skip to Main Content
Name: Missouri v. Seibert
Case #: 02-1371
Court: US Supreme Court
District USSup
Citation: 542 U.S. 600
Summary

Where an officer deliberately elicits incriminating statements without administering warnings under Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, and then in the course of a nearly continuous interrogation subsequently elicits the same statements following Miranda warnings, the latter statement must also be suppressed. A four-justice plurality held that the post-advisement statement was not made admissible under Oregon v. Elstad (1985) 470 U.S. 298 because under the circumstances of this case the late advisement was unlikely to have accomplished the goals of the Miranda rule, i.e., to reduce the risk of admitting a coerced statement at trial. Justice Breyer, who joined the plurality opinion, wrote separately to suggest that the fruits of a first, unwarned statement should be suppressed unless the failure to warn was in good faith. Justice Kennedy concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to argue that the balancing test adopted by the plurality was too difficult to apply and diluted the clarity of the Miranda requirements, and that in his view the test devised in Elstad was the better test and would still require suppression in the case at bar, where unadvised statements were deliberately elicited and no curative steps were taken to ensure the voluntariness of the subsequent statements.

Opinion Date: 06/28/2004