Wisconsin Supreme Court Sets New Boundaries for Police Interrogations of Minors
In State v. K.R.C., the Wisconsin Supreme Court clarified that judges must assess whether a young person was "in custody" from the perspective of a reasonable child. The authors contend that as police presence in schools grows, this shift in standard is a meaningful step, but it doesn't go far enough.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Many adults can recite by heart the standard Miranda warnings meant to protect our Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But courts require Miranda warnings only when the person questioned is “in custody.” In a recent seminal case, State v. K.R.C., the Wisconsin Supreme Court explained how the custody inquiry changes when law enforcement officers question a child. Noting the “special care” courts must take “when analyzing the interrogation of children,” the court made clear in K.R.C. that, when reviewing the constitutionality of these interrogations, Wisconsin courts must view every aspect of the interaction through the eyes of a reasonable child.
The court’s analysis relies heavily on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, J.D.B. v. North Carolina.Pointing out both “commonsense” and neuroscience-based differences between children and adults, the Court in J.D.B. affirmed that “it is beyond dispute that children will often feel bound to submit to police questioning when an adult in the same circumstances would feel free to leave.” Because “ignor[ing] the very real differences between children and adults — would be to deny children the full scope of the procedural safeguards” granted to adults under Miranda, the Court adopted a “reasonable child” (rather than the usual “reasonable person”) standard for evaluating custody. Yet even after J.D.B., the lower courts in K.R.C. treated age merely as one discrete factor to weigh among many others in balancing the totality of circumstances.
State v. K.R.C. Facts & Holding
In K.R.C., the Wisconsin Supreme Court clarified that this is not enough: Courts evaluating whether a child was “in custody” for purposes of Miranda must view all the traditional “adult-custody” factors from the perspective of a child. And when a child is interrogated at school, courts must consider “factors unique to students” during the custody analysis. The court emphasized that the child in this case, who was represented by the Wisconsin State Public Defenders, “was 12 years old … a middle schooler, in seventh grade, [and] still six years removed from legal adulthood.”
The court then demonstrated how this test should be applied by analyzing the circumstances of the interrogation through the perspective of a 12-year-old child. For example, the court observed that being pulled from class to speak with police officers “would likely unsettle a middle schooler.” The conversational tone and short duration of the interview were not enough to overcome the other circumstances of the interrogation: “in the end, a 12-year-old boy was questioned in a closet-like law-enforcement office with two police officers, one of whom was fully uniformed and standing in front of the door.”
