<P> The "public safety" exception is a limited and case - specific exception, allowing certain unadvised statements (given without Miranda warnings) to be admissible into evidence at trial when they were elicited in circumstances where there was great danger to public safety; thus, the Miranda rule provides some elasticity . </P> <P> The public safety exception derives from New York v. Quarles (1984), a case in which the Supreme Court considered the admissibility of a statement elicited by a police officer who apprehended a rape suspect who was thought to be carrying a firearm . The arrest took place during the middle of the night in a supermarket that was open to the public but apparently deserted except for the clerks at the checkout counter . When the officer arrested the suspect, he found an empty shoulder holster, handcuffed the suspect, and asked him where the gun was . The suspect nodded in the direction of the gun (which was near some empty cartons) and said, "The gun is over there". The Supreme Court found that such an unadvised statement was admissible in evidence because "(i) na kaleidoscopic situation such as the one confronting these officers, where spontaneity rather than adherence to a police manual is necessarily the order of the day, the application of the exception we recognize today should not be made to depend on post hoc findings at a suppression hearing concerning the subjective motivation of the police officer". Thus, the jurisprudential rule of Miranda must yield in "a situation where concern for public safety must be paramount to adherence to the literal language of the prophylactic rules enunciated in Miranda". </P> <P> Under this exception, to be admissible in the government's direct case at a trial, the questioning must not be "actually compelled by police conduct which overcame his will to resist", and must be focused and limited, involving a situation "in which police officers ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety". </P> <P> In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation encouraged agents to use a broad interpretation of public safety - related questions in terrorism cases, stating that the "magnitude and complexity" of terrorist threats justified "a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case", continuing to list such examples as: "questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might pose an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations, and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks". A Department of Justice spokesman described this position as not altering the constitutional right, but as clarifying existing flexibility in the rule . </P>

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