## Facts

- A series of burglary-sexual assaults occurred in Punta Gorda, Florida; police recovered latent fingerprints from a victim’s bedroom doorknob believed to be the assailant’s.
- Police focused on Joe Hayes as a principal suspect and went to his home without a warrant to obtain fingerprints.
- Officers spoke with Hayes on his front porch and sought to take him to the police station for fingerprinting.
- When Hayes hesitated, an officer said they would arrest him; Hayes stated he would rather go to the station than be arrested.
- Officers seized a pair of tennis shoes visible on the porch and transported Hayes to the station, where they took his fingerprints.
- After the fingerprints matched those recovered from the crime scene, Hayes was formally arrested and later convicted.
- State appellate findings included that Hayes did not consent to the stationhouse trip and that probable cause did not exist until after the fingerprints were obtained.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fourth Amendment permits police, without consent, probable cause, or prior judicial authorization, to transport a suspect to a stationhouse for investigative fingerprinting based only on reasonable suspicion.
2. Whether fingerprints obtained through such a stationhouse detention must be excluded as the fruit of an unlawful seizure.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the state court’s judgment affirming Hayes’s conviction.
- The Court held that transporting Hayes from his home to the station and detaining him for fingerprinting, without probable cause, consent, or judicial authorization, violated the Fourth Amendment.
- The fingerprints obtained during the unlawful detention were inadmissible as fruits of the illegal seizure.

## Legal Principles

- A nonconsensual stationhouse detention for investigative fingerprinting is sufficiently like an arrest to require probable cause, absent prior judicial authorization.
- The limited scope of a Terry stop does not extend to transporting a suspect to the station for fingerprinting on reasonable suspicion alone.
- Fingerprint evidence obtained through an unconstitutional detention is subject to exclusion as fruit of the unlawful seizure.
- The Fourth Amendment may permit narrowly limited fingerprint procedures with prior judicial authorization and safeguards, but such conditions were not present here.

## Conclusion

The Court held that police violated the Fourth Amendment by threatening arrest and transporting a suspect to the station for fingerprinting without consent, probable cause, or judicial authorization, requiring suppression of the resulting fingerprints.


Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811 (1985)