Provision of Miranda Warning Is Age Related

Facts of the Case

During an investigation of several break-ins with stolen property in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in September 2005, police learned that a 13-year-old young man, J.D.B., whom they had suspected and briefly questioned, had shown off at school a camera similar to one that had been stolen. A police investigator went to the school to question him, and upon arrival, the investigator spoke to a uniformed police officer assigned to the school, who then went and got J.D.B. out of class and took him to a conference room in the same building. Present in the room were J.D.B., the uniformed school officer, the investigator, an assistant principal, and an intern working with the assistant principal. The door was closed but not locked, and the young man was questioned. No parent or guardian was contacted before, during, or after the questioning.

The police investigator asked J.D.B. if he “would agree to answer” some questions, and the young man agreed. Initially he maintained that he was in the neighborhood where the break-ins had occurred but was uninvolved in the crimes. However, at one point, the assistant principal advised him to “do the right thing” by telling the truth, and the police investigator told him that the police had recovered a camera that was stolen. J.D.B. then asked if he would still be “in trouble” if he gave the stolen items back, and the investigator told him that it would “be helpful” if he did, but advised that the matter would still be referred to the court. J.D.B. then confessed to entering the homes and taking items. After his confession, the police investigator informed him that he was not under arrest, did not have to answer questions, and was free to leave and asked him if he understood these facts. The investigator did not, however, give a Miranda warning. J.D.B. “nodded” to indicate that he understood. He then provided more details, including that some of the items were hidden at his grandmother's house. The investigator asked him to provide a written statement and the young man did. Shortly after he completed the statement, the school bell rang, indicating the end of the school day, and he was told he could leave.

Investigators subsequently applied for a search warrant and executed the warrant later at J.D.B.'s grandmother's house. He was present and showed the officers where the items were hidden. In addition, he told the officers that he had secreted some items on the roof of a nearby garage and took the officers there. Here again, his parents were not notified, and he was never given a Miranda warning. Subsequently, he was charged with two counts each of breaking and entering and larceny.

In December 2005, J.D.B. filed a motion to suppress the evidence against him on the grounds that he was in custody during the initial interview at the school and therefore should have been given a Miranda warning before being questioned. The trial court denied the motion to suppress without offering any finding of facts or conclusions of law. In January 2005, J.D.B. filed a petition wherein he admitted to all four charges but objected to the denial of his motion, pointing out that there had been no finding of facts or conclusions of law offered in the denial. On the same day, the trial court adjudicated him a juvenile delinquent. He appealed the finding.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals remanded the case and urged the lower court to make findings of fact to support its determination that J.D.B. was not in custody at the time of his interrogation. The lower court then made the same finding while putting forth a detailed summary of the facts of the case on which it based its decision. The court did not, however, proffer legal analysis or conclusions. J.D.B. again appealed the lower court's decision. The North Carolina Court of Appeals heard the case again and affirmed the lower court's opinion. The appeals court made its own legal conclusions, saying that J.D.B. was not in custody, a Miranda warning was therefore not necessary, and thus the evidence need not have been excluded.

The opinion of the North Carolina appellate court pointed out that the requirement for giving a Miranda warning applies only to custodial settings and concluded that despite being in a separate room in school with police officers and an assistant principal present, J.D.B. was not in custody. The majority interpreted North Carolina statutes and prior North Carolina cases to say that custody was equal to a formal arrest or a restraint of freedom equivalent to a formal arrest. They argued that since all school children are subject to restraint of freedom, in order for custody to exist, the suspect's circumstances must be significantly different than those that are typically encountered in a school setting. They offered as examples a locked door, a uniformed officer standing guard, or handcuffs applied and said that since none of these things was present (the uniformed officer in his case sat at the table and asked few questions, the door was closed but not locked, and handcuffs were never applied), his situation was not different enough to meet the objective test for being in custody and therefore did not require giving him a Miranda warning. The dissent pointed out that age should have been considered in the objective custody analysis, but the majority held that age need not be viewed as a factor.

Ruling and Reasoning

J.D.B. appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and incorporated in the language of the appeal the argument made by the dissent in the North Carolina appeals court that age should have been considered in the custody analysis. In June 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, overturned the North Carolina courts' decisions and held that “a child's age properly informs the Miranda custody analysis.” Writing for the majority, Justice Sotomayor pointed out that there are “very real differences between adults and children” and that never considering age as part of the custody analysis would deprive children of the same due process afforded adults. The majority opinion pointed to previous cases to buttress their opinion, including Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318 (1994), in which the Court held that a child's age would have affected his perception of his freedom to leave, and also cited Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004), in which the Court opined that a child's age “generates commonsense conclusions about behavior and perception.” The majority further supported their argument by referring to several areas of law where a child's age is commonly used to show inferior judgment, including voting and marriage rights. Finally, the opinion pointed out that age was an objective factor and did not unnecessarily complicate the analysis that law enforcement must undertake when determining if a Miranda warning is necessary.

The dissent, written by Justice Alito, asserted that adding age as a consideration would complicate what must be a very clear and easily applicable rule. The dissent argued that to consider age would shift the custody consideration from a simple test to one that required an analysis of individualized characteristics. It also argued that adding the age consideration would open the door to more characteristics being added in the future, which could result in a hopelessly complicated and inherently subjective custody analysis every time an officer had to consider whether to give a Miranda warning.