Page:Brief for the United States, Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).djvu/50

 confession or the evidence of larceny obtained as a result of the confession. Human beings do normally have power to control their own speech, and, when they do choose to speak, their words, if voluntary, cannot be simply equated, without more, to intangible objects observed or discovered in the course of an illegal arrest or search.

To us, what the existing decisions show is that the question whether a statement made at the time of an illegal entry or illegal arrest should or should not be deemed admissible cannot be settled by any fixed rule but must essentially represent a judgment, based on all the circumstances, as to whether the illegal government action or the voluntary act of the defendant is the primary motivating force behind the production or discovery of the evidence. The leading case holding that voluntary admissions at the time of an invalid search are admissible is Quan v. State, 185 Miss. 513.