An officer was correct to ask a suspect in custody “Where’s the gun?” without giving a Miranda warning first, as the question was allowed under a public safety exception to the legal notification, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled.

Law enforcement personnel who intend to interrogate a suspect in custody must provide a Miranda warning, named for the 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, about their right to an attorney and against self-incrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1984 first recognized a “public safety” exception to the rule, in which the need to protect people from immediate danger could outweigh the suspect’s constitutional rights.

“The legal standard has been and remains whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the officer’s questioning relates to an objectively reasonable need to protect the public from the immediate danger associated with a weapon,” wrote Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright for Colorado’s court in an opinion issued on Tuesday.

Tim Lane, legislative liaison and policy analyst with the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, agreed that the “right to remain silent and the expectation that officers recite Miranda warnings is an important part of our individual rights. But, like all constitutional rights, it is subject to certain reasonable exceptions.”

The justices considered the case of Marcus Perez, who was the passenger in a vehicle police pulled over in February 2014. Perez and the driver appeared to be extremely nervous, and Perez provided a false name and date of birth to the officer.

When Perez stepped out of the vehicle, he fled, leading officers on a chase between residential and commercial areas, including through a liquor store where they briefly lost sight of him. When law enforcement did attempt to take him into custody, Perez broke one officer’s nose.

After police handcuffed him, an officer found two live shotgun shells in Perez’s pocket. He asked, “Where’s the gun?” and Perez responded that he had thrown it away. Police found the shotgun back in the car. A Denver jury convicted Perez of one charge of assault and four charges of possession of a dangerous weapon by a previous offender. He received 24 years in prison.

Perez appealed, arguing the trial court should have suppressed the statements he made to police prior to receiving the Miranda warning.

“When you look at most of the cases that the courts have decided that the public safety exception applies, they do involve prior information about a weapon or some very serious concerns like that that a weapon would be present,” Antony Noble, an attorney representing Perez, told the justices at oral argument, “and that’s something that’s simply lacking in this case. All the police have are the shotgun cases that they found during the search and no further information.”

Asked whether Perez’s flight and subsequent resistance to arrest created a reasonable suspicion of a weapon, Noble responded that his client had not drawn a weapon during the encounter, and so there was no basis for that concern.

“Guns are pervasive in our society these days,” acknowledged Justice William W. Hood, III. “A lot of people have shotguns. A lot of people are hunters. Why isn’t it reasonable to infer there’s a more innocuous explanation for why this guy might have shotgun shells on him?”

Brittany Limes, an assistant attorney general arguing the case for the prosecution, replied that it was nonetheless reasonable to suspect Perez had access to a weapon and could have discarded it in a hazardous fashion.

The public safety exception, she said, “allow[s] officers to follow their legitimate instincts and not decide between, do I ask this question and find the gun or do I give Miranda warnings and reduce the chances of finding a gun and risk harm to the police or public?”

The Supreme Court agreed, overturning a Court of Appeals decision that found officers lacked enough information to interrogate Perez immediately about a gun.

“Importantly, officers lost sight of Perez for a period of time, raising the possibility that Perez had discarded the firearm in an area where people could find it, creating a public safety threat,” wrote Boatright. “We hold, therefore, that under the facts of this case, the question about the location of the gun fell under the public safety exception to Miranda.”

Elizabeth McClintock, a Colorado Springs defense attorney, believed the decision appropriately limits officers’ interrogations, in that they have to be able to justify a reasonable public safety concern.

“While some officers might try to expand the exception in the field, the determination of whether it applies is going to be limited by the facts of the custodial questioning and the officer’s ability to state his reasonable concern for public safety.”

Noble, who told the justices during oral argument that such a ruling would “certainly be the broadest application of that exception that any court has applied,” clarified on Tuesday that it was ultimately not a “radical decision.”

While there were not many similar cases, in his analysis, from other states and federally, “I didn’t find any cases that would go as far as this one,” he said.

The case is Perez v. People.