In re K.R.C.

While at school, 12-year-old Kevin was called out of class and sent to student services. In a small office the size of a coat closet, a school resource officer interrogated him about an alleged incident that occurred in school. A second uniformed, armed officer blocked the door. Kevin had no prior experience with law enforcement, and neither officer contacted his parents or offered to do so. The interrogation included confrontational, accusatory questions and a false claim about a witness. The interrogation continued in the in-school suspension room, where the officer raised her voice. Kevin was never given Miranda warnings. The State charged him with fourth-degree sexual assault. The trial court denied his motion to suppress, found him guilty, and adjudicated him delinquent. The court of appeals affirmed, calling it a “close case.” Kevin appealed again, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to review whether 1) Kevin was in custody and entitled to Miranda warnings, and 2) his statements were involuntary due to coercive tactics.

Juvenile Law Center and the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Criminal Defense and Youth Advocacy Clinic filed an amicus brief on the first issue, arguing Kevin was in custody and entitled to Miranda protections. Eleven Wisconsin and national criminal defense and youth advocacy organizations, attorneys, and academics joined. The brief emphasized that when determining whether an individual is in custody, courts must assess every custody factor from a reasonable child’s perspective. The reasonable child standard is required by the Supreme Court in J.D.B., which recognized children’s vulnerability in interrogation settings. We argued that properly applying the reasonable child standard shows Kevin was in custody and that interrogations in schools should be presumptively custodial due to students' restricted movement and heightened susceptibility to pressure.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed that Kevin was in custody when he gave statements to law enforcement because “a reasonable 12-year -old would not feel free to leave.” Because Kevin therefore should have received Miranda warnings, but did not, the Court held that the lower courts erred in failing to exclude Kevin’s statement from evidence. However, unfortunately, the Court also found this was “harmless error” due to other testimony duplicating the facts in his statement, and upheld Kevin’s delinquency adjudication.

The Court’s analysis nevertheless paves the way for stronger protections for youth involved in schoolhouse interrogations moving forward. The Court noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261 (2011) that the child’s age must be a factor when known or objectively apparent, emphasizing “the special care [courts] must take when analyzing the interrogation of children” because “children are more vulnerable to coercion than adults.” The Court focused on the unique pressures inherent to school-based interrogations, noting all the ways in which the setting Kevin faced was “coercive” and amounted to the “schoolhouse version of a police-station interrogation room.” As the Court weighed the “totality of the circumstances” in Kevin’s case, it continually viewed those circumstances through the lens of “a middle schooler, in seventh grade, still six years removed from legal adulthood.”

 

LEGAL TEAM

Attorneys

Kate Burdick, Alisa Hoban, Marsha Levick

Paralegals

Tiffany Faith