Op-ed

Ella Yearicks English 102 Christy Vance November 13, 2009 Juveniles vs. False Confession Many investigators, both in the recent and the non-recent past, have wound up focusing on a juvenile as the main suspect of a homicide. In these not so rare cases, an interrogator is usually advised to take special care in questioning the suspect. In many places throughout the country a juveniles interviews and interrogations all have to be recorded in some way or another, usually by tape recorder, sometimes a video recorder; but not in all places. When Miranda rights are presented to a juvenile they must be explained efficiently and thoroughly in a way this specific child will understand. Ignorantly, this step in minor interrogation is pretty much skipped a lot of the time. If a child doesn’t understand his or her rights you may as well not even waste your breath asking them questions. What should happen is a parent or attorney should inarguably be notified even without the child’s consent. A juvenile is too young to vote. How is someone not responsible enough to choose a candidate supposed be responsible enough to make the decision to waive his or her rights? Rebecca Diloreto described several incidents where a juvenile was wrongfully interrogated in the Supreme Court document, Juvenile Confessions/Right Against Self-incrimination. One of these is the case Woods v. Clusen where a 16 ½ year old murder suspect “who had no prior criminal record and no serious previous contact with criminal justice system confessed involuntarily; suspect was awakened early one morning by police officers hovering in his bedroom, was handcuffed and led away from home ostensibly for theft of chain saw, was stripped of his clothes, given institutional garb, but no shoes upon arrival at police station, and was fingerprinted and photographed and led to interrogation room where he was confronted with graphic pictures of murder scene and subjected to interrogation. If this was an adult, do you think this would have gone differently? Well, yes unless the adult has the same mental capacity as a child. An adult knows when the law is wrongfully mistreating them, for the most part. On the other hand children are subject to do as they are told as long as it is an adult who is asking them to do it. They are taught consequences come from disobeying elders. This is an indisputable reason why a parent/guardian or an attorney should be contacted for the benefit of the child. When it comes to the case as a whole, most of the time it will be thrown out of court if a child is wrongfully treated or denied his rights during interrogation, and rightfully so. If the “totality of the circumstances test,” described by Ann Gergen in her article on Constitutional Issues in Juvenile Interrogation, is carefully considered when interrogating a child the evidence will undoubtedly hold up better in court. Even though it would be most parents’ decision to be called in while his or her child is being interrogated, it’s not a law in any state. But it should be.