Cite as: 532 U. S. 67 (2001)
Scalia, J., dissenting
Miranda rule did not require suppression of an inmate confession given an agent posing as a fellow prisoner).
Until today, we have never held—or even suggested—that material which a person voluntarily entrusts to someone else cannot be given by that person to the police, and used for whatever evidence it may contain.2 Without so much as discussing the point, the Court today opens a hole in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the size and shape of which is entirely indeterminate. Today's holding would be remarkable enough if the confidential relationship violated by the police conduct were at least one protected by state law. It would be surprising to learn, for example, that in a State which recognizes a spousal evidentiary privilege the police cannot use evidence obtained from a cooperating husband or wife. But today's holding goes even beyond that, since there does not exist any physician-patient privilege in South Carolina. See, e. g., Peagler v. Atlantic Coast R. R. Co., 232 S. C. 274, 101 S. E. 2d 821 (1958). Since the Court declines even to discuss the issue, it leaves law enforcement officials entirely in the dark as to when they can use incriminating evidence obtained from "trusted" sources.3 Presumably the
2 Hoffa did say that the Fourth Amendment can be violated by "guileful as well as by forcible intrusions into a constitutionally protected area." 385 U. S., at 301. The case it cited for that proposition, however, shows what it meant: Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298 (1921), found a Fourth Amendment violation where a Government agent who had obtained access to the defendant's office on pretext of a social visit carried away private papers. "Guile" (rather than force) had been used to go beyond the scope of the consented access to evidence. Whereas the search in Gouled was invalidated, the search was approved in Lewis v. United States, 385 U. S. 206 (1966), where an equally guileful agent stayed within the bounds of the access to defendant's home, carrying away only a package of drugs that had been voluntarily provided.
3 The Court contends that its opinion does not leave law enforcement officials in the dark as to when they can use incriminating evidence from trusted sources, since it "do[es] not address a case in which doctors independently complied with reporting requirements," ante, at 85, n. 24. I find it hard to understand how not addressing that point fails to leave
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