Summary of Argument
The age of a person is an objective fact that, when known by the interrogating officer, is a circumstance of the interrogation that a court may properly consider in a Miranda custody analysis. In Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004), this Court held that the state court did not “unreasonably apply . . . clearly established Federal law” by neglecting to consider Alvarado’s age2 explicitly in its Miranda custody analysis. In so holding, the Court expressly left open the question whether a court may consider age—and, if so, under what circumstances. Consistent with Miranda and its progeny, including Alvarado, amicus curiae NACDL respectfully urges this Court to confirm in this case that age, like other factual circumstances that comprise an interrogation environment, may be properly considered by a court as part of the “totality of circumstances” for purposes of the Miranda custody test when that fact is known by both parties to the interrogation.
Permitting a court to consider age, when known, as part of the Miranda custody test does not convert the analysis into a subjective test. In order to be relevant to the “custody” analysis, a factor under consideration must be an “objective fact,” not a “subjective experience” that “depend[s] on the actual mindset of a particular suspect.” See Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 667- 68. The age of the person being questioned, when known to the interrogating officer, is not a “subjective experience” or a matter subject to debate or interpretation. When an objective fact—including the age of the person being questioned—is known to the interrogating officers, they need not engage in guesswork about the person’s particular “frailties or idiosyncrasies.” See Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 442 n.35 (1984). Although interrogating officers (and courts) will have to assess the relative impact and significance of age in the context of all other objective circumstances, this is no different—and no less “objective”—than the analysis for any other circumstance this Court has upheld as appropriately considered under the Miranda custody test, such as the length or location of the interrogation. Also like any other objective fact, age will not be dispositive. It may not even be significant in some cases, as in Alvarado, depending upon the particular facts. That said, the objective exercise of applying a reasonable person standard necessitates an evaluation of “all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation,” Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322 (1994) (per curiam) (emphasis added), in order for the court to “determine what it would have been like for a reasonable man to be in the suspect’s shoes,” Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 119 (1995) (Thomas, J., dissenting). To the extent that the age of the interviewee is known to the questioner and may materially affect whether a reasonable person in the position of the interviewee would view himself as free to leave, that objective fact should not be excluded from the custody inquiry. Cf. United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274-75 (2002) (criticizing lower court’s removal of certain factors from its analysis under a “totality of the circumstances” test).
The Alvarado majority noted that “[t]here is an important conceptual difference between the Miranda custody test and the line of cases from other contexts considering age and experience”—such as, for example, the voluntariness of confessions. 541 U.S. at 667. But the fact that the inquiries are conceptually distinct does not mean that age is irrelevant in the “custody” context. For example, this Court has already recognized a number of factors, such as the location and length of the interrogation, as being relevant both to the voluntariness inquiry that assesses the suspect’s state of mind as well as the custody analysis that is based upon a reasonable person standard. See, e.g., Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U.S. 49, 52-53, 54, 55 (1962) (noting relevance of the length of questioning in voluntariness analysis); In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 53, 54 (1967) (in context of voluntariness analysis, noting instances where interviewee was “placed in the police station” and where statements were “made at police headquarters”); Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 664-65 (noting as relevant factors in custody test that questioning took place “at the police station” and that “[t]he interview lasted two hours, four times longer than the 30-minute interview in Mathiason”); Mathiason v. Oregon, 429 U.S. 492, 495-96 (1977) (location of interrogation is relevant to custody test, albeit not dispositive); id. at 495 (noting as relevant to custody test the fact that interview lasted half an hour).
Certain common factors are inherent in the interactions between law enforcement officers and suspects, and these factors, when present and known to both parties, will inform any determination based upon the totality of the circumstances. The age of a suspect, like the location or length of the questioning, is one of the objective facts that (when known to the interrogating officer) should inform a court’s decision whether the interrogation was custodial, in addition to informing a court’s decision whether any statement made was voluntary. To the extent an individual’s age affects a reasonable and objective view of whether that person would have felt he or she was not free to leave under the circumstances of the case, the age of the individual should not be ignored.
Considering age as part of the custody inquiry does not impose any impractical or inappropriate burdens on law enforcement and is consistent with Miranda’s policy goal to provide clear guidelines to law enforcement. Conversely, a holding that the suspect’s age is never relevant to the custody analysis could put officers in the odd position of having to ignore certain facts about the suspect that would have bearing on the interrogation environment. In this case, the interrogating officer was specially trained in juvenile law enforcement and was well aware of the juvenile suspect’s age. The officer chose the child’s middle school as the site of an interrogation regarding a nonschool incident and conducted the interrogation during school hours in a closed conference room, without contacting the child’s guardian. In these circumstances, a rule permitting a court to consider the juvenile’s age as part of the custody inquiry would not complicate the analysis of or place undue burdens upon the police. Such a rule simply allows a court to account for the knowledge of the interrogation scene that an officer and suspect both have, consistent with this Court’s precedents.