By Kevin Lapp, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
Advocates, courts, and policymakers across the nation are considering how far the Supreme Court’s “children are different in a way that matters” criminal justice jurisprudence should extend. One of those Supreme Court cases was J.D.B., which held that a suspect’s age is relevant to determining whether an individual is in custody for purposes of Miranda. That is so even though the custody analysis is an objective inquiry. So long as the youth’s age was known or would have been objectively apparent to a reasonable officer, his age (and the developmental vulnerabilities that accompany it) must be considered.
Just last month, a California Court of Appeal held that the same applies when deciding whether a juvenile has made an unequivocal request for an attorney after waiving Miranda. The case involved a 13-year-old eighth grader who was suspected in a shooting. Thirty pages into the transcript of the videotaped custodial interrogation, and after being shown a surveillance video of the shooting, the 13 year-old said “Could I have an attorney? Because that’s not me.” The police said no and continued the interrogation. Relying on J.D.B., the court held that the police should have considered the suspect’s age in deciding whether that statement was an unequivocal request for an attorney. Moreover, it found that the youth’s lack of maturity and sophistication were objectively apparent to a reasonable officer, and that the statement by the 13 year-old was an unequivocal request for an attorney, as opposed to a mere inquiry.
This seems right to me. While it’s true that it may be hard for police to decide whether the youth they are interrogating feel free to leave, or whether they are unambiguously and unequivocally requesting an attorney such that the interrogating must immediately end, the point of this recent juvenile jurisprudence is that law enforcement must pause when confronting youth. If they’re unsure whether their presence and training are overbearing the young person, the best result would be to warn them of their Miranda rights and respect their attempts to invoke their constitutional rights.
The case was argued and briefed by staff and students at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles’s amazing Center for Juvenile Law and Policy.
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