An approach suggested by at least one court is to look at the actual words spoken by the police officer to determine whether coercion is present. For example, if
an officer says he will "get" a warrant rather than "apply for" a warrant, he may give the citizen the impression that the issuance of a warrant is a nondiscretionary process. The citizen's consent in such a case is given in response to an implicit claim of authority. The situation resembles cases where consent was vitiated by untruthful statements by police because the police officer's failure to communicate that the warrant process is discretionary deceives the citizen.
Judge Newman of the Second Circuit best stated the rationale of the semantic distinction approach:
[W]ords spoken in the process of obtaining consent to waiver of a constitutional right ought to be chosen with care. The officers are not proceeding in haste to make a split second decision of their au- thority to apprehend a fleeing suspect. They face a situation that normally calls for a delay necessary
(Harlan, J., concurring). "The course of true law pertain- ing to search and seizure has not-to put it mildly-run smooth." Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618
(1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). See, e.g., Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-55(1979).
Often the exclusion of evidence will result in an to obtain a search warrant. If they are to forego the requirement, it should not be too much to ask that they take care not to confront the accused with a choice that totally obliterates the important protective function of the warrant-issuing process.