Cite as: 538 U. S. 626 (2003)
Per Curiam
meaning of the Fourth Amendment, there being evidence of every one of the probative circumstances mentioned by Justice Stewart in Mendenhall.3 A 17-year-old boy was awakened in his bedroom at three in the morning by at least three police officers, one of whom stated " 'we need to go and talk.' " He was taken out in handcuffs, without shoes, dressed only in his underwear in January, placed in a patrol car, driven to the scene of a crime and then to the sheriff's offices, where he was taken into an interrogation room and questioned. This evidence points to arrest even more starkly than the facts in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 212 (1979), where the petitioner "was taken from a neighbor's home to a police car, transported to a police station, and placed in an interrogation room." There we held it clear that the detention was "in important respects indistinguishable from a traditional arrest" and therefore required probable cause or judicial authorization to be legal. Ibid. The same is, if anything, even clearer here.
Contrary reasons mentioned by the state courts are no answer to the facts. Kaupp's " 'Okay' " in response to Pinkins's statement is no showing of consent under the circumstances. Pinkins offered Kaupp no choice, and a group of police officers rousing an adolescent out of bed in the middle of the night with the words " 'we need to go and talk' " presents no option but "to go." There is no reason to think Kaupp's answer was anything more than "a mere submission to a claim of lawful authority." Royer, supra, at 497 (plurality opinion); see also Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 226, 233-234 (1973). If reasonable doubt were possible
3 On the record before us, it is possible to debate whether the law enforcement officers were armed. The State Court of Appeals not only described them as armed but said specifically that Pinkins's weapon was visible, though not drawn, when he confronted Kaupp in the bedroom. See App. A to Pet. for Cert. 6. But at least one officer testified before the trial court that they went to Kaupp's house unarmed. See App. 3 to App. D to Pet. for Cert. 8 (trial transcript).
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