In Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 (1973) the husband of a strangulation victim appeared voluntarily at the police station. He was not under arrest but he refused consent to a scraping of his fingers and fingernails. Against his consent, the scrapings were taken. The United States Supreme Court held this seizure was reasonable even though the suspect was not under arrest. There was probable cause, and the search without a warrant was necessary to preserve the evidence from destruction. ( Id. at p. 296.) The Supreme Court approved the warrantless seizure of scrapings from under a suspect's fingernails. The suspect was not under arrest and was not arrested after the police completed the search. The Court assumed that there was probable cause that the suspect had committed a homicide by strangling the victim with his hands and found that exigent circumstances justified the immediate seizure of the fingernail scrapings because the suspect had been alerted to the police interest in the evidence and the evidence may have been destroyed if the police did not act. (Id. at 296.) Cupp v. Murphy, upheld the seizure of physical evidence from a suspect without his consent even though he was not under arrest, and the police lacked a search warrant. The defendant voluntarily went to the police station for questioning about his wife's murder. Officers noticed a dark spot on his finger and suspected it might be blood. (Ibid.) They detained him only long enough to take the fingernail scrapings, and he was not arrested until a month later. (Id. at p. 294.) The court concluded that although the taking of defendant's fingernail scrapings was not obtained incident to an arrest, the fact the police officers had probable cause to arrest the defendant justified the limited intrusion to preserve the evidence from destruction. (Id. at p. 296.)