Teens’ Miranda Rights Redefined

WASHINGTON — The police need not always warn a teenage crime suspect of his rights before formally questioning him, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The 5-4 ruling gives police a bit more leeway to question suspects without warning them of their Miranda rights, and it says that a suspect’s youth is not reason enough to treat him with more caution.

The decision upholds the second-degree murder conviction of a Los Angeles County man who was 17 at the time of the crime.

Michael Alvarado was charged with being an accessory to the 1995 murder of a truck driver at a shopping mall in Santa Fe Springs. He was convicted based on tape-recorded comments he made during an interview with a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective.

At issue in the Supreme Court was whether those comments should have been excluded from his trial because Alvarado had not been warned of his rights.

In the past, the court has ruled that suspects who are “in custody” of the police must be told, before being questioned, that they have rights to remain silent and to see a lawyer. People are said to be in custody when they are in the control of the police and do not feel free to leave.

But deciding whether a suspect is in custody often comes down to a judgment call.

On Tuesday, the high court agreed with state judges in California who said that Alvarado was not in custody when he was questioned at a police station in Pico Rivera.

Det. Cheryl Comstock, who was investigating the murder, had contacted Alvarado’s parents and said she needed to speak with Michael. They took him out of school and to the station house. There, according to Alvarado’s account, the police told his parents that they would have to wait in the lobby while the detective questioned him.

Initially, the 17-year-old denied knowledge of the shooting. Later, he admitted he was standing outside the passenger side of the truck when, to his surprise, another individual pulled out a gun and shot the driver because he had refused to give up his keys. Alvarado also admitted helping hide the gun afterward.

The gunman, Paul Soto, and Alvarado were tried together, and both were convicted. Soto was sentenced to life in prison, and Alvarado got 15 years to life.

Two years ago, however, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Alvarado’s conviction on the grounds that his interview with the detective should have been excluded from the trial.

Because Alvarado was in custody of the police, he should have been warned of his rights, the three-judge panel held. “A criminal defendant’s age has long been a relevant factor.... We do not believe that a reasonable 17-year-old in Alvarado’s position would have felt ‘at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave,’ ” wrote Judge Richard D. Cudahy, quoting an earlier Supreme Court ruling.

California prosecutors appealed on behalf of the state warden. They were joined by Bush administration lawyers, who said an interrogation such as this was essentially voluntary, and therefore outside the scope of the 1966 Miranda ruling, which requires police questioners to warn suspects that they have the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday in Yarborough vs. Alvarado.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that the case was a close call, but that the 9th Circuit judges should have deferred to the California judges who initially upheld Alvarado’s conviction. Alvarado was not arrested and taken to the station house, Kennedy said. And he was not placed under arrest when he arrived. At the end of the interview, he was allowed to go home with his parents.

All this is “consistent with an interrogation environment in which a reasonable person would have felt free to terminate the interview and leave,” Kennedy wrote. “A suspect’s age or experience is (not) relevant to the Miranda custody analysis.” He was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In a concurring opinion, O’Connor said a suspect’s youth might make a difference, but not in a case such as Alvarado’s, since he was nearly 18.

In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said “ordinary common sense” called for a different result. “Would a reasonable person in Alvarado’s position have felt free simply to get up and walk out of the small room in the station house at will during his two-hour police interrogation? I ask the reader to put himself, or herself, in Alvarado’s circumstances and then answer that question,” Breyer said. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with him.

The ruling was praised by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. “Voluntary confessions are a good thing,” said Charles Hobson, a lawyer for the group. Had the detective warned Alvarado of his rights, “he probably would have said nothing and asked to see a lawyer. Had he shut up, they may not have solved the crime.”

Tara K. Allen of Malibu, the lawyer who represented Alvarado, called the ruling absurd for equating teenagers with adult criminals.

One of “the fictions of Miranda is that people have the same knowledge as the police or criminal attorney,” Allen said. “To say that police can question children in an interrogation room and treat them as if they have the same perception about their freedom to leave as an adult is absurd. It takes a few seconds for them to read the Miranda rights, but they circumvent it because they don’t want people to invoke their rights.”

Alvarado has served eight years in prison and will not be eligible for parole for seven more years, she said.

The high court is expected to rule later this month in two other Miranda-related cases.