264 Kan. 417
(955 P2d 1302)
No. 79,358
IN THE MATTER OF B.M.B., Appellant.
SYLLABUS BY THE COURT
1. The standard of review of a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence is whether there is substantial evidence in the record on appeal to support the trial court's findings.
2. A juvenile under 14 years of age must be given an opportunity to consult with his or her parent, guardian, or attorney as to whether he or she will waive his or her rights to an attorney and against self-incrimination. Both the parent and juvenile shall be advised of the juvenile's right to an attorney and to remain silent. Absent such warning and consultation, a statement or confession cannot be used against the juvenile at a subsequent hearing or trial.
3. An error of constitutional magnitude may be held to be harmless if the appellate court can declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. In order to declare the constitutional error harmless, an appellate court must be able to declare beyond a reasonable doubt that the error had little, if any, likelihood of having changed the result of the trial.
4. In a juvenile offender adjudication, when the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged, the standard of review on appeal is whether, after review of all the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the appellate court is convinced that a rational factfinder could have found the respondent guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Appeal from Sedgwick district court; CAROL J. BACON and TIMOTHY G. LAHEY, judges. Opinion filed March 13, 1998. Reversed.
Richard Ney, of Law Offices of Richard Ney, of Wichita, argued the cause and was on the brief for appellant.
Debra S. Peterson, assistant district attorney, argued the cause, and Nola Foulston, district attorney, and Carla J. Stovall, attorney general, were with her on the brief for appellee.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
ALLEGRUCCI, J.: B.M.B., a 10-year-old boy, appeals from his adjudication of one count of rape. Appellant's motion to transfer from the Court of Appeals to this court was granted.
On May 14, 1996, J. was 4 years old. That day, she had been outside playing when she came into the house upset and crying. J. said that a boy had tried to kiss her. Her parents had told her to scream "if anyone ever touched her in any way that she did not like."
Later the same day, J. and her 7-year-old brother, C., were playing with B.M.B. in a load of sand that had been delivered to a neighbor, Paul Beyer, who was constructing a pool.
C. and J. buried B.M.B. up to his waist in sand as B.M.B. sat with his legs extended in front of him. Then J. sat down near B.M.B., in the same position and facing the same direction he faced, and C. began burying her with B.M.B.'s help. C. was using his hands to scoop sand into a bucket, and B.M.B. was helping by pushing the sand over toward the bucket. While C. was burying J., he saw a worm in the bucket and dumped the sand back out near J.
When J. had been buried up to her knees, she screamed and ran into her house. According to C., B.M.B. said there was a bug holding onto J.'s cheek.
After Beyer began working in the back yard, he heard J. crying. Approximately 20 minutes later, he heard J. scream. Beyer described the scream as "just shrilling." He saw J. running toward the house. He also saw C. and B.M.B. standing near the sand. Beyer did not see anyone else.
J. was crying and upset when she got into her house. She told her mother that a boy had tried to "put his finger up [my] butt." J.'s mother testified that J. told her the boy who had tried to kiss J. was not the same one who was in the sand with her.
J.'s mother started brushing sand off her, then removed J.'s outer pants and noticed sand inside her panties. She asked J. how sand got there, and J. told her that "the black man tried to put his finger up her butt." When J.'s mother noticed fresh blood in the crotch of J.'s panties, she and her husband called the police. At the suggestion of the police, they took J. to a hospital to be examined.
The nurse who examined J. asked her if she knew why she had been brought to the hospital. J. had told her, "That boy put his finger in my butt and made me bleed." With no further prompting, J. had continued, "Then he hit me in my face." J. said he hit her "[because] I won't kiss him. I don't like to kiss." When asked where she was hurt, J. had pointed to her vaginal area. The nurse examined J.'s perineal area with a binocular microscope and found a laceration, some broken blood vessels beneath the skin, and sand-like gravel. The injuries were recent and consistent with J.'s general description of what had happened.
C. told a police officer that he did not know of anything that B.M.B. had done to make J. cry. C. thought J. had cried out and run away because she was frightened by a bug he had seen on her. At B.M.B.'s adjudication hearing, J. testified that "me and the black man and my brother played in the sand." She testified that she got buried first, and B.M.B. "just sticked his finger in my bottom." She said that B.M.B. had touched her through the top of her shorts.
Detective Swanson testified that after B.M.B.was identified, he had called B.M.B.'s mother on May 20, 21, and 22. Each time he spoke to an unidentified person and left a message that B.M.B.'s mother should call him. Swanson had not tried to contact B.M.B.'s mother by going to their house. Swanson had not tried to get in touch with B.M.B.'s father because he had been told that the father was in prison.
The morning of May 23, J.'s father called Swanson to advise him that B.M.B. would be leaving the next day to spend the summer with his uncle in Arkansas. Without trying to contact B.M.B.'s mother again, Swanson went to the school where 10-year-old B.M.B. attended fourth grade. Swanson identified himself as a police officer and said that B.M.B. would be going with him to the Exploited and Missing Child Unit office because he needed to talk to B.M.B. about something that had happened. B.M.B. cried, but by the time they had driven to the office (about 20 minutes), he was calm. During the drive, Swanson asked B.M.B. about his upcoming trip to Arkansas. Swanson considered B.M.B. to be under arrest, but did not tell B.M.B. so.
At the police station, Swanson put B.M.B. into an interview room and advised him of his Miranda rights. He did this by having B.M.B. read the Miranda form, going over each sentence with him, and having B.M.B. initial each sentence. Swanson asked B.M.B. if he wanted to have his mother present, and B.M.B. said that he did not. He began questioning B.M.B. at 9:55 a.m. and stopped at 10:33 a.m. About 20 minutes after the questioning began, someone knocked on the door. The tape recorder was then turned off for 7 minutes. Swanson was told that B.M.B.'s mother had called. Swanson testified: "I went and told [B.M.B.'s mother] that, indeed, I had [B.M.B.] at the interview--at the office. And then I went back, documented the time that I started the tape again, and continued the interview." The transcript of the taped questioning shows that Swanson received the message about B.M.B.'s mother at 10:14 a.m. and turned the tape back on at 10:21 a.m. The transcript also shows that Swanson did not tell B.M.B. that his mother had called or that she was on her way to the police station until after B.M.B. had made incriminating statements and was asking when he was going back to school. Swanson resumed questioning immediately and concluded it before B.M.B.'s mother arrived. Much of the text of the transcribed questioning is underlined. This note appears at the end of the transcript: "(Underlined corrections by Det. Swanson, 08-16-96)[.]" It is unclear exactly what that includes.
At the hearing on the motion for new trial, Dr. Mark Chaffin testified on B.M.B.'s behalf. He is a clinical professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma, research director at the Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, and co-director of the Adolescent Sex Offender Treatment Program. He had read the transcript of B.M.B.'s questioning. Asked his opinion of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the questioning, he stated:
"I've reviewed transcripts of many interviews in several other cases, as well as this one, interviews that I thought were both appropriate and inappropriate. This interview was a very difficult one. This transcript was a very difficult one to review. I have to say, unfortunately, it's probably the worst I've seen in my career. It was, at best, incompetent; at [worst], reprehensible. And I say that with a great deal of difficulty because I'm someone who works with abused children, who works with law enforcement people, who works with people who do this. I'm normally on the other side of these cases. This particular interview was beyond the pale. I'm familiar with the techniques used. I've attended conferences. I've collaborated with law enforcement people in their training of how to interview children. I'm familiar with the techniques that were used in these interviews. These are techniques that law enforcement people, to my knowledge, are trained to use with adult suspects who are suspected of being sex offenders. They are wholly inappropriate for use with ten year old children. We have reams of research about the effects of coercive questioning, suggestive and leading questioning, pressured situations and the effects these have on children and how it's different from the effects they have on adults. Basically, these types of techniques, in my opinion, have no place in--in any kind of setting in use with children. They would likely lead--in fact, we really from a research perspective don't know the effects of this type of questioning because, typically, in the suggestibility and coercive questioning research that's been done, far less pressure has been exerted on children in those research studies because people didn't think it would be ethical to go this far with children just to see what would happen. Even in settings where less pressure, less suggestion and less coercion has been studied, we found substantial numbers of children will agree with things that are--that are factually inaccurate, will give assention to things, will nod and say 'Uh-huh' or will--will essentially agree to things or even come to believe things that are not true using far lower levels of pressure and suggestion than were used in this interview. This type of interview technique--if what one wants is a confession, this type of interview technique with ten year old children will get it. It will unfortunately, in my opinion, get it from the guilty and get it from the innocent. I think--my guess would be a substantial number--and I'm not talking about ten percent or fifteen percent. But a substantial number, perhaps as many as half, of all children interviewed in this way would have given some minimal agreement to what was being suggested to them with this level of pressure and coercion. So my opinion--I guess my opinion of this interview, based on the transcript and understanding that transcripts don't tell you everything in an interview--the transcript is flat. It reads like the record is flat. It doesn't give you intonation. It doesn't give you non-verbals. It doesn't give you the way the people were conducting an interchange. But simply even with those limitations, my evaluation of this interview would be, is, obviously fairly negative."
We first consider if B.M.B.'s waiver of his rights was knowingly and voluntarily given so that his statement to police was properly admitted at trial. "If the findings of the trial court on a motion to suppress evidence are based on substantial evidence, this court on review will not substitute its view of the evidence for that of the trial court." State v. Salcido-Corral, 262 Kan. 392, Syl. 6, 940 P.2d 11 (1997). But where the accused is a juvenile, this court exercises "the 'greatest care' in assessing the validity of the confession." State v. Robinson, 261 Kan. 865, 888, 934 P.2d 38 (1997) (quoting State v. Young, 220 Kan. 541, 553, 552 P.2d 905 [1976]). In the present case, the trial judge denied the juvenile's motion to suppress in the following words:
"When I apply the factors outline in Young to this factual situation, I find the following: That the length of the questioning weighs toward admitting the statement made by [B.M.B], as it appears it was approximately thirty-one minutes in length, if you take out the time that the Detective left the room. There certainly have been many interrogations that have lasted a matter of hours, closer to half a day, actually, off and on, with meal breaks, et cetera, and this is nowhere near that. [B.M.B]'s mental state appears to be relatively calm. Although he was described as tearful or crying as he left the school, that was apparently a situation that corrected itself upon getting into the Detective's car. I'm more impressed, however, with [B.M.B]'s comment that he would simply do his homework while waiting for paperwork to be processed, rather than being described as tearful or overwrought. There is no indication at this point that [B.M.B.] had any hesitation with regard to speaking to this Detective. I know nothing about [B.M.B]'s maturity, other than he obviously can write and has signed the document, Exhibit No. 5, [and] dated it appropriately. On the other hand, he is ten years old--or was ten years old at the time. I find significant that the Detective did, indeed, attempt to reach [B.M.B.]'s mother and that apparently he only took the action of picking up [B.M.B.] at school when it appeared [B.M.B.] was going to be leaving the jurisdiction of the Court. The total circumstances would indicate that this is a voluntary statement. If, after hearing the statement, I see anything or hear anything in there to indicate otherwise, on my own I would exclude it. At this time it comes in. It's in."
In the case referred to by the trial court, State v. Young, 220 Kan. 541, the 16-year-old defendant's conviction of felony murder was affirmed. In considering Young's motion to suppress his confession, the court concluded that an accused juvenile's pretrial waiver of his privilege against self-incrimination was controlled by In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 18 L. Ed. 2d 527, 87 S. Ct. 1428 (1967), and State v. Hinkle, 206 Kan. 472, 479 P.2d 841 (1971). Young, 220 Kan. at 546. This guiding principle was quoted from In re Gault:
"'. . . If counsel was not present for some permissible reason when an admission was obtained, the greatest care must be taken to assure that the admission was voluntary, in the sense not only that it was not coerced or suggested, but also that it was not the product of ignorance of rights or of adolescent fantasy, fright or despair.' (p. 55.)" 220 Kan. at 546.
In making its determination, the court considers the totality of the circumstances. 220 Kan. at 546. The factors considered in Young were:
- the age of the minor,
- the length of the questioning,
- the youth's education,
- the youth's prior experience with the police, and
- the youth's mental state.
The inquiry, if this court is to apply the generally accepted standard of review of a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence, is whether there is substantial evidence in the record on appeal to support the trial court's findings. B.M.B.'s counsel suggests that there is not. We agree. Distilled from the trial court's ruling from the bench, the court identified the evidence of the following circumstances:
- the age of the minor--B.M.B. was 10 years old.
- the length of the questioning--interrogation lasted 31 minutes. It was brief compared to many interrogations.
- the youth's education--"I know nothing about [B.M.B.'s] maturity, other than he obviously can write and has signed the document [and] dated it appropriately."
- the youth's prior experience with the police--no finding.
- the youth's mental state--B.M.B. was "relatively calm." He was not "tearful or overwrought."
The trial court correctly stated that B.M.B. was 10 years old. His age, however, seems not to have been considered material to the trial court's other findings.
The trial court correctly stated that the formal questioning lasted 31 minutes. B.M.B. also was alone in the car with the officer for approximately 20 minutes, and then he was in the interview room for 38 minutes and was questioned for 31 minutes. The trial court seemed to find the length of the questioning unremarkable relative to other interrogations. The trial court, however, made no effort to evaluate the length of the interrogation in light of B.M.B.'s age. Nor did the trial court take into account the length of time B.M.B. was in the officer's sole custody.
The trial court did not mention that B.M.B. was in the fourth grade, but noted that he could write. In other words, the trial court failed to make any finding of any significance with respect to B.M.B.'s mental capacity. Moreover, the trial court professed total ignorance "about [B.M.B.'s] maturity."
The trial court did not mention whether B.M.B. had any prior experience with the police. The State contends that, "[b]y his own admission, the respondent had been in trouble with the police before for writing in the cement." The State does not contend, however, that this "fact" appears in the record on appeal except in B.M.B.'s statement, the admissibility of which is at issue. There is nothing in the record from which it can be determined what the nature or extent of the encounter was.
The factor that most impressed the trial judge was B.M.B.'s mental state, which she regarded as being "relatively calm." She seems to have based her opinion on his demeanor following the questioning rather than preceding or during it. In this regard, the trial judge stated:
"Although he was described as tearful or crying as he left the school, that was apparently a situation that corrected itself upon getting into the Detective's car. I'm more impressed, however, with [B.M.B.'s] comment that he would simply do his homework while waiting for paperwork to be processed, rather than being described as tearful or overwrought."
Not only is the basis for the trial court's opinion of questionable relevance due to its occurring after the interrogation, but also it is not supported by the record. The basis for the trial judge's opinion is the testimony of Detective Swanson. The transcript of Swanson's exchange with B.M.B. at the close of the questioning does not substantiate Swanson's trial testimony about B.M.B. stating that he would do his homework. At the end of the interrogation, Swanson said, "I'm going to let you sit back here for a few minutes, okay and I'm going to do some paperwork and stuff and your mom should be here [in] a short time and uh, we'll get things taken care of okay?" On the record, B.M.B. responded, "Can I go sit back where I was?" Swanson asked, "You mean out front?" B.M.B. said yes, and Swanson said he could. There is no mention of homework. At trial, Swanson testified: "I had told him I had some paperwork to do and he said he was going to work on his homework."
The trial court failed to make any finding at all for one of the Young factors--prior experience with the police--and the finding on B.M.B.'s education is of little value. There is a serious question whether a basis of substantial evidence can be said to exist for the trial court's finding with regard to B.M.B.'s mental state. In addition, it appears that the trial court assigned weight to factors that should not have been in the equation. For example, the trial court stated: "I find significant that the Detective did, indeed, attempt to reach [B.M.B.'s] mother and that apparently he only took the action of picking up [B.M.B.] at school when it appeared [B.M.B.] was going to be leaving the jurisdiction of the Court." There is nothing material to the voluntariness of B.M.B.'s statement in this finding. There certainly is no mention of Detective Swanson's failure to try to arrange to meet B.M.B.'s mother at the school or to secure her presence at the police station. Nor is there any mention of his deliberately continuing and concluding B.M.B.'s questioning after his mother called the police station to say that she was on her way there, presumably after being informed by school officials that B.M.B. had been taken from his classroom.
In addition to these shortcomings in the trial court's consideration, B.M.B.'s counsel argues that the detective's demeanor and conduct was inappropriate and should be taken into account as tending to make the statement involuntary. Counsel contends that Swanson misled B.M.B. into thinking that the situation was not serious by failing to tell B.M.B. he was under arrest and facing a very serious charge and by acting as if he were a pal rather than a law enforcement officer. Swanson's testimony and the transcript of the taped questioning support the contentions. In the first regard, Swanson testified that he considered B.M.B. to be under arrest when they left the school. Swanson admitted, however, that he did not tell B.M.B. When B.M.B. asked Swanson during the questioning whether he was in trouble, Swanson did not give him a direct answer. Instead he suggested to B.M.B. that any trouble he might be in would be created by someone other than Swanson and concluded by assuring B.M.B. he would be all right:
"Well, anytime, anytime that we do something wrong, there's, there's a price that we pay but I'm not the one that's going to do that. I don't make that decision. What I do is get all the fact[s] and I present them to other people and they make that decision. Okay, but I'll tell you this. You're going to be [all right]."
In the second regard, Swanson cajoled B.M.B. during the questioning by asking the 10-year-old boy things like, "You're not married are you? Just checking." He also asked, "Have you ever been in the military?"
B.M.B.'s counsel also contends that Swanson coerced and suggested the contents of B.M.B.'s statement to him so that it was not the product of B.M.B.'s own mind or will. Counsel singles out the following response made by Swanson to B.M.B.'s denial of wrongdoing:
"Well, let me tell you something, okay? I didn't bring you down here to ask you if you did it. Okay? I brought you down here to tell me why you did it. See, because she went to the doctor and all you know and she told me what happened and I talked to the doctor and the doctor you know she, she found hurt."
Examination of the transcript also shows that a short time later, with B.M.B. persisting in his denial of wrongdoing, the following exchange occurred:
"JS: Let me ask you something, okay? This is, it's not a matter of if, okay? Something happened and I don't think you meant to hurt the girl, but it did happen. So now what [we] have to do is we have to deal with what happened . . .
"BB: Yeah, but I didn't . . .
"JS: . . . Okay now listen . . .
"BB: . . . touch her . . .
"JS: . . . Now listen let me finish, okay? I don't think you meant to hurt her. There's a lot of reasons, you know you, there's a lot of reasons that could of happen. It could of been an accident. It could mean, you know you didn't mean to do it. I don't know, but it did happen and the girl got hurt and it's, it's just one of those things, but what [we] have to do when we make mistakes part of growing up is being able to admit that we make mistakes, okay?"
Then immediately after Swanson returned from talking to B.M.B.'s mother on the telephone, he began again:
"JS: Okay [B.M.B.], we were talking before okay? The fact of the matter is it happened, it was a mistake. You didn't mean to hurt her, did you? Okay and I didn't think that you did. You don't seem like a bad kid. You didn't want to hurt that girl. Was it this, you were curious or I mean it's, it's okay. I'm going [sic] to think badly of you. Like I said the only thing I deal with is the truth. That's the only thing I'm interested in. I mean was it an accident?
"BB: I don't see how I could
"JS: Huh?
"BB: I don't see how I could have touched though cause all I was doing was putting sand on her
"JS: _______ but your hand touched her down there, didn't it? You know, it's okay. You know sometimes these things really bother us and cause us problems, but if you talk to me and let me know we can help."
In addition to suggesting the accidental nature, Swanson also suggested specific actions to B.M.B.: "Well you know there was sand inside her panties and stuff too? So that makes [sense], if you were burying her in the sand, huh? Did your finger accidentally slide up her?" "So did your in finger accidentally go in the girl when you were playing with her?" "Yeah, do you remember which finger accident[ally] went in her?" "So basically what happened, is you accidentally stuck your left thumb up there while you were playing?" These suggestions by Swanson continued despite B.M.B.'s responding no less than seven times that he did not touch J. as suggested by Swanson.
Another problem with Swanson's questioning arises from his and B.M.B.'s not sharing a vocabulary for the subject. The resulting dialogue leaves the reader wondering whether the two are talking about the same thing and what B.M.B. actually said he did. For example, when Swanson asked B.M.B. about his finger or thumb being "up her" or "in the girl" or "in her" or "up there," did B.M.B. understand the officer to be referring to his finger or thumb being inside J.'s outer pants, panties, between her legs, in her vagina? There is no way to tell for sure what Swanson intended, what B.M.B. thought Swanson was talking about, or what B.M.B. was talking about.
The heavy burden of proving a knowing waiver by a juvenile is on the State. In order for B.M.B. to knowingly and intelligently waive his right to counsel and privilege against self-incrimination, the State must show that he fully comprehended the significance of those rights and the consequences of waiving them. Here, the trial court found that he did. We disagree. The trial court identified the relevant factors to be considered in making its determination but failed to consider the significance of those factors as applied to B.M.B. The trial court failed to consider the totality of the circumstances as it affected B.M.B.'s waiver, and its consideration of the Young factors was superficial at best. In applying those factors to the circumstances in the present case, we have serious doubts whether B.M.B. fully understood his constitutional rights or the consequences of his waiving those rights. Based on the totality of the circumstances, we conclude that the State failed to show that B.M.B.'s statement was voluntary.
B.M.B.'s appellate counsel would have this court make a bright-line rule that a 10-year-old child, acting strictly on his or her own, is incapable of knowingly waiving rights. Counsel advocates that the advice of a parent, guardian, or legal custodian as well as that of an attorney should be a required condition for a child's knowing waiver of rights. He contends that "[a] number of states have found the interrogation of unadvised children to be illegal and have established absolute prohibitions against such acts either by statute or case law." According to B.M.B.'s counsel, the states with statutory restrictions on the admissibility of unadvised juvenile statements include Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. With regard to judicially created restrictions, B.M.B.'s counsel states:
"The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court drew a legal bright line on this issue without a state statute. In Commonwealth v. MacNeill, 399 Mass. 71, 76-77, 502 N.E.2d 938, 942 (1987), the court held:
'We conclude that for the Commonwealth successfully to demonstrate a knowing and intelligent waiver by a juvenile, in most cases it should show that a parent or an interested adult was present, understood the warnings, and had the opportunity to explain his rights to the juvenile so the juvenile understands the significance of waiver of these rights. For the purpose of obtaining the waiver in the case of juveniles who are under the age of fourteen, we conclude that no waiver can be effective without this added protection.'
"In Missouri and in New York the rule is stricter. The appellate courts in those states have found that the interrogation of any juvenile requires the presence of his or her parent. In re K.W.B., 500 S.W.2d 275 (Mo. App. 1973); Matter of Aaron D., 30 App. Div. 2d 183, 290 N.Y.S.2d 935 (1968).
"The courts of Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Vermont have held that in order for prosecutors in their states to meet the burden of demonstrating that a juvenile's waiver was made knowingly and intelligently, they must affirmatively show that the juvenile engaged in meaningful consultation with an attorney or informed parent or guardian before he waived his privilege against self-incrimination. Commonwealth v. Smith, 472 Pa. 492, 372 A.2d 797 (1977); State in Interest of Dino, [359 So. 2d 586 (La. 1978)]; State v. Piper, [143 Vt. 468], 468 A.2d 554 (1983).
"Indiana, Georgia and Florida courts have concluded that the administering of Miranda warnings to a juvenile, without providing an opportunity to consult with an informed adult concerned primarily with the interest of the juvenile, is inadequate per se to create a knowing and voluntary waiver. Lewis v. State, 259 Ind. 431, 288 N.E.2d 138 (1972); Freeman v. Wilcox, 119 Ga. App. 325, 167 S.E.2d 163 (1969); J.E.S. v. State, [366 So. 2d 538 (Fla. Dist. App. 1979)]."
B.M.B.'s counsel brings to the court's attention a scholarly article by Thomas Grisso entitled Juveniles' Capacities to Waive Miranda Rights: An Empirical Analysis, 68 Cal. L. Rev. 1134 (1980). Grisso describes studies performed by social scientists and lawyers at St. Louis University which were designed to provide judges, legislators, and attorneys with the information essential to consideration of the validity of Miranda rights waivers by juveniles. 68 Cal. L. Rev. 1134-36. In reporting the results of the studies, the author advocated different approaches for juveniles younger than 15 and juveniles 15 and older. 68 Cal. L. Rev. at 1160-66. He drew the following conclusions:
"The two empirical studies described in this Article indicate that younger juveniles as a class do not understand the nature and significance of their Miranda rights to remain silent and to counsel. Consequently, their waivers of these rights cannot be considered