Letting a Ten-Year-Old Waive His Miranda Rights? There Oughtta Be a Law

Marsha Levick & Steve Drizin,

The following is an excerpt from the Huffington Post blog post by Deputy Director and Chief Counsel, Marsha Levick, and Northwestern University Law Professor, Steve Drizin. Click the link below to read the full post.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that the average ten-year-old is incapable of waiving his Miranda rights on his own. In fact, most brain surgeons can point to hard physical evidence that they can't.

Can a ten-year-old understand Miranda rights? Is a ten-year-old able to decide to give them up and speak to the police? Last week, in a four to three decision, the California Supreme Court answered these questions in the affirmative, declining to review a ruling which had held that ten-year-old Joseph H. had "knowingly and intelligently waived" his Miranda rights before confessing to killing his abusive, neo-Nazi father.

...To waive his Miranda rights "knowingly, and intelligently," Joseph must have had "full awareness of both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it." Ten-year-olds like Joseph do not comprehend and appreciate the meaning of these rights. Research shows that many of the words used in the warnings require at least a tenth-grade education. Other research demonstrates that, as a group, adolescents understand legal proceedings less well than adults and make poorer decisions. Not surprisingly, youths fifteen years of age and younger showed the greatest disability. During his interrogation, Joseph was asked, "You have the right to remain silent. You know what that means?" Joseph responded, "That means that I have the right to stay calm." This exchange indicates that Joseph misunderstood the phrase as an instruction about how he should behave.

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Image credit: "India sad" by Anthony Kelly. Licensed under CCA-2.0.

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