712
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
sort to formal and dispositive labels. By dispensing with the difficulty of producing a yes-or-no answer to questions that are often better answered in shades and degrees, the voluntariness inquiry often can make judicial decisionmaking easier rather than more onerous. Thus, it is true that the existence of warnings is still a consideration under the totality-of-the-circumstances approach, ante, at 693-694, but it is unnecessary to determine conclusively whether "custody" existed and triggered the warning requirement, or whether the warnings given were sufficient. It is enough that the habeas court look to the warnings or their absence, along with all other factors, and consider them in deciding what is, after all, the ultimate question: whether the confession was compelled and involuntary or the product of a free and unimpaired will. See Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S., at 225-226.
Nor does continued application of Miranda's prophylactic
rule on habeas dispense with the necessity of testing confessions for voluntariness. While Miranda's conclusive presumption of coercion may sound like an impenetrable barrier to the introduction of compelled testimony, in practice it leaks like a sieve. Miranda, for example, does not preclude the use of an unwarned confession outside the prosecution's case in chief, Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222 (1971); Oregon v. Hass, 420 U. S. 714 (1975); involuntary statements, by contrast, must be excluded from trial for all purposes, Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 398 (1978). Miranda does not preclude admission of the fruits of an unwarned statement, see Oregon v. Elstad, supra; but under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, we require the suppression of not only compelled confessions but tainted subsequent confessions as well, Clewis v. Texas, 386 U. S. 707, 710 (1967). Finally, Miranda can fail to exclude some truly involuntary statements: It is entirely possible to extract a compelled statement despite the most precise and accurate of warnings.
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