ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
In Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977), the Supreme Court set aside the murder conviction of appellant Robert Anthony Williams because statements leading the police to the body of the victim had been obtained from Williams in violation of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel. Williams was tried again, and evidence of the discovery of the body and its condition was again admitted against him, this time on the theory, suggested in a footnote in the Supreme Court’s opinion, that “the body would have been discovered in any event,” 430 U.S. at 407 n. 12, 97 S.Ct. at 1244 n. 12, even in the absence of the statements unconstitutionally obtained from the defendant. After the Supreme Court of Iowa affirmed the second conviction, State v. Williams, 285 N.W.2d 248 (Iowa 1979), defendant again sought federal habeas relief, which the District Court denied, Williams v. Nix, 528 F.Supp. 664 (S.D.Iowa 1981). Both [1166]*1166the Supreme Court of Iowa and the District Court adopted the “inevitable discovery” or “hypothetical independent source” exception to the exclusionary rule and upheld the second conviction on that basis, finding that the State had proved that the body would have been discovered in any event and that the police had not acted in bad faith in obtaining the excluded statements from defendant. We hold that the record cannot support a finding that the State proved the police did not act in bad faith. We therefore reverse, 528 F.Supp. 664, and remand with instructions that the writ issue unless the State commences proceedings to try defendant again within 60 days of this Court’s mandate.1
I.
On Christmas Eve 1968 the Powers family went to see a wrestling match at the YMCA in Des Moines. Pamela Powers, their ten-year-old daughter, excused herself to go to the bathroom. She did not come back. A little while later, Robert Anthony Williams, a resident of the YMCA, was seen leaving the building with a bundle wrapped in a blanket. Williams, a black man known as “Reverend,” had escaped from a mental hospital in Missouri, where he had been a patient for three years, without the knowledge, presumably, of the Des Moines YMCA. Two days later, Pamela Powers’s body was found in a ditch east of Des Moines, as a result of statements made by Williams to the police under circumstances to be fully described later. Williams was tried and convicted of deliberate, premeditated murder, and his conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Iowa, State v. Williams, 182 N.W.2d 396 (Iowa 1970). On habeas, however, the District Court, Williams v. Brewer, 375 F.Supp. 170 (S.D.Iowa 1974), set this first conviction aside, and this Court, 509 F.2d 227 (8th Cir.1974), and the Supreme Court, Brewer v. Williams, supra, affirmed.
The Supreme Court’s reasons for invalidating the first conviction are of course the law of this case and are an important part of the background necessary for an understanding of the issues that now arise on this habeas challenge to Williams’s second conviction. The defendant, after leaving the YMCA in Des Moines on December 24, turned up in Rock Island, Illinois, two days later. He telephoned Henry McKnight, a lawyer in Des Moines, and McKnight advised him to turn himself in to the police in Davenport, Iowa. Williams did surrender in Davenport, and McKnight went to the police station in Des Moines to speak with the authorities there. “As a result of these conversations, it was agreed between McKnight and the Des Moines police officials that Detective Learning [of the Des Moines police] and a fellow officer would drive to Davenport to pick up Williams, that they would bring him directly back to Des Moines, and that they would not question him during the trip.” Brewer v. Williams, supra, 430 U.S. at 391, 97 S.Ct. at 1235. The Supreme Court then described what happened next, id. at 392-93, 97 S.Ct. at 1236-1237:
The two detectives, with Williams in their charge, then set out on the 160-mile drive. At no time during the trip did Williams express a willingness to be interrogated in the absence of an attorney. Instead, he stated several times that “[w]hen I get to Des Moines and see Mr. McKnight, I am going to tell you the whole story.” Detective Learning knew that Williams was a former mental patient, and knew also that he was deeply religious.
The detective and his prisoner soon embarked on a wide-ranging conversation covering a variety of topics, including the subject of religion. Then, not long after leaving Davenport and reaching the interstate highway, Detective Learning delivered what has been referred to in the briefs and oral arguments as the “Christian burial speech.” Addressing Williams as “Reverend,” the detective said:
[1167]*1167“I want to give you something to think about while we’re traveling down the road.... Number one, I want you to observe the weather conditions, it’s raining, it’s sleeting, it’s freezing, driving is very treacherous, visibility is poor, it’s going to be dark early this evening. They are predicting several inches of snow for tonight, and I feel that you yourself are the only person that knows where this little girl’s body is, that you yourself have only been there once, and if you get a snow on top of it you yourself may be unable to find it. And, since we will be going right past the area on the way into Des Moines, I feel that we could stop and locate the body, that the parents of this little girl should be entitled to a Christian burial for the little girl who was snatched away from them on Christmas [E]ve and murdered. And I feel we should stop and locate it on the way in rather than waiting until morning and trying to come back out after a snow storm and possibly not being able to find it at all.”
Williams asked Detective Learning why he thought their route to Des Moines would be taking them past the girl’s body, and Learning responded that he knew the body was in the area of Mitchellville — a town they would be passing on the way to Des Moines.1 Learning then stated: “I do not want you to answer me. I don’t want to discuss it any further. Just think about it as we’re riding down the road.”
As the car approached Grinnell, a town approximately 100 miles west of Davenport, Williams asked whether the police had found the victim’s shoes. When Detective Learning replied that he was unsure, Williams directed the officers to a service station where he said he had left the shoes; a search for them proved unsuccessful. As they continued towards Des Moines, Williams asked whether the police had found the blanket, and directed the officers to a rest area where he said he had disposed of the blanket. Nothing was found. The car continued towards Des Moines, and as it approached Mitchellville, Williams said that he would show the officers where the body was. He then directed the police to the body of Pamela Powers.
The Court then held that the use of Williams’s statements against him violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel. “Detective Learning,” it said, “deliberately and designedly set out to elicit information from Williams just as surely as — and perhaps more effectively than — if he had formally interrogated him.... [H]e purposely sought during Williams’ isolation from his lawyers to obtain as much incriminating information as possible.” Id. 430 U.S. at 399, 97 S.Ct. at 1240. The Court further held that Williams had not waived his right to counsel and that “so clear a violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments as here occurred cannot be condoned.” Id. at 406, 97 S.Ct. at 1243. The judgment of this Court granting habeas corpus was affirmed.
It was in this setting that Williams was tried for the second time. This time the. State did not offer his own statements in evidence against him, nor did it seek to show that the police had been led to the victim’s body by the defendant. The prosecution did, however, introduce evidence of the discovery of the body and various articles of the victim’s clothing, including photographs and results of scientific tests. An evidentiary hearing on defendant’s motion to suppress this evidence was held by the District Court of Polk County, Iowa.2 The evidence was incontestably discovered as a direct result of defendant’s unconstitutionally obtained statements, so it was, absent some exception, clearly excludable as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The State argued that the evidence would have been discovered in any event, and cited a footnote in the Supreme Court’s opinion:
[1168]*116812 The District Court stated that its decision “does not touch upon the issue of what evidence, if any, beyond the incriminating statements themselves must be excluded as ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.’ ” 375 F.Supp. 170, 185. We, too, have no occasion to address this issue, and in the present posture of the case there is no basis for the view of our dissenting Brethren, post, [430 U.S.] at 430 [97 S.Ct. at 1255] (White, J.); post, at 441 [97 S.Ct. at 1261] (Blackmun, J.), that any attempt to retry the respondent would probably be futile. While neither Williams’ incriminating statements themselves nor any testimony describing his having led the police to the victim’s body can constitutionally be admitted into evidence, evidence of where the body was found and of its condition might well be admissible on the theory that the body would have been discovered in any event, even had incriminating statements not been elicited from Williams. Cf. Killough v. United States, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 10, 336 F.2d 929. In the event that a retrial is instituted, it will be for the state courts in the first instance to determine whether particular items of evidence may be admitted.
430 U.S. at 406-07 n. 12, 97 S.Ct. at 1243-44 n. 12.
The state trial court denied the motion to suppress, and held admissible articles of clothing, and photographs of articles of clothing, found on the body, evidence concerning the condition of the body, and the results of medical, chemical, or pathological tests performed on the body. The court found that the State had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the body would have been discovered in any event, because a police search for the body would have continued, and the body would have been found in substantially the same condition in which it was found. Freezing temperatures, the court found, would have preserved the body from decomposition even into April of 1969. State v. Williams, No. CR 55805 (Dist.Ct. Polk County, Iowa, May 31, 1977), found in Appendix filed in State v. Williams, No. 61228 Crim. (Sup.Ct. Iowa, App. filed July 31, 1978), p. 137.3
The case then went to trial, and the disputed evidence was introduced against defendant. The defense conceded that Williams had left the YMCA with the little girl’s body, but claimed that someone else had killed her and placed her body in Williams’s room in the hope that suspicion would focus on him. Williams, the theory went, then panicked, fled, and hid the body by the side of a road, until he came to his senses and gave himself up two days later. The theory is not so far-fetched as it sounds. The State contended that the murder was related to sexual abuse of the victim, and in fact acid phosphatase, a component of semen, was found in her body. But no traces of spermatozoa, living or dead, were found either in the body or on Pamela’s clothing. One inference that could be drawn is that the victim was attacked by a sterile male. Williams is concededly not sterile. The State’s witnesses suggested that sperm, initially present, had been destroyed by freezing, but this theory was arguably inconsistent with the hypothesis, earlier urged and accepted in connection with the motion to suppress, that extreme cold would preserve the body’s condition, not change it. The defense called experts who testified that freezing would not destroy sperm cells. In addition, although pubic hairs said by an FBI expert to be “like” those of the defendant were found on the victim’s clothing, so were other pubic hairs concededly belonging neither to Williams nor to the victim.4 In any event, the jury found defendant guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison. He has been in the Iowa State Penitentiary since his first conviction in 1969.
[1169]*1169On appeal, the Supreme Court of Iowa again affirmed. It held that there is in fact a “hypothetical independent source” exception to the exclusionary rule. The exception was stated as follows:
After the defendant has shown unlawful conduct on the part of the police, the State has the burden to show by a preponderance of the evidence that (1) the police did not act in bad faith for the purpose of hastening discovery of the evidence in question, and (2) that the evidence in question would have been discovered by lawful means.
State v. Williams, 285 N.W.2d 248, 260 (Iowa 1979). As to the first element, the Court stated:
The first question, then, is whether the police acted in bad faith for the purpose of hastening discovery of the body of Pamela Powers. While there can be no doubt that the method upon which the police embarked in order to gain Williams’s assistance was both subtly coercive and purposeful, and that its purpose was to discover the victim’s body, see 430 U.S. at 393, 399,97 S.Ct. at 1236-37,1240, 51 L.Ed.2d at 433, 437, we cannot find that it was in bad faith. The issue of the propriety of the police conduct in this case, as noted earlier in this opinion, has caused the closest possible division of views in every appellate court which has considered the question. In light of the legitimate disagreement among individuals well versed in the law of criminal procedure who were given the opportunity for calm deliberation, it cannot be said that the actions of the police were taken in bad faith.
Id. at 260-61. As to the second element, the trial court’s finding that the body “would have been found in essentially the same condition it was in at the time of the actual discovery,” id. at 262, even in the absence of assistance from the defendant, was approved.
II.
Our analysis of this case makes it unnecessary to decide whether to recognize the inevitable-discovery or hypothetical-independent-source exception to the rule excluding evidence obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. We assume arguendo that there is such an exception and that the opinion of the Supreme Court of Iowa in this case correctly states the requirements for establishing it. The exception as thus stated requires the State to prove two things: that the police did not act in bad faith, and that the evidence would have been discovered in any event. We hold that the State has not met the first requirement. It is therefore unnecessary to decide whether the state courts’ finding that the body would have been discovered anyway is fairly supported by the record.5 It is also unnecessary to decide whether the State must prove the two elements of the exception by clear and convincing evidence, as defendant argues, or by a preponderance of the evidence, as the state courts held.
The state trial court, in denying the motion to suppress, made no finding one way or the other on the question of bad faith.6 Its opinion does not even mention the issue and seems to proceed on the assumption — contrary to the rule of law later laid down by the Supreme Court of Iowa— that the State needed to show only that the body would have been discovered in any event. The Iowa Supreme Court did ex[1170]*1170pressly address the issue, in words that we have quoted, and a finding by an appellate court of a state is entitled to the same presumption of correctness that attaches to trial-court findings under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 545 — 47, 101 S.Ct. 764, 768-769, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981). We conclude, however, that the state Supreme Court’s finding that the police did not act in bad faith is not entitled to the shield of § 2254(d), for two reasons. First, the Iowa court’s discussion of bad faith is not really a finding of fact at all. It is more like a legal conclusion that police conduct later found constitutionally blameless by a large minority of this Court and the Supreme Court cannot amount to bad faith. To put it another way, if four Supreme Court Justices believe something, it must be reasonable.7 And if the bad-faith passage in the Supreme Court of Iowa’s opinion is regarded as a finding of fact that Detective Learning, though he later turned out to be wrong, honestly believed that his conversation with Williams was not a violation of the Sixth Amendment, the finding must still be rejected. It is utterly without record support, for reasons that we shall explain later in some detail. The finding (if that is what it is) is thus “not fairly supported by the record," and paragraph (8) of § 2254(d) permits us to examine the bad-faith question unhampered by any presumption.8
If the state court’s opinion is read as holding as a matter of law that Detective Learning did not act in bad faith because one judge of this Court (or three, if the votes to grant rehearing en banc are counted) and four members of the Supreme Court later voted not to exclude the fruits of his effort, then we respectfully disagree with the Supreme Court of Iowa. An opinion of the Supreme Court is no less declaratory of the law of the land when a bare majority joins it. The majority rules, in courts as in legislatures, and one vote is a decisive margin. Law is an art, not a science, and it often happens, especially in cases complex and important enough to attract the Supreme Court’s attention, that questions of great moment do not receive unanimous answers. We note that the Supreme Court’s opinion refers to Detective Learning’s conduct as “so clear a violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments ... [that it] cannot be condoned.” 430 U.S. at 406, 97 S.Ct. at 1243 (emphasis supplied). There is a sense, we suppose, in which a case decided by one vote is anything but “clear,” but we judges of an inferior court are not permitted such speculation.
It is true that a proposition of law subscribed to by four Supreme Court Justices (or perhaps even one) must in some fashion be objectively “reasonable,” but that does not meet the issue presented here. The question before us is not whether the Supreme Court’s opinion in Brewer v. Williams is fairly debatable as a legal matter. Obviously it is. The question is rather what was in Detective Learning’s mind during that car ride back to Des Moines. If he honestly thought he was not violating Williams’s rights, then the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule would arguably not be impaired by allowing proof of facts that would have come to light in any event. But if he had no such honest belief, and if the courts later hold his conduct unlawful, it matters not how close the division was among the judges. The relevant question— [1171]*1171bad faith — is subjective. Possibly if Detective Learning testified that he thought he was behaving constitutionally, and later the courts unanimously decided otherwise, based on clear preexisting law, the very clarity of the courts’ action might be thought to cast a doubt on the truthfulness of the testimony. Could a proposition so lacking in legal support actually have been believed by an officer of the law?, one might ask. But that is not this case. Here, the question is the reverse: Does the closeness of a later judicial decision necessarily establish that conduct approved by a minority of judges is not in bad faith? We think not. If Learning conversed with Williams in deliberate violation of the Sixth Amendment, the evidence must be excluded.
We turn, then, to the factual question of Learning’s state of mind at the time. On this question the State concededly has the burden of proof. If the evidence is in equipoise, or if there is no evidence either way, the State must lose. Yet there is not a line of evidence in the record before us that Detective Learning thought he was within the Constitution. No court, state or federal, has ever so found, and it is not hard to see why, given the state of this record. We do not even have a self-serving statement from Learning himself that he was unaware of any constitutional violation.9
The opinions of the Supreme Court and of the various concurring Justices in Brewer v. Williams furnish some fairly strong clues as to how that Court might resolve the bad-faith issue (though footnote 12 of the Court’s opinion must mean that that issue, like other aspects of the inevitable-discovery doctrine, was to be open for exploration at the second trial and subsequent post-conviction proceedings). Not only does the Court refer to the Sixth Amendment violation as “clear,” 430 U.S. at 406, 97 S.Ct. at 1243. It also describes Learning’s course of conduct as undertaken “deliberately,” “designedly,” and “purposely,” id. at 399, 97 S.Ct. at 1239, and labels the situation before it as “constitutionally indistinguishable from” a previous Supreme Court decision, Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964). The Court did not think it was breaking new ground, or holding Detective Learning to a standard of conduct not theretofore clearly established.
Justice Marshall, concurring, stated that “there can be no doubt that Detective Learning consciously and knowingly set out to violate Williams’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination/10! as Learning himself understood, those rights.” Id. 430 U.S. at 407, 97 S.Ct. at 1244. Justice Powell, concurring, remarked that “the entire setting was conducive to the psychological coercion that was successfully exploited.” Id. at 412, 97 S.Ct. at 1246. He took the position, at least as to Fourth Amendment violations, that “a distinction should be made between flagrant violations by the police, on the one hand, and technical, trivial, or inadvertent violations, on the other,” but emphasized that “[h]ere, we have a Sixth Amendment case and also one in which the police deliberately took advantage of an inherently coercive setting in the absence of counsel, contrary to their express agreement. ' Police are to be commended for diligent efforts to ascertain the truth, but the police conduct in this case plainly violated [Williams’s] constitutional rights.” Id. at 413-14 n. 2, 97 S.Ct. at 1246-47 n. 2. And Justice Stevens, concur[1172]*1172ring, observed that “the State cannot be permitted to dishonor its promise to this lawyer.” Id. at 415, 97 S.Ct. at 1247 (footnote omitted).11
Our study of the record confirms these hints in the opinions of the Justices in the majority. Not only has the State not borne its burden of proof; what evidence there is on the subject strongly points in the direction” of bad faith. In the first place, every court, state or federal, that has made a finding on the issue has found that the police broke an express promise to Henry McKnight, Williams’s Des Moines lawyer. The trial court so found before the first trial, see State v. Williams, supra, 182 N.W.2d at 402; id. at 406 (Stuart, J., dissenting); the District Court so found in the first habeas proceeding, Williams v. Brewer, supra, 375 F.Supp. at 173; and by the time the case reached this Court for the first time the breach of the agreement was no longer in dispute, Williams v. Brewer, supra, 509 F.2d at 229; id. at 236 n. 1 (Webster, J., dissenting). The word of the police, like that of everyone else, should be good. The broken promise might be justified if Detective Learning was hoping (after two days of exposure to freezing temperatures) to find the victim alive. But Learning did not so testify, and, though it could not be known that Pamela was dead, any hope of finding her alive must have been forlorn. In any event, McKnight had told Learning that after he and Williams had had a chance to confer in Des Moines the police would be told where to find the body. Learning did not wish to wait. Instead, as we said on the prior appeal, “the specific purpose of ... [Learning’s] conversation with ... [Williams] was to obtain statements and information from ... [him] concerning the missing girl before ... [he] could consult with Mr. McKnight.” 509 F.2d at 231. Learning wanted, it seems, not merely to find Pamela or her body, but also to obtain statements from Williams that might be used against him. See 430 U.S. at 408, 97 S.Ct. at 1244 (Marshall, J., concurring); 375 F.Supp. at 179.
At the oral argument the State did not question that Learning broke his word, or that he deliberately and designedly set out to elicit information from Williams. It suggested, though, that deliberately seeking information is different from deliberately violating constitutional rights. Doubtless this is true as a matter of abstract logic. But several aspects of this record are inconsistent with such a reconstruction of Learning’s motivation. The promise not to question Williams was not the only promise broken. Learning also promised McKnight to bring Williams straight to Des Moines, see 430 U.S. at 391, 97 S.Ct. at 1235, and this promise also was not kept. Learning seems to have decided to break his promise not to question Williams almost immediately after the promise was made. Upon arriving in Davenport to pick Williams up, and before beginning the return trip. Learning told his prisoner that “ ‘we’ll be visiting between here and Des Moines.’ ” Ibid. Thereafter, Williams’s Davenport counsel, a lawyer named Kelly, reminded Learning of his commitment, but “Learning expressed some reservations.” Id. at 392, 97 S.Ct. at 1236. Kelly asked to be allowed to ride back in the car with his client, but this request was refused. Then, in the car, Learning told Williams that he knew the body was in the area of Mitchellville, although “[t]he fact of the matter, of course, was that Detective Learning possessed no such knowledge.” Id. at 393 n. 1, 97 S.Ct. at 1236 n. 1. We do not wonder that the Supreme Court of Iowa described these tactics as “both subtly coercive and purposeful,” 285 N.W.2d at 260, and that the trial court, in its opinion on the motion to suppress made before the second trial, referred to the “U.S. Supreme Court’s findings that ... [the Christian burial] speech was a sly and clever psychological ploy, designed for mental coercion of the defendant .... ” App. 136-37 (emphasis supplied). The State seems not to have asked the trial [1173]*1173court to make a finding on the issue of bad faith, and, as we have noted, it did not do so. This quotation from its opinion may indicate what that finding would have been. A design to obtain incriminating evidence by mental coercion is a design to violate the Constitution.
Nor is this a case where the police, having successfully devised a means of obtaining evidence, then forthrightly admitted the facts and defended the legality of their own conduct. On the contrary, Learning disputed the claim that he had agreed with McKnight not to question Williams on the way back to Des Moines. He also contradicted Kelly’s testimony that he had been refused permission to ride back with Williams, and that he had told Learning that Williams was not to talk with him until they reached Des Moines. The District Court in the first habeas case explicitly resolved these three conflicts in testimony against Learning, 375 F.Supp. at 176, 177, and the state trial court found as a fact, contrary to Learning’s testimony, that the agreement with McKnight had been made, and expressed “explicit doubts as to the testimony of Detective Learning.” Id. at 176 (footnote omitted). These are not the actions of a man who believed he was doing the right thing, only to be confounded later on by a close vote on a question of law.
We hold that the State did not satisfy its burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the police did not act in bad faith in obtaining Williams’s statements that led them to the body. Under the inevitable-discovery rule as laid down by the Supreme Court of Iowa, which we accept arguendo for the purposes of this appeal, the motion to suppress should have been granted. Williams’s conviction was obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and it must be set aside.
III.
It will inevitably be remarked that our opinion focusses more on the conduct of the police than of the alleged murderer. If Williams is indeed guilty, and if he goes free as a result of our holding, then complete justice may not have been done, even though Williams has served 14 years in prison. A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one’s attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced.
The judgment of the District Court is reversed. This cause is remanded to it with directions to issue the writ of habeas corpus releasing Williams from custody, unless the State within 60 days of the issuance of our mandate commences proceedings to try Williams again. Our action is also without prejudice to the right of the appropriate authorities of the State of Iowa to commence a civil-commitment proceeding against appellant.
It is so ordered.