Page:Brief for the United States, Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).djvu/53

 far as would be necessary in this case to hold inadmissible and unusable the statement made by petitioner Toy. In Nueslein the admissions made by the taxicab owner were admissions of guilt as to the very act which prompted the officers to make the illegal entry; they were also made while the man appeared to be intoxicated, not in full possession of his faculties. Here, petitioner Toy, although knowing that the officers had found no narcotics in his house or on his person, deliberately sent them to Johnny Yee in order to divert suspicion from himself. Toy saw an opportunity to sidetrack the officers, and consciously chose to do so.

For this reason, we think the statements in this case are a significant step removed from the Nueslein case and that that step is sufficient for the ruling here to fall on the side of admissibility. The motivating force behind Toy's statement that he knew Yee had narcotics was Toy's own voluntary act of deciding to give that information. Nothing in the entry by officers, nothing the officers found, would have sent them to Yee. The information communicated by the officers to Toy that Hom Way had named Toy as a source of narcotics in no way stemmed from the illegal entry. And it was Hom Way's information which caused Toy to send the officers to Yee. It later turned out that Toy's scheme to divert the agents failed, but at the time he evidently hoped to clear himself. This led to his voluntarily choosing to speak—and his words became the trail to new evidence. In short, petitioner Toy would now