We are called upon in this case to decide issues under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments arising in the context of a state criminal trial for the commission of a particularly brutal murder. As in every case, our single duty is to determine the issues presented in accord with the Constitution and the law.

Pamela Mason, a 14-year-old girl, left her home in Manchester, New Hampshire, on the evening of January 13, 1964, during a heavy snowstorm, apparently in response to a man's telephone call for a babysitter. Eight days later, after a thaw, her body was found by the site of a major north-south highway several miles away. She had been murdered. The event created great alarm in the area, and the police immediately began a massive investigation.

On January 28, having learned from a neighbor that the petitioner, Edward Coolidge, had been away from home on the evening of the girl's disappearance, the police went to his house to question him. They asked him, among other things, if he owned any guns, and he produced three, two shotguns and a rifle. They also asked whether he would take a lie-detector test concerning his account of his activities on the night of the disappearance. He agreed to do so on the following Sunday, his day off. The police later described his attitude on the occasion of this visit as fully 'cooperative.' His wife was in the house throughout the interview.

On the following Sunday, a policeman called Coolidge early in the morning and asked him to come down to the police station for the trip to Concord, New Hampshire, where the lie-detector test was to be administered. That evening, two plainclothes policemen arrived at the Coolidge house, where Mrs. Coolidge was waiting with her mother-in-law for her husband's return. These two policemen were not the two who had visited the house earlier in the week, and they apparently did not know that Collidge had displayed three guns for inspection during the earlier visit. The plainclothesmen told Mrs. Coolidge that her husband was in 'serious trouble' and probably would not be home that night. They asked Coolidge's mother to leave, and proceeded to question Mrs. Coolidge. During the course of the interview they obtained from her four guns belonging to Coolidge, and some clothes that Mrs. Coolidge thought her husband might have been wearing on the evening of Pamela Mason's disappearance.

Coolidge was held in jail on an unrelated charge that night, but he was released the next day.1 During the ensuing two and a half weeks, the State accumulated a quantity of evidence to support the theory that it was he who had killed Pamela Mason. On February 19, the results of the investigation were presented at a meeting between the police officers working on the case and the State Attorney General, who had personally taken charge of all police activities relating to the murder, and was later to serve as chief prosecutor at the trial. At this meeting, it was decided that there was enough evidence to justify the arrest of Coolidge on the murder charge and a search of his house and two cars. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Manchester police chief made formal application, under oath, for the arrest and search warrants. The complaint supporting the warrant for a search of Coolidge's Pontiac automobile, the only warrant that concerns us here, stated that the affiant 'has probable cause to suspect and believe, and does suspect and believe, and herewith offers satisfactory evidence, that there are certain objects and things used in the Commission of said offense, now kept, and concealed in or upon a certain vehicle, to wit: 1951 Pontiac two-door sedan * * *.' The warrants were then signed and issued by the Attorney General himself, acting as a justice of the peace. Under New Hampshire law in force at that time, all justices of the peace were authorized to issue search warrants. N.H.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 595:1 (repealed 1969).

The police arrested Coolidge in his house on the day the warrant issued. Mrs. Coolidge asked whether she might remain in the house with her small child, but was told that she must stay elsewhere, apparently in part because the police believed that she would be harassed by reporters if she were accessible to them. When she asked whether she might take her car, she was told that both cars had been 'impounded,' and that the police would provide transportation for her. Some time later, the police called a towing company, and about two and a half hours after Coolidge had been taken into custody the cars were towed to the police station. It appears that at the time of the arrest the cars were parked in the Coolidge driveway, and that although dark had fallen they were plainly visible both from the street and from inside the house where Coolidge was actually arrested. The 1951 Pontiac was searched and vacuumed on February 21, two days after it was seized, again a year later, in January 1965, and a third time in April 1965.

At Coolidge's subsequent jury trial on the charge of murder, vacuum sweepings, including particles of gun powder, taken from the Pontiac were introduced in evidence against him, as part of an attempt by the State to show by microscopic analysis that it was highly probable that Pamela Mason had been in Coolidge's car.2 Also introduced in evidence was one of the guns taken by the police on their Sunday evening visit to the Coolidge house—a 22-caliber Mossberg rifle, which the prosecution claimed was the murder weapon. Conflicting ballistics testimony was offered on the question whether the bullets found in Pamela Mason's body had been fired from this rifle. Finally, the prosecution introduced vacuum sweepings of the clothes taken from the Coolidge house that same Sunday evening, and attempted to show through microscopic analysis that there was a high probability that the clothes had been in contact with Pamela Mason's body. Pretrial motions to suppress all this evidence were referred by the trial judge to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which ruled the evidence admissible. 106 N.H. 186, 208 A.2d 322. The jury found Coolidge guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of conviction, 109 N.H. 403, 260 A.2d 547, and we granted certiorari to consider the constitutional questions raised by the admission of this evidence against Coolidge at his trial. 399 U.S. 926, 90 S.Ct. 2253, 26 L.Ed.2d 806.

* The petitioner's first claim is that the warrant authorizing the seizure and subsequent search of his 1951 Pontiac automobile was invalid because not issued by a 'neutral and detached magistrate.' Since we agree with the petitioner that the warrant was invalid for this reason, we need not consider his further argument that the allegations under oath supporting the issuance of the warrant were so conclusory as to violate relevant constitutional standards. Cf. Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503; Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723.

The classic statement of the policy underlying the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment is that of Mr. Justice Jackson, writing for the Court in Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13—14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436:

'The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. * * * When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or Government enforcement agent.'

Cf. United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452, 464, 52 S.Ct. 420, 423, 76 L.Ed. 877; Giordenello v. United States, supra, at 486, 78 S.Ct., at 1250; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 481—482, 83 S.Ct. 407, 413—414, 9 L.Ed.2d 441; Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 356—357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576.

In this case, the determination of probable cause was made by the chief 'government enforcement agent' of the State—the Attorney General—who was actively in charge of the investigation and later was to be chief prosecutor at the trial. To be sure, the determination was formalized here by a writing bearing the title 'Search Warrant,' whereas in Johnson there was no piece of paper involved, but the State has not attempted to uphold the warrant on any such artificial basis. Rather, the State argues that the Attorney General, who was unquestionably authorized as a justice of the peace to issue warrants under then existing state law, did in fact act as a 'neutral and detached magistrate.' Further, the State claims that any magistrate, confronted with the showing of probable cause made by the Manchester chief of police, would have issued the warrant in question. To the first proposition it is enough to answer that there could hardly be a more appropriate setting than this for a per se rule of disqualification rather than a case-by-case evaluation of all the circumstances. Without disrespect to the state law enforcement agent here involved, the whole point of the basic rule so well expressed by Mr. Justice Jackson is that prosecutors and policemen simply cannot be asked to maintain the requisite neutrality with regard to their own investigations—the 'competitive enterprise' that must rightly engage their single-minded attention.3 Cf. Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U.S. 364, 371, 88 S.Ct. 2120, 2125, 20 L.Ed.2d 1154. As for the proposition that the existence of probable cause renders noncompliance with the warrant procedure an irrelevance, it is enough to cite Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 33, 46 S.Ct. 416, 70 L.Ed. 145, decided in 1925:

'Belief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house, furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant. And such searches are held unlawful notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause.'

See also Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 497—498, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1256, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514; Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392, 40 S.Ct. 182, 183, 64 L.Ed. 319. ('(T)he rights * * * against unlawful search and seizure are to be protected even if the same result might have been achieved in a lawful way.')

But the New Hampshire Supreme Court, in upholding the conviction, relied upon the theory that even if the warrant procedure here in issue would clearly violate the standards imposed on the Federal Government by the Fourth Amendment, it is not forbidden the States under the Fourteenth. This position was premised on a passage from the opinion of this Court in Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 31, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 1628, 10 L.Ed.2d 726:

'Preliminary to our examination of the search and seizures involved here, it might be helpful for us to indicate what was not decided in Mapp (v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081). First, it must be recognized that the 'principles governing the admissibility of evidence in federal criminal trials have not been restricted * * * to those derived solely from the Constitution. In the exercise of its supervisory authority over the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts * * * this Court has * * * formulated rules of evidence to be applied in federal criminal prosecutions.' McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 341, 63 S.Ct. 608, 613, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943); * * * Mapp, however, established no assumption by this Court of supervisory authority over state courts * * * and, consequently, it implied no total obliteration of state laws relating to arrests and searches in favor of federal law. Mapp sounded no death knell for our federalism; rather, it echoed the sentiment of Elkins v. United States, supra, 364 U.S. (206), at 221, 80 S.Ct. (1437), at 1446, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669, that 'a healthy federalism depends upon the avoidance of needless conflict between state and federal courts' by itself urging that '(f)ederal-state cooperation in the solution of crime under constitutional standards will be promoted, if only by recognition of their now mutual obligation to respect the same fundamental criteria in their approaches.' 367 U.S., at 658, 81 S.Ct., at 1693, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081.' (Emphasis in Ker.)

It is urged that the New Hampshire statutes which at the time of the searches here involved permitted a law enforcement officer himself to issue a warrant was one of those 'workable rules governing arrests, searches and seizures to meet 'the practical demands of effective criminal investigation and law enforcement' in the States,' id., at 34, 83 S.Ct., at 1630, authorized by Ker.

That such a procedure was indeed workable from the point of view of the police is evident from testimony at the trial in this case:

'The Court: You mean that another police officer issues these (search warrants)?

'The Witness: Yes. Captain Couture and Captain Shea and Captain Loveren are J.P.'s.

'The Court: Well, let me ask you, Chief, your answer is to the effect that you never go out of the department for the Justice of the Peace?

'The Witness: It hasn't been our—policy to go out of the deparment.

'Q. Right. Your policy and experience, is to have a fellow police officer take the warrant in the capacity of Justice of the Peace?

'A. That has been our practice.' But it is too plain for extensive discussion that this now abandoned New Hampshire method of issuing 'search warrants' violated a fundamental premise of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments—a premise fully developed and articulated long before this Court's decisions in Ker v. California, supra, and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081. As Mr.Justice Frankfurter put it in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27—28, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361, 93 L.Ed. 1782:

'The security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police—which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment—is basic to a free society. It is therefore implicit in 'the concept of ordered liberty' and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause. The knock at the door, whether by day or by night, as a prelude to a search, without authority of law but solely on the authority of the police, did not need the commentary of recent history to be condemned * * *.'

We find no escape from the conclusion that the seizure and search of the Pontiac automobile cannot constitutionally rest upon the warrant issued by the state official who was the chief investigator and prosecutor in this case. Since he was not the neutral and detached magistrate required by the Constitution, the search stands on no firmer ground than if there had been no warrant at all. If the seizure and search are to be justified, they must, therefore, be justified on some other theory.

The State proposes three distinct theories to bring the facts of this case within one or another of the exceptions to the warrant requirement. In considering them, we must not lose sight of the Fourth Amendment's fundamental guarantee. Mr. Justice Bradley's admonition in his opinion for the Court almost a century ago in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 635, 6 S.Ct. 524, 535, 29 L.Ed. 746, is worth repeating here:

'It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.'4

Thus the most basic constitutional rule in this area is that '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.'5 The exceptions are 'jealously and carefully drawn,'6 and there must be 'a showing by those who seek exemption * * * that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.'7 '(T)he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.'8 In times of unrest, whether caused by crime or racial conflict or fear of internal subversion, this basic law and the values that it represents may appear unrealistic or 'extravagant' to some. But the values were those of the authors of our fundamental constitutional concepts. In times not altogether unlike our own they won—by legal and constitutional means in England,9 and by revolution on this continent—a right of personal security against arbitrary intrusions by official power. If times have changed, reducing everyman's scope to do as he pleases in an urban and industrial world, the changes have made the values served by the Fourth Amendment more, not less, important.10

The State's first theory is that the seizure on February 19 and subsequent search of Coolidge's Pontiac were 'incident' to a valid arrest. We assume that the arrest of Coolidge inside his house was valid, so that the first condition of a warrantless 'search incident' is met. Whiteley v. Warden, Wyoming State Penitentiary, 401 U.S. 560, 567 n. 11, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 1037, 28 L.Ed.2d 306. And since the events in issue took place in 1964, we assess the State's argua different result where the arrest is made inside the house and the search outside and at some distance away.11

Even assuming, arguendo, that the police might have searched the Pontiac in the driveway when they arrested Coolidge in the house, Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777, makes plain that they could not legally seize the car, remove it, and search it at their leisure without a warrant. In circumstances virtually identical to those here, Mr. Justice Black's opinion for a unanimous Court held that '(o)nce an accused is under arrest and in custody, then a search (of his car) made at another place, without a warrant, is simply not incident to the arrest.' Id., at 367, 84 S.Ct., at 883. Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg. Co., 391 U.S. 216, 88 S.Ct. 1472, 20 L.Ed.2d 538. Cf. Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 47, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 26 L.Ed.2d 419. Search-incident doctrine, in short, has no applicability to this case.12

The second theory put forward by the State to justify a warrantless seizure and search of the Pontiac car is that under Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543, the police may make a warrantless search of an automobile whenever they have probable cause to do so, and, under our decision last Term in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, whenever the police may make a legal contemporaneous search under Carroll, they may also seize the car, take it to the police station, and search it there. But even granting that the police had probable cause to search the car, the application of the Carroll case to these facts would extend it far beyond its original rationale.

Carroll did indeed hold that 'contraband goods concealed and illegally transported in an automobile or other vehicle may be searched for without a warrant,'13 provided that 'the seizing officer shall have reasonable or probable cause for believing that the automobile which he stops and seizes has contraband liquor therein which is being illegally transported.'14 Such searches had been explicitly authorized by Congress, and, as we have pointed out elsewhere,15 in the conditions of the time '(a)n automobile * * * was an almost indispensable instrumentality in large-scale violation of the National Prohibition Act, and the car itself therefore was treated somewhat as an offender and became contraband.' In two later cases,16 each involving an occupied automobile stopped on the open highway and searched for contraband liquor, the Court followed and reaffirmed Carroll.17 And last Term in Chambers, supra, we did so again.

The underlying rationale of Carroll and of all the cases that have followed it is that there is

'a necessary difference between a search of a store, dwelling house, or other structure in respect of which a proper official warrant readily may be obtained and a search of a ship, motor boat, wagon, or automobile for contraband goods, where it is not practicable to secure a warrant, because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.' 267 U.S., at 153, 45 S.Ct., at 285. (Emphasis supplied.)

As we said in Chambers, supra, at 51, 90 S.Ct., at 1981, 'exigent circumstances' justify the warrantless search of 'an automobile stopped on the highway,' where there is probable cause, because the car is 'movable, the occupants are alerted, and the car's contents may never be found again if a warrant must be obtained.' '(T)he opportunity to search is fleeting * * *.' (Emphasis supplied.)

In this case, the police had known for some time of the probable role of the Pontiac car in the crime. Coolidge was aware that he was a suspect in the Mason murder, but he had been extremely cooperative throughout the investigation, and there was no indication that he meant to flee. He had already had ample opportunity to destroy any evidence he thought incriminating. There is no suggestion that, on the night in question, the car was being used for any illegal purpose, and it was regularly parked in the driveway of his house. The opportunity for search was thus hardly 'fleeting.' The objects that the police are assumed to have had probable cause to search for in the car were neither stolen nor contraband nor dangerous.

When the police arrived at the Coolidge house to arrest him, two officers were sent to guard the back door while the main party approached from the front. Coolidge was arrested inside the house, without resistance of any kind on his part, after he had voluntarily admitted the officers at both front and back doors. There was no way in which he could conceivably have gained access to the automobile after the police arrived on his property. When Coolidge had been taken away, the police informed Mrs. Coolidge, the only other adult occupant of the house, that she and her bady had to spend the night elsewhere and that she could not use either of the Coolidge cars. Two police officers then drove her in a police car to the house of a relative in another town, and they stayed with her there until around midnight, long after the police had had the Pontiac towed to the station house. The Coolidge premises were guarded throughout the night by two policemen.18

The word 'automobile' is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears. And surely there is nothing in this case to invoke the meaning and purpose of the rule of Carroll v. United States—no alerted criminal bent on flight, no fleeting opportunity on an open highway after a hazardous chase, no contraband or stolen goods or weapons, no confederates waiting to move the evidence, not even the inconvenience of a special police detail to guard the immobilized autobile. In short, by no possible stretch of the legal imagination can this be made into a case where 'it is not practicable to secure a warrant,' Carroll, supra, at 153, 45 S.Ct., at 285, and the 'automobile exception,' despite its label, is simply irrelevant.19

Since Carroll would not have justified a warrantless search of the Pontiac at the time Coolidge was arrested, the later search at the station house was plainly illegal, at least so far as the automobile exception is concerned. Chambers, supra, is of no help to the State, since that case held only that, where the police may stop and search an automobile under Carroll, they may also seize it and search it later at the police station.20 Rather, this case is controlled by Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg. Co., supra. There the police lacked probable cause to seize or search the defendant's automobile at the time of his arrest, and this was enough by itself to condemn the subsequent search at the station house. Here there was probable cause, but no exigent circumstances justified the police in proceeding without a warrant. As in Dyke, the later search at the station house was therefore illegal.21

The State's third theory in support of the warrantless seizure and search of the Pontiac car is that the car itself was an 'instrumentality of the crime,' and as such might be seized by the police on Coolidge's property because it was in plain view. Supposing the seizure to be thus lawful, the case of Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 87 S.Ct. 788, 17 L.Ed.2d 730, is said to support a subsequent warrantless search at the station house, with or without probable cause. Of course, the distinction between an 'instrumentality of crime' and 'mere evidence' was done away with by Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782, and we may assume that the police had probable cause to seize the automobile.22 But, for the reasons that follow, we hold that the 'plain view' exception to the warrant requirement is inapplicable to this case. Since the seizure was therefore illegal, it is unnecessary to consider the applicability of Cooper, supra, to the subsequent search.23

It is well established that under certain circumstances the police may seize evidence in plain view without a warrant. But it is important to keep in mind that, in the vast majority of cases, any evidence seized by the police will be in plain view, at least at the moment of seizure. The problem with the 'plain view' doctrine has been to identify the circumstances in which plain view has legal significance rather than being simply the normal concomitant of any search, legal or illegal.

An example of the applicability of the 'plain view' doctrine is the situation in which the police have a warrant to search a given area for specified objects, and in the course of the search come across some other article of incriminating character. Cf. Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 358, 51 S.Ct. 153, 158, 75 L.Ed. 374; United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452, 465, 52 S.Ct. 420, 423, 76 L.Ed. 877; Steele v. United States, 267 U.S. 498, 45 S.Ct. 414, 69 L.Ed. 757; Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 571, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 1251, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (Stewart, J., concurring in result). Where the initial intrusion that brings the police within plain view of such an article is supported, not by a warrant, but by one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, the seizure is also legitimate. Thus the police may inadvertently come across evidence while in 'hot pursuit' of a fleeing suspect. Warden v. Hayden, supra; cf. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 44 S.Ct. 445, 68 L.Ed. 898. And an object that comes into view during a search incident to arrest that is appropriately limited in scope under existing law may be seized without a warrant.24 Chimel v. California, 395 U.S., at 762—763, 89 S.Ct., at 2039—2040. Finally, the 'plain view' doctrine has been applied where a police officer is not searching for evidence against the accused, but nonetheless inadvertently comes across an incriminating object. Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067; Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684; Ker v. California, 374 U.S., at 43, 83 S.Ct., at 1635. Cf. Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312.

What the 'plain view' cases have in common is that the police officer in each of them had a prior justification for an intrusion in the course of which he came inadvertently across a piece of evidence incriminating the accused. The doctrine serves to supplement the prior justification—whether it be a warrant for another object, hot pursuit, search incident to lawful arrest, or some other legitimate reason for being present unconnected with a search directed against the accused—and permits the warrantless seizure. Of course, the extension of the original justification is legitimate only where it is immediately apparent to the police that they have evidence before them; the 'plan view' doctrine may not be used to extend a general exploratory search from one object to another until something incriminating at last emerges. Cf. Stanley v. Georgia, supra, at 571—572, 89 S.Ct., at 1251 (Stewart, J., concurring in result).

The rationale for the 'plain view' exception is evident if we keep in mind the two distinct constitutional protections served by the warrant requirement. First, the magistrate's scrutiny is intended to eliminate altogether searches not based on probable cause. The premise here is that any intrusion in the way of search or seizure is an evil, so that no intrusion at all is justified without a careful prior determination of necessity. See, e.g., McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 83 L.Ed. 153; Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782; Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576; Chimel v. California, 395 U.S., at 761—762, 89 S.Ct., at 2039. The second, distinct objective is that those searches deemed necessary should be as limited as possible. Here, the specific evil is the 'general warrant' abhorred by the colonists, and the problem is not that of intrusion per se, but of a general, exploratory rummaging in a person's belongings. See, e.g., Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S., at 624—630, 6 S.Ct., at 528—532; Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 195—196, 48 S.Ct. 74, 75—76, 72 L.Ed. 231; Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 85 S.Ct. 506, 13 L.Ed.2d 431. The warrant accomplishes this second objective by requiring a 'particular description' of the things to be seized.

The 'plain view' doctrine is not in conflict with the first objective because plain view does not occur until a search is in progress. In each case, this initial intrusion is justified by a warrant or by an exception such as 'hot pursuit' or search incident to a lawful arrest, or by an extraneous valid reason for the officer's presence. And, given the initial intrusion, the seizure of an object in plain view is consistent with the second objective, since it does not convert the search into a general or exploratory one. As against the minor peril to Fourth Amendment protections, there is a major gain in effective law enforcement. Where, once an otherwise lawful search is in progress, the police inadvertently come upon a piece of evidence, it would often be a needless inconvenience, and sometimes dangerous—to the evidence or to the police themselves—to require them to ignore it until they have obtained a warrant particularly describing it.

The limits on the doctrine are implicit in the statement of its rationale. The first of these is that plain view alone is never enough to justify the warrantless seizure of evidence. This is simply a corollary of the familiar principle discussed above, that no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless search or seizure absent 'exigent circumstances.' Incontrovertible testimony of the senses that an incriminating object is on premises belonging to a criminal suspect may establish the fullest possible measure of probable cause. But even where the object is contraband, this Court has repeatedly stated and enforced the basic rule that the police may not enter and make a warrantless seizure. Taylor v. United States, 286 U.S. 1, 52 S.Ct. 466, 76 L.Ed. 951; Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153; Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 497—498, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1256—1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514; Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 81 S.Ct. 776, 5 L.Ed.2d 828; Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 68 S.Ct. 1229, 92 L.Ed. 1663.25

The second limitation is that the discovery of evidence in plain view must be inadvertent.26 The rationale of the exception to the warrant requirement, as just stated, is that a plain-view seizure will not turn an initially valid (and therefore limited) search into a 'general' one, while the inconvenience of procuring a warrant to cover an inadvertent discovery is great. But where the discovery is anticipated, where the police know in advance the location of the evidence and intend to seize it, the situation is altogether different. The requirement of a warrant to seize imposes no inconvenience whatever, or at least none which is constitutionally cognizable in a legal system that regards warrantless searches as 'per se unreasonable' in the absence of 'exigent circumstances.'

If the initial intrusion is bottomed upon a warrant that fails to mention a particular object, though the police know its location and intend to seize it, then there is a violation of the express constitutional requirement of 'Warrants * * * particularly describing * * * (the) things to be seized.' The initial intrusion may, of course, be legitimated not by a warrant but by one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as hot pursuit or search incident to lawful arrest. But to extend the scope of such an intrusion to the seizure of objects—not contraband nor stolen nor dangerous in themselves—which the police know in advance they will find in plain view and intend to seize, would fly in the face of the basic rule that no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless seizure.27

In the light of what has been said, it is apparent that the 'plain view' exception cannot justify the police seizure of the Pontiac car in this case. The police had ample opportunity to obtain a valid warrant; they knew the automobile's exact description and location well in advance; they intended to seize it when they came upon Coolidge's property. And this is not a case involving contraband or stolen goods or objects dangerous in themselves.28

The seizure was therefore unconstitutional, and so was the subsequent search at the station house. Since evidence obtained in the course of the search was admitted at Coolidge's trial, the judgment must be reversed and the case remanded to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081.

In his dissenting opinion today, Mr. Justice WHITE marshals the arguments that can be made against our interpretation of the 'automobile' and 'plain view' exceptions to the warrant requirement. Beyond the unstartling proposition that when a line is drawn there is often not a great deal of difference between the situations closest to it on either side, there is a single theme that runs through what he has to say about the two exceptions. Since that theme is a recurring one in controversies over the proper meaning and scope of the Fourth Amendment, it seems appropriate to treat his views in this separate section, rather than piecemeal.

Much the most important part of the conflict that has been so notable in this Court's attempts over a hundred years to develop a coherent body of Fourth Amendment law has been caused by disagreement over the importance of requiring law enforcement officers to secure warrants. Some have argued that a determination by a magistrate of probable cause as a precondition of any search or seizure is so essential that the Fourth Amendment is violated whenever the police might reasonably have obtained a warrant but failed to do so. Others have argued with equal force that a test of reasonableness, applied after the fact of search or seizure when the police attempt to introduce the fruits in evidence, affords ample safeguard for the rights in question, so that '(t)he relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable.'29

Both sides to the controversy appear to recognize a distinction between searches and seizures that take place on a man's property—his home or office—and those carried out elsewhere. It is accepted, at least as a matter of principle, that a search or seizure carried out on a suspect's premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions based on the presence of 'exigent circumstances.'30 As to other kinds of intrusions, however, there has been disagreement about the basic rules to be applied, as our cases concerning automobile searches, electronic surveillance, street searches and administrative searches make clear.31

With respect to searches and seizures carried out on a suspect's premises, the conflict has been over the question of what qualifies as an 'exigent circumstance.' It might appear that the difficult inquiry would be when it is that the police can enter upon a person's property to seize his 'person * * * papers, and effects,' without prior judicial approval. The question of the scope of search and seizure once the police are on the premises would appear to be subsidiary to the basic issue of when intrusion is permissible. But the law has not developed in this fashion.

The most common situation in which Fourth Amendment issues have arisen has been that in which the police enter the suspect's premises, arrest him, and then carry out a warrantless search and seizure of evidence. Where there is a warrant for the suspect's arrest, the evidence seized may later be challenged either on the ground that the warrant was improperly issued because there was not probable cause,32 or on the ground that the police search and seizure went beyond that which they could carry out as an incident to the execution of the arrest warrant.33 Where the police act without an arrest warrant, the suspect may argue that an arrest warrant was necessary, that there was no probable cause to arrest,34 or that even if the arrest was valid, the search and seizure went beyond permissible limits.35 Perhaps because each of these lines of attack offers a plethora of litigable issues, the more fundamental question of when the police may arrest a man in his house without a warrant has been little considered in the federal courts. This Court has chosen on a number of occasions to assume the validity of an arrest and decide the case before it on the issue of the scope of permissible warrantless search. E.g., Chimel v. California, supra. The more common inquiry has therefore been: 'Assuming a valid police entry for purposes of arrest, what searches and seizures may the police carry out without prior authorization by a magistrate?'

Two very broad, and sharply contrasting answers to this question have been assayed by this Court in the past. The answer of Trupiano v. United States, supra, was that no searches and seizures could be legitimated by the mere fact of valid entry for purposes of arrest, so long as there was no showing of special difficulties in obtaining a warrant for search and seizure. The contrasting answer in Harris v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399, and United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, was that a valid entry for purposes of arrest served to legitimate warrantless searches and seizure throughout the premises where the arrest occurred, however spacious those premises might be.

The approach taken in Harris and Rabinowitz was open to the criticism that it made it so easy for the police to arrange to search a man's premises without a warrant that the Constitution's protection of a man's 'effects' became a dead letter. The approach taken in Trupiano, on the other hand, was open to the criticism that it was absurd to permit the police to make an entry in the dead of night for purposes of seizing the 'person' by main force, and then refuse them permission to seize objects lying around in plain sight. It is arguable that if the very substantial intrusion implied in the entry and arrest are 'reasonable' in Fourth Amendment terms, then the less intrusive search incident to arrest must also be reasonable.

This argument against the Trupiano approach is of little force so long as it is assumed that the police must, in the absence of one of a number of defined exceptions based on 'exigent circumstances,' obtain an arrest warrant before entering a man's house to seize his person. If the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant to enter and seize the person, then it makes sense as well to require a warrant to seize other items that may be on the premises. The situation is different, however, if the police are under no circumstances required to obtain an arrest warrant before entering to arrest a person they have probable cause to believe has committed a felony. If no warrant is ever required to legitimate the extremely serious intrusion of a midnight entry to seize the person, then it can be argued plausibly that a warrant should never be required to legitimate a very sweeping search incident to such an entry and arrest. If the arrest without a warrant is per se reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, then it is difficult to perceive way a search incident in the style of Harris and Rabinowitz is not per se reasonable as well.

It is clear, then, that the notion that the warrantless entry of a man's house in order to arrest him on probable cause is per se legitimate is in fundamental conflict with the basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that searches and seizures inside a man's house without warrant are per se unreasonable in the absence of some one of a number of well defined 'exigent circumstances.' This conflict came to the fore in Chimel v. California, supra. The Court there applied the basic rule that the 'search incident to arrest' is an exception to the warrant requirement and that its scope must therefore be strictly defined in terms of the justifying 'exigent circumstances.' The exigency in question arises from the dangers of harm to the arresting officer and of destruction of evidence within the reach of the arrestee. Neither exigency can conceivably justify the far-ranging searches authorized under Harris and Rabinowitz. The answer of the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice White in Chimel, supported by no decision of this Court, was that a warrantless entry for the purpose of arrest on probable cause is legitimate and reasonable no matter what the circumstances. 395 U.S., at 776 780, 89 S.Ct., at 2047—2049. From this it was said to follow that the full-scale search incident to arrest was also reasonable since it was a lesser intrusion. 395 U.S., at 772—775, 89 S.Ct., at 2045 2047.

The same conflict arises in this case. Since the police knew of the presence of the automobile and planned all along to seize it, there was no 'exigent circumstance' to justify their failure to obtain a warrant. The application of the basic rule of Fourth Amendment law therefore requires that the fruits of the warrantless seizure be suppressed. Mr. Justice WHITE's dissenting opinion, however, argues once again that so long as the police could reasonably make a warrantless nighttime entry onto Coolidge's property in order to arrest him, with no showing at all of an emergency, then it is absurd to prevent them from seizing his automobile as evidence of the crime.

Mr. Justice WHITE takes a basically similar approach to the question whether the search of the automobile in this case can be justified under Carroll v. United States, supra, and Chambers v. Maroney, supra. Carroll, on its face, appears to be a classic example of the doctrine that warrantless searches are per se unreasonable in the absence of exigent circumstances. Every word in the opinion indicates the Court's adherence to the underlying rule and its care in delineating a limited exception. Read thus, the case quite evidently does not extend to the situation at bar. Yet if we take the viewpoint of a judge called on only to decide in the abstract, after the fact, whether the police have behaved 'reasonably' under all the circumstances—in short if we simply ignore the warrant requirement—Carroll comes to stand for something more. The stopping of a vehicle on the open highway and a subsequent search amount to a major interference in the lives of the occupants. Carroll held such an interference to be reasonable without a warrant, given probable cause. It may be thought to follow a fortiori that the seizure and search here where there was no stopping and the vehicle was unoccupied—were also reasonable, since the intrusion was less substantial, although there were no exigent circumstances whatever. Using reasoning of this sort, it is but a short step to the position that it is never necessary for the police to obtain a warrant before searching and seizing an automobile, provided that they have probable cause. And Mr. Justice WHITE appears to adopt exactly this view when he proposes that the Court should 'treat searches of automobiles as we do the arrest of a person.'

If we were to accept Mr. Justice WHITE's view that warrantless entry for purposes of arrest and warrantless seizure and search of automobiles are per se reasonable, so long as the police have probable cause, it would be difficult to see the basis for distinguishing searches of houses and seizures of effects. If it is reasonable for the police to make a warrantless nighttime entry for the purpose of arresting a person in his bed, then surely it must be reasonable as well to make a warrantless entry to search for and seize vital evidence of a serious crime. If the police may, without a warrant, seize and search an unoccupied vehicle parked on the owner's private property, not being used for any illegal purpose, then it is hard to see why they need a warrant to seize and search a suitcase, a trunk, a shopping bag, or any other portable container in a house, garage, or back yard.

The fundamental objection, then, to the line of argument adopted by Mr. Justice WHITE in his dissent in this case and in Chimel v. California, supra, is that it proves too much. If we were to agree with Mr. Justice WHITE that the police may, whenever they have probable cause, make a warrantless entry for the purpose a making an arrest, and that seizures and searches of automobiles are likewise per se reasonable given probable cause, then by the same logic any search or seizure could be carried out without a warrant, and we would simply have read the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution. Indeed, if Mr. Justice WHITE is correct that it has generally been assumed that the Fourth Amendment is not violated by the warrantless entry of a man's house for purposes of arrest, it might be wise to re-examine the assumption. Such a re-examination 'would confront us with a grave constitutional question, namely, whether the forceful nighttime entry into a dwelling to arrest a person reasonably believed within, upon probable cause that he had committed a felony, under circumstances where no reason appears why an arrest warrant could not have been sought, is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.' Jones v. United States, 357 U.S., at 499—500, 78 S.Ct., at 1257.

None of the cases cited by Mr. Justice WHITE disposes of this 'grave constitutional question.' The case of Warden v. Hayden, supra, where the Court elaborated a 'hot pursuit' justification for the police entry into the defendant's house without a warrant for his arrest, certainly stands by negative implication for the proposition that an arrest warrant is required in the absence of exigent circumstances. See also Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 728, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 1398, 22 L.Ed.2d 676; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S., at 481—482, 83 S.Ct., at 413—415. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, sitting en banc, has unanimously reached the same conclusion.36 But we find it unnecessary to decide the question in this case. The rule that '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,'37 is not so frail that its continuing vitality depends on the fate of a supposed doctrine of warrantless arrest. The warrant requirement has been a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. It is not an inconvenience to be somehow 'weighed' against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the 'well-intentioned but mistakenly over-zealous, executive officers'38 who are a part of any system of law enforcement. If it is to be a true guide to constitutional police action, rather than just a pious phrase, then '(t)he exceptions cannot be enthroned into the rule.' United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, at 80, 70 S.Ct., at 441 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). The confinement of the exceptions to their appropriate scope was the function of Chimel v. California, supra, where we dealt with the assumption that a search 'incident' to a lawful arrest may encompass all of the premises where the arrest occurs, however spacious. The 'plain view' exception is intimately linked with the search-incident exception, as the cases discussed in Part C above have repeatedly shown. To permit warrantless plain-view seizures without limit would be to undo much of what was decided in Chimel, as the similar arguments put forward in dissent in the two cases indicate clearly enough.

Finally, a word about Trupiano v. United States, supra. Our discussion of 'plain view' in Part C above corresponds with that given in Trupiano. Here, as in Trupiano, the determining factors are advance police knowledge of the existence and location of the evidence, police intention to seize it, and the ample opportunity for obtaining a warrant. See 334 U.S., at 707—708, 68 S.Ct., at 1233—1234 and n. 27, supra. However, we do not 'reinstate' Trupiano, since we cannot adopt all its implications. To begin with, in Chimel v. California, supra, we held that a search of the person of an arrestee and of the area under his immediate control could be carried out without a warrant. We did not indicate there, and do not suggest here, that the police must obtain a warrant if they anticipate that they will find specific evidence during the course of such a search. See n. 24, supra. And as to the automobile exception, we do not question the decisions of the Court in Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 87 S.Ct. 788, and Chambers v. Maroney, supra, although both are arguably inconsistent with Trupiano.

Mr. Justice WHITE's dissent characterizes the coexistence of Chimel, Cooper, Chambers, and this case as 'punitive,' 'extravagant,' 'inconsistent,' 'without apparent reason,' 'unexplained,' and 'inexplicable.' Post, at 517, 519, 521. It is urged upon us that we have here a 'ready opportunity, one way or another, to bring clarity and certainty to a body of law that lower courts and law enforcement officials often find confusing.' Post, at 521. Presumably one of the ways in which Mr. Justice WHITE believes we might achieve clarity and certainty would be the adoption of his proposal that we treat entry for purposes of arrest and seizure of an automobile alike as per se reasonable on probable cause. Such an approach might dispose of this case clearly and certainly enough, but, as we have tried to show above, it would cast into limbo the whole notion of a Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. And it is difficult to take seriously Mr. Justice WHITE's alternative suggestion that clarity and certainty, as well as coherence and credibility, might also be achieved by modifying Chimel and overruling Chambers and Cooper. Surely, quite apart from his strong disagreement on the merits, he would take vehement exception to any such cavalier treatment of this Court's decisions.

Of course, it would be nonsense to pretend that our decision today reduces Fourth Amendment law to complete order and harmony. The decisions of the Court over the years point in differing directions and differ in emphasis. No trick of logic will make them all perfectly consistent. But it is no less nonsense to suggest, as does Mr. Justice WHITE, post, at 521, 520 that we cease today 'to strive for clarity and consistency of analysis,' or that we have 'abandoned any attempt' to find reasoned distinctions in this area. The time is long past when men believed that development of the law must always proceed by the smooth incorporation of new situations into a single coherent analytical framework. We need accept neither the 'clarity and certainty' of a Fourth Amendment without a warrant requirement nor the facile consistency obtained by wholesale overruling of recently decided cases. A remark by Mr. Justice Harlan concerning the Fifth Amendment is applicable as well to the Fourth:

'There are those, I suppose, who would put the 'liberal construction' approach of cases like Miranda (v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694,) and Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), side-by-side with the balancing approach of Schmerber (v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908,) and perceive nothing more subtle than a set of constructional antinomies to be utilized as convenient bootstraps to one result or another. But I perceive in these cases the essential tension that springs from the uncertain mandate which this provision of the Constitution gives to this Court.' California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 449—450, 91 S.Ct. 1535, 1548, 29 L.Ed.2d 9 (concurring in judgment).

We are convinced that the result reached in this case is correct, and that the principle it reflects—that the police must obtain a warrant when they intend to seize an object outside the scope of a valid search incident to arrest—can be easily understood and applied by courts and law enforcement officers alike. It is a principle that should work to protect the citizen without overburdening the police, and a principle that preserves and protects the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment.

Because of the prospect of a new trial, the efficient administration of justice counsels consideration of the second substantial question under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments presented by this case. The petitioner contends that when the police obtained a rifle and articles of his clothing from his home on the night of Sunday, February 2, 1964, while he was being interrogated at the police station, they engaged in a search and seizure violative of the Constitution. In order to understand this contention, it is necessary to review in some detail the circumstances of the February 2 episode.

The lie-detector test administered to Coolidge in Concord on the afternoon of the 2d was inconclusive as to his activities on the night of Pamela Mason's disappearance, but during the course of the test Coolidge confessed to stealing $375 from his employer. After the group returned from Concord to Manchester, the interrogation about Coolidge's movements on the night of the disappearance continued, and Coolidge apparently made a number of statements which the police immediately checked out as best they could. The decision to send two officers to the Coolidge house to speak with Mrs. Coolidge was apparently motivated in part by a desire to check his story against whatever she might say, and in part by the need for some corroboration of his admission to the theft from his employer. The trial judge found as a fact, and the record supports him, that at the time of the visit the police knew very little about the weapon that had killed Pamela Mason. The bullet that had been retrieved was of small caliber, but the police were unsure whether the weapon was a rifle or a pistol. During the extensive investigation following the discovery of the body, the police had made it a practice to ask all those questioned whether they owned any guns, and to ask the owners for permission to run tests on those that met the very general description of the murder weapon. The trial judge found as a fact that when the police visited Mrs. Coolidge on the night of the 2d, they were unaware of the previous visit during which Coolidge had shown other officers three guns, and that they were not motivated by a desire to find the murder weapon.

The two plainclothesmen asked Mrs. Coolidge whether her husband had been at home on the night of the murder victim's disappearance, and she replied that he had not. They then asked her if her husband owned any guns. According to her testimony at the pretrial suppression hearing, she replied, 'Yes, I will get them in the bedroom.' One of the officers replied, 'We will come with you.' The three went into the bedroom where Mrs. Coolidge took all four guns out of the closet. Her account continued:

'A. I believe I asked if they wanted the guns. One gentleman said, 'No;' then the other gentleman turned around and said, 'We might as well take them.' I said, 'If you would like them, you may take them.'

'Q. Did you go further and say, 'We have nothing to hide.'?

'A. I can't recall if I said that then or before. I don't recall.

'Q. But at some time you indicated to them that as far as you were concerned you had nothing to hide, and they might take what they wanted?

'A. That was it.

'Q. Did you feel at that time that you had something to hide?

'A. No.'

The two policemen also asked Mrs. Coolidge what her husband had been wearing on the night of the disappearance. She then produced four pairs of trousers and indicated that her husband had probably worn either of two of them on that evening. She also brought out a hunting jacket. The police gave her a receipt for the guns and the clothing, and, after a search of the Coolidge cars not here in issue, took the various articles to the police station.

The first branch of the petitioner's argument is that when Mrs. Coolidge brought out the guns and clothing and then handed them over to the police, she was acting as an 'instrument' of the officials, complying with a 'demand' made by them. Consequently, it is argued, Coolidge was the victim of a search and seizure within the constitutional meaning of those terms. Since we cannot accept this interpretation of the facts, we need not consider the petitioner's further argument that Mrs. Coolidge could not or did not 'waive' her husband's constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Had Mrs. Coolidge, wholly on her own initiative, sought out her husband's guns and clothing and then taken them to the police station to be used as evidence against him, there can be no doubt under existing law that the articles would later have been admissible in evidence. Cf. Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 41 S.Ct. 574, 65 L.Ed. 1048. The question presented here is whether the conduct of the police officers at the Coolidge house was such as to make her actions their actions for purposes of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and their attendant exclusionary rules. The test, as the petitioner's argument suggests, is whether Mrs. Coolidge, in light of all the circumstances of the case, must be regarded as having acted as an 'instrument' or agent of the state when she produced her husband's belongings. Cf. United States v. Goldberg, 330 F.2d 30 (CA3), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 953, 84 S.Ct. 1630, 12 L.Ed.2d 497 (1964); People v. Tarantino, 45 Cal.2d 590, 290 P.2d 505 (1955); see Byars v. United States, 273 U.S. 28, 47 S.Ct. 248, 71 L.Ed. 520; Gambino v. United States, 275 U.S. 310, 48 S.Ct. 137, 72 L.Ed. 293.

In a situation like the one before us there no doubt always exist forces pushing the spouse to cooperate with the police. Among these are the simple but often powerful convention of openness and honesty, the fear that secretive behavior will intensify suspicion, and uncertainty as to what course is most likely to be helpful to the absent spouse. But there is nothing constitutionally suspect in the existence, without more, of these incentives to full disclosure or active cooperation with the police. The exclusionary rules were fashioned 'to prevent, not to repair,' and their target is official misconduct. They are 'to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way—by removing the incentive to disregard it.' Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 217, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1444, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669. But it is no part of the policy underlying the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to discourage citizens from aiding to the utmost of their ability in the apprehension of criminals. If, then, the exclusionary rule is properly applicable to the evidence taken from the Coolidge house on the night of February 2, it must be upon the basis that some type of unconstitutional police conduct occurred.

Yet it cannot be said that the police should have obtained a warrant for the guns and clothing before they set out to visit Mrs. Coolidge, since they had no intention of rummaging around among Coolidge's effects or of dispossessing him of any of his property. Nor can it be said that they should have obtained Coolidge's permission for a seizure they did not intend to make. There was nothing to compel them to announce to the suspect that they intended to question his wife about his movements on the night of the disappearance or about the theft from his employer. Once Mrs. Coolidge had admitted them, the policemen were surely acting normally and properly when they asked her, as they had asked those questioned earlier in the investigation, including Coolidge himself, about any guns there might be in the house. The question concerning the clothes Coolidge had been wearing on the night of the disappearance was logical and in no way coercive. Indeed, one might doubt the competence of the officers involved had they not asked exactly the questions they did ask. And surely when Mrs. Coolidge of her own accord produced the guns and clothes for inspection, rather than simply describing them, it was not incumbent on the police to stop her or avert their eyes.

The crux of the petitioner's argument must be that when Mrs. Coolidge asked the policemen whether they wanted the guns, they should have replied that they could not take them, or have first telephoned Coolidge at the police station and asked his permission to take them, or have asked her whether she had been authorized by her husband to release them. Instead, after one policeman had declined the offer, the other turned and said, 'We might as well take them,' to which Mrs. Coolidge replied, 'If you would like them, you may take them.'

In assessing the claim that this course of conduct amounted to a search and seizure, it is well to keep in mind that Mrs. Coolidge described her own motive as that of clearing her husband, and that she believed that she had nothing to hide. She had seen her husband himself produce his guns for two other policemen earlier in the week, and there is nothing to indicate that she realized that he had offered only three of them for inspection on that occasion. The two officers who questioned her behaved, as her own testimony shows, with perfect courtesy. There is not the slightest implication of an attempt on their part to coerce or dominate her, or, for that matter, to direct her actions by the more subtle techniques of suggestion that are available to officials in circumstances like these. To hold that the conduct of the police here was a search and seizure would be to hold, in effect, that a criminal suspect has constitutional protection against the adverse consequences of a spontaneous, good-faith effort by his wife to clear him of suspicion.39

The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Judgment reversed and case remanded.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, concurring.

From the several opinions that have been filed in this case it is apparent that the law of search and seizure is due for an overhauling. State and federal law enforcement officers and prosecutorial authorities must find quite intolerable the present state of uncertainty, which extends even to such an everyday question as the circumstances under which police may enter a man's property to arrest him and seize a vehicle believed to have been used during the commission of a crime.

I would begin this process of re-evaluation by overruling Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), and Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963). The former of these cases made the federal 'exclusionary rule' applicable to the States. The latter forced the States to follow all the ins and outs of this Court's Fourth Amendment decisions, handed down in federal cases.

In combination Mapp and Ker have been primarily responsible for bringing about serious distortious and incongruities in this field of constitutional law. Basically these have had two aspects, as I believe an examination of our more recent opinions and certiorari docket will show. First, the States have been put in a federal mold with respect to this aspect of criminal law enforcement, thus depriving the country of the opportunity to observe the effects of different procedures in similar settings. See, e.g., Oaks, Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure, 37 U.Chi.L.Rev. 665 (1970), suggesting that the assumed 'deterrent value' of the exclusionary rule has never been adequately demonstrated or disproved, and pointing out that because of Mapp all comparative statistics are 10 years old and no new ones can be obtained. Second, in order to leave some room for the States to cope with their own diverse problems, there has been generated a tendency to relax federal requirements under the Fourth Amendment, which now govern state procedures as well. For an illustration of that tendency in another constitutional field, again resulting from the infelicitous 'incorporation' doctrine, see Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 90 S.Ct., 1893, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970). Until we face up to the basic constitutional mistakes of Mapp and Ker, no solid progress in setting things straight in search and seizure law will, in my opinion, occur.

But for Mapp and Ker, I would have little difficulty in voting to sustain this conviction, for I do not think that anything the State did in this case could be said to offend those values which are 'at the core of the Fourth Amendment.' Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361, 93 L.Ed. 1782 (1949); cf. Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128, 74 S.Ct. 381, 98 L.Ed. 561 (1954); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952).

Because of Mapp and Ker, however, this case must be judged in terms of federal standards, and on that basis I concur, although not without difficulty, in Parts I, II—D, and III of the Court's opinion and in the judgment of the Court.* It must be recognized that the case is a close one. The reason I am tipped in favor of Mr. Justice STEWART's position is that a contrary result in this case would, I fear, go far toward relegating the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment to a position of little consequence in federal search and seizure law, a course which seems to me opposite to the one we took in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), two Terms ago.

Recent scholarship has suggested that in emphasizing the warrant requirement over the reasonableness of the search the Court has 'stood the fourth amendment on its head' from a historical standpoint. T. Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation 23—24 (1969). This issue is perhaps most clearly presented in the case of a warrantless entry into a man's home to arrest him on probable cause. The validity of such entry was left open in Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499—500, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257—1258, 2 L.Ed.2d 514 (1958), and although my Brothers WHITE and STEWART both feel that their contrary assumptions on this point are at the root of their disagreement in this case, ante, at 477—479; Post, at 510—512, 521, the Court again leaves the issue open. Ante, at 481. In my opinion it does well to do so. This matter should not be decided in a state case not squarely presenting the issue and where it was not fully briefed and argued. I intimate no view on this subject, but until it is ripe for decision, I hope in a federal case, I am unwilling to lend my support to setting back the trend of our recent decisions.

Mr. Chief Justice BURGER, dissenting in part and concurring in part.

I join the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice WHITE and in Parts II and III of Mr. Justice BLACK's concurring and dissenting opinion. I also agree with most of what is said in Part I of Mr. Justice BLACK's opinion, but I am not prepared to accept the proposition that the Fifth Amendment requires the exclusion of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. I join in Part III of Mr. Justice STEWART's opinion.

This case illustrates graphically the monstrous price we pay for the exclusionary rule in which we seem to have imprisoned ourselves. See my dissent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619.

On the merits of the case I find not the slightest basis in the record to reverse this conviction. Here again the Court reaches out, strains, and distorts rules that were showing some signs of stabilizing, and directs a new trial which will be held more than seven years after the criminal acts charged.

Mr. Justice Stone, of the Minnesota Supreme Court, called the kind of judicial functioning in which the Court indulges today 'bifurcating elements too infinitesimal to be split.'

Mr. Justice BLACK, concurring and dissenting.

After a jury trial in a New Hampshire state court, petitioner was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Holding that certain evidence introduced by the State was seized during an 'unreasonable' search and that the evidence was inadmissible under the judicially created exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment, the majority reverses that conviction. Believing that the search and seizure here was reasonable and that the Fourth Amendment properly construed contains no such exclusionary rule, I dissent.

The relevant facts are these. Pamela Mason, a 14-year-old school girl, lived with her mother and younger brother in Manchester, New Hampshire. She occasionally worked after school as a baby sitter and sought such work by posting a notice on a bulletin board in a local laundromat. On January 13, 1964, she arrived home from school about 4:15 p.m. Pamela's mother told her that a man had called seeking a babysitter for that evening and said that he would call again later. About 4:30 p.m. after Pamela's mother had left for her job as a waitress at a nearby restaurant, Pamela received a phone call. Her younger brother, who answered the call but did not overhear the conversation, later reported that the caller was a man. After the call, Pamela prepared dinner for her brother and herself, then left the house about 6 p.m. Her family never again saw her alive. Eight days later, on January 21, 1964, Pamela's frozen body was discovered in a snowdrift beside an interstate highway a few miles from her home. Her throat had been slashed and she had been shot in the head. Medical evidence showed that she died some time between 8 and 10 p.m. on January 13, the night she left home.

A manhunt ensued. The witnesses informed the police that about 9:30 p.m. on the night of the murder they had stopped to offer assistance to a man in a 1951 Pontiac automobile which was parked beside the interstate highway near the point where the little girl's dead body was later found. Petitioner came under suspicion seven days after the body was discovered when one of his neighbors reported to the police that petitioner had been absent from his home between 5 and 11 p.m. on January 13, the night of the murder. Petitioner owned a 1951 Pontiac automobile that matched the description of the car which the two witnesses reported seeing parked where the girl's body had been found. The police first talked with petitioner at his home on the evening of January 28, fifteen days after the girl was killed, and arranged for him to come to the police station the following Sunday, February 2, 1964. He went to the station that Sunday and answered questions concerning his activities on the night of the murder, telling the police that he had been shopping in a neighboring town at the time the murder was committed. During questioning, petitioner confessed to having committed an unrelated larceny from his employer and was held overnight at the police station in connection with that offense. On the next day, he was permitted to go home.

While petitioner was being questioned at the police station on February 2, two policemen went to petitioner's home to talk with his wife. They asked what firearms the petitioner owned and his wife produced two shotguns and two rifles which she voluntarily offered to the police. Upon examination the University of Rhode Island Criminal Investigation Laboratory concluded that one of the firearms, a Mossberg .22-caliber rifle, had fired the bullet found in the murdered girl's brain.

Petitioner admitted that he was a frequent visitor to the laundromat where Pamela posted her babysitting notice and that he had been there on the night of the murder. The following day a knife belonging to petitioner, which could have inflicted the murdered girl's knife wounds, was found near that laundromat. The police also learned that petitioner had unsuccessfully contacted four different persons before the girl's body had been discovered in an attempt to fabricate an alibi for the night of January 13.

On February 19, 1964, all this evidence was presented to the state attorney general who was authorized under New Hampshire law to issue arrest and search warrants. The attorney general considered the evidence and issued a warrant for petitioner's arrest and four search warrants including a warrant for the seizure and search of petitioner's Pontiac automobile.

On the day the warrants issued, the police went to the petitioner's residence and placed him under arrest. They took charge of his 1951 Pontiac which was parked in plain view in the driveway in front of the house, and two hours later, towed the car to the police station. During the search of the automobile at the station, the police obtained vacuum sweepings of dirt and other fine particles which matched like sweepings taken from the clothes of the murdered girl. Based on the similarity between the sweepings taken from petitioner's automobile and those taken from the girl's clothes, experts who testified at trial concluded that Pamela had been in the petitioner's car. The rifle given to the police by petitioner's wife was also received in evidence.

Petitioner challenges his conviction on the ground that the rifle obtained from his wife and the vacuum sweepings taken from his car were seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment and were improperly admitted at trial. With respect to the rifle voluntarily given to the police by petitioner's wife, the majority holds that it was properly received in evidence. I agree. But the Court reverses petitioner's conviction on the ground that the sweepings taken from his car were seized during an illegal search and for this reason the admission of the sweepings into evidence violated the Fourth Amendment. I dissent.

* The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The Amendment says nothing about consequences. It certainly nowhere provides for the exclusion of evidence as the remedy for violation. The Amendment states: 'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.' No examination of that text can find an exclusionary rule by a mere process of construction. Apparently the first suggestion that the Fourth Amendment somehow embodied a rule of evidence came in Justice Bradley's majority opinion in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886). The holding in that case was that ordinarily a person may not be compelled to produce his private books and papers for use against him as proof of crime. That decision was a sound application of accepted principles of common law and the command of the Fifth Amendment that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. But Justice Bradley apparently preferred to formulate a new exclusionary rule from the Fourth Amendment rather than rely on the already existing exclusionary rule contained in the language of the Fifth Amendment. His opinion indicated that compulsory production of such evidence at trial violated the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Justice Miller, with whom Chief Justice Waite joined, concurred solely on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, and explicitly refused to go along with Justice Bradley's novel reading of the Fourth Amendment. It was not until 1914, some 28 years after Boyd and when no member of the Boyd Court remained, that the Court in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, stated that the Fourth Amendment itself barred the admission of evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Weeks opinion made no express confession of a break with the past. But if it was merely a proper reading of the Fourth Amendment, it seems strange that it took this Court nearly 125 years to discover the true meaning of those words. The truth is that the source of the exclusionary rule simply cannot be found in the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment did not when adopted, and does not now, contain any constitutional rule barring the admission of illegally seized evidence.

In striking contrast to the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment states in express, unambiguous terms that no person 'shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.' The Fifth Amendment in and of itself directly and explicitly commands its own exclusionary rule a defendant cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself. Absent congressional action taken pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, if evidence is to be excluded, it must be under the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourth. That was the point so ably made in the concurring opinion of Justice Miller, joined by Chief Justice Waite, in Boyd v. United States, supra, and that was the thrust of my concurring opinion in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 661, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1694, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961).

The evidence seized by breaking into Mrs. Mapp's house and the search of all her possessions, was excluded from evidence, not by the Fourth Amendment which contains no exclusionary rule, but by the Fifth Amendment which does. The introduction of such evidence compels a man to be a witness against himself, and evidence so compelled must be excluded under the Fifth Amendment, not because the Court says so, but because the Fifth Amendment commands it.

The Fourth Amendment provides a constitutional means by which the Government can act to obtain evidence to be used in criminal prosecutions. The people are obliged to yield to a proper exercise of authority under that Amendment.1 Evidence properly seized under the Fourth Amendment, of course, is admissible at trial. But nothing in the Fourth Amendment provides that evidence seized in violation of that Amendment must be excluded.

The majority holds that evidence it views as improperly seized in violation of its ever changing concept of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible. The majority treats the exclusionary rule as a judge-made rule of evidence designed and utilized to enforce the majority's own notions of proper police conduct. The Court today announces its new rules of police procedure in the name of the Fourth Amendment, then holds that evidence seized in violation of the new 'guidelines' is automatically inadmissible at trial. The majority does not purport to rely on the Fifth Amendment to exclude the evidence in this case. Indeed it could not. The majority prefers instead to rely on 'changing times' and the Court's role as it sees it, as the administrator in charge of regulating the contacts of officials with citizens. The majority states that in the absence of a better means of regulation, it applies a court-created rule of evidence.

I readily concede that there is much recent precedent for the majority's present announcement of yet another new set of police operating procedures. By invoking this