437 U.S. 385 (1978)
On October 28, 1974, undercover police officer Barry Headricks arranged to purchase a quantity of heroin from Rufus Mincey at Mincey's apartment in Tucson, Arizona.1 Headricks entered the apartment accompanied by an informant while nine other plainclothes officers and a deputy county attorney waited outside.2
After a short while, Headricks left the apartment and told the waiting officers that he had seen narcotics and narcotics paraphernalia inside.3 The officers then radioed for a search warrant and positioned themselves outside the apartment.4 Shortly thereafter the officers heard sounds of a struggle, forced entry, and a shootout followed in which Headricks was fatally wounded, Mincey was shot and left semiconscious, and another man in the apartment was also shot and later died.5
Mincey was taken to the hospital in critical condition, placed in the intensive care unit, and connected to breathing tubes, a stomach tube, a bladder catheter, and intravenous feeding equipment while receiving pain medication and other drugs.6 Homicide detectives arrived within ten minutes of the shooting, supervised removal of the wounded, and then conducted a warrantless search of the entire apartment that lasted four days.7 Officers opened drawers, closets, and cupboards, emptied clothing pockets, dug bullet fragments from walls and floors, pulled up sections of carpet, photographed and diagrammed every room, and seized between two hundred and three hundred objects including narcotics and paraphernalia.8
The evening of the shooting and again the next day, Detective Hust questioned Mincey in the intensive care unit.9 Unable to speak because of the breathing tube, Mincey wrote answers on paper while in pain and under medication; he repeatedly stated that he wanted a lawyer and asked that questioning stop, yet Hust continued the interrogation for several hours across multiple sessions interrupted only by medical treatment or loss of consciousness.10 At a single trial Mincey was convicted of murder, assault, and three counts of narcotics offenses; the trial court admitted both the evidence seized during the four-day search and Mincey's hospital statements over his objections.11
The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the murder and assault convictions on state-law grounds but affirmed the narcotics convictions, upholding the search under a homicide-scene exception and finding the statements voluntary.12 The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the constitutional questions presented by the search and the statements.13
Whether the warrantless search of the petitioner's apartment was constitutional under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments?14
The Fourth Amendment proscribes all unreasonable searches and seizures. Searches conducted outside the judicial process without prior approval by judge or magistrate are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. A possible homicide does not create a categorical exception to the warrant requirement.15
No. The homicide detectives arrived within ten minutes and all persons had been located before they began their search.16 The subsequent four-day search that opened drawers, emptied pockets, dug bullet fragments from walls and floors, pulled up carpet sections, and seized two hundred to three hundred objects cannot be justified by any emergency threatening life or limb.17
The public interest in investigating murder does not create exigent circumstances because the police guard minimized loss of evidence and a warrant could easily have been obtained.18
The warrantless search of the petitioner's apartment violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.19
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Joined by Justice Brennan
Justice Marshall joined the opinion of the Court. He wrote separately to emphasize that the decision does not affect the validity of the hot pursuit exception to the warrant requirement or the right of police to enter a dwelling to render emergency aid to an injured person.20
Marshall further noted that Stone v. Powell places a greater burden on the Court to ensure uniform federal law on Fourth Amendment questions because federal habeas review is unavailable after that decision.21
Justice Rehnquist joined Part I of the Court's opinion rejecting the murder scene exception. He agreed that the four-day warrantless search did not fit within any usual exigent circumstances exception recognized by the Court.22
Rehnquist wrote separately to emphasize that the question of what evidence was seized under established Fourth Amendment standards is left open for the Arizona courts to resolve on remand.23 He observed that the constitutionality of a particular search depends on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security.24 Prior intrusions occasioned by the shooting and the police response may legitimize a search under some exigencies that in tamer circumstances might not permit a search.25
Whether the statements made by the petitioner while in a hospital were admitted in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?26
Any criminal trial use against a defendant of his involuntary statement is a denial of due process of law even though there is ample evidence aside from the confession to support the conviction. Statements are involuntary if they are not the product of a rational intellect and a free will.27
Yes. Mincey had been seriously wounded hours earlier, was in the intensive care unit attached to breathing tubes, a stomach tube, a bladder catheter, and intravenous equipment, complained of unbearable pain, repeatedly wrote that he wanted a lawyer and asked that questioning stop, yet Detective Hust continued the interrogation for several hours across multiple sessions interrupted only by medical treatment or loss of consciousness, rendering the statements the product of coercion that overbore his will.28
The hospital statements were involuntary and their admission violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.29
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Justice Rehnquist dissented from Part II of the Court's opinion.30 He argued that the Court failed to accord the state-court finding of voluntariness the deference due under precedents such as Townsend v. Sain and Haynes v. Washington.
Rehnquist noted that the trial court and Arizona Supreme Court were entitled to conclude the statements were voluntary based on testimony that Mincey was alert, cooperative, and not under the influence of drugs.31 He concluded that the Court improperly substituted its own judgment for that of the trial court and state supreme court on a cold record.32