.
So to conclude from the
implications of this case,
There is a "public safety"
exception to the
requirement that Miranda
warnings be given before
a suspect's answers may
be admitted into
evidence, and the
availability of that
exception does not
depend upon the
motivation of the
individual officers
involved. In an instant
situation where
spontaneity rather than
adherence to a police
procedures is
necessarily the order of
the day, the application
of the public safety
exception should govern.