It’s Time to Draw a Line in Juvenile Interrogations

Is a 10-year-old capable of understanding their Miranda rights? What about an 8-year-old? This is an age-old policy question: How do we determine the right age cutoffs?

Undoubtedly, children and adolescents face greater vulnerability to coerced and false confessions than their adult counterparts. Of juvenile wrongful convictions documented by the National Registry of Exonerations, a third involved a false confession, three times the rate in adult wrongful conviction cases. Recent research efforts have begun to focus on how best to protect juveniles; however, it is clear current protections for juveniles in interrogations are inadequate.

In my current work on a paper examining the adequacy of existing protections in juvenile interrogations, the age cutoff question comes up frequently. Although the Supreme Court created bright-line rules and protections for juveniles in its decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Miller v. Alabama, it has not done so in the context of interrogations.

Instead, the Court’s decision in Fare v. Michael C. held that age is merely one factor for judges to consider in determining whether a juvenile’s waiver of their Miranda rights was voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The Court’s most recent decision in juvenile interrogations, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, similarly held age is just one relevant factor in evaluating whether a juvenile was in custody when questioned by police (which is a requirement for Miranda protections to take effect).

The Supreme Court’s decisions in Roper and Miller embrace several lessons that have gone neglected in the field of juvenile interrogations: (1) age cutoffs avoid the risk that individualized determinations will be underprotective, (2) age cutoffs, while flawed, avoid a general-to-individual inference problem, and (3) age cutoffs should be informed by science. 

Legal Rationale for Categorical Juvenile Protections

The majority of the Court in Roper v. Simmons acknowledged the flaws with categorical rules. It said that categorical lines are both under and overprotective, but insisted that a categorical line was necessary to prevent the “unacceptable likelihood” that the gravity of a juvenile’s crime would unduly outweigh considerations of the juvenile’s immaturity. 

Roper drew an age cutoff typical in the law: juveniles are people younger than 18 and deserve special protection. Recent court decisions from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Massachusetts, however, recognized that the age of 18 is an arbitrary cutoff unsupported by neuroscience research showing brain development continues until at least age 25. Each court extended the U.S. Supreme Court’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole sentences to “emerging adults” aged 18 through 20 (Michigan’s decision addressed only 18-year-olds).

Yet, this science has not impacted juvenile interrogation law in the same way, with J.D.B. and Michael C. endorsing a case-by-case approach. In fact, the Court decided not to hear the appeal from a California court decision which found a 10-year-old gave a knowing and intelligent Miranda waiver.

As the petitioner’s brief in the Joseph H. case notes, the lack of a categorical rule has led to some courts to leave the door open to finding children 10 years old and younger capable of giving a knowing and intelligent waiver of their Miranda rights. Far from a remote possibility, courts’ decisions suggest there is an “unacceptable likelihood” that case-by-case determinations allow some judges to leave juveniles unprotected from the coercion “inherent in custodial interrogation.”

Age Cutoffs and General-to-Individual (G2i) Inferences

One notable scientific critique of age cutoffs is what some scholars have termed the pitfalls of “general-to-individual inferences” or G2i. Put simply, most empirical research establishes evidence on a group level, with great variation at the individual level. For example, a drug that research finds is “effective” for a certain condition may not be effective at all for a particular individual with that condition.

In the area of adolescent neuroscience and the law, G2i problems occur when judges or lawyers directly impute what empirical research reveals about adolescents generally to a specific juvenile defendant. For example, research finds juveniles generally are more vulnerable than adults to falsely confess in the face of the police interrogation tactic of lying about evidence (also known as a “false evidence ploy”). However, not every juvenile is more vulnerable than the average adult to the effect of a false evidence ploy.

Given the neuroscience research suggesting neurodevelopment is a gradient, not a sharp line, some may argue against categorical rules saying they fail to capture that nuance. However, like the Supreme Court acknowledged in Roper, endorsing a case-by-case approach can leave vulnerable individuals unprotected. Is there a middle path?

Where to Draw the Line

One solution is to adopt a tiered approach that recognizes this nuance. Dr. Naomi Goldstein and colleagues suggest that states prohibit juveniles 14 or younger from waiving their right to counsel during the course of the interrogation. Additionally, they suggest courts apply a rebuttable presumption of invalidity for the waiver of counsel from 15- and 16-year-old juveniles. 

The recent push for jurisdictions to adopt or raise the minimum age for prosecution gives another answer. If a jurisdiction believes that a juvenile is too young to be prosecuted, even within the juvenile justice system, why shouldn’t we also assume that person lacks the capacity to make a knowing or intelligent Miranda waiver?

Minimum age of prosecution suggests an easy starting floor for categorical protections in juvenile interrogations. Although, it is important that this floor does not become a ceiling: New Mexico categorically excludes confessions from juveniles under 13, but it has no minimum age of prosecution.

Whatever approach to categorical protections a jurisdiction finds is best, it is clear that our current case-by-case approach leaves an “unacceptable likelihood” of producing coerced confessions and wrongful conviction of juveniles. If we would not trust an eight-year-old to navigate a courtroom, we should not expect them to withstand the pressures of a police interrogation. It is time for courts and legislatures to take the lesson from Roper and Miller and finally draw a line.