New York v. Quarles

A rape victim told police her attacker had just entered a nearby supermarket carrying a gun; officers found Quarles (defendant), matching the description, who fled and was caught after a brief chase and frisked, revealing an empty gun holster. Before reading Miranda warnings, an officer asked Quarles where the gun was, and he gestured toward it saying "the gun is over there"; only after finding the gun did police read him his Miranda rights and question him further about his ownership of it. The trial court excluded both the pre-warning statement about the gun's location and the later answers as tainted by the Miranda violation, and also excluded the gun itself; New York's appellate courts affirmed, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.