— 41 —
that youth are substantially more likely to waive their rights and to make incriminating statements that may, if untrue,
compromise the soundness of the outcome. Studies have found that youth invoke their Miranda rights (right to
remain silent or right to consult an attorney) in about 7 percent of cases.
216
By contrast, adults have been found to
invoke such rights in approximately 20 percent of cases.
217
A recent comprehensive study of taped interrogations for
16- and 17-year-olds charged with felonies found that 88 percent of these youth made incriminating statements, with
58 percent of youth confessing within a few minutes of waiving Miranda rights and another 30 percent providing
statements of some evidentiary value. By contrast, only 64 percent of adults made incriminating statements in the
same interrogation setting.
218
Substantial research has also demonstrated that youth have significant difficulties in understanding Miranda warnings due
to the warnings’ excessive lengths,
219
the required reading comprehension that is beyond most youth’s ability,
220
the use of
unknown legal terms,
221
and basic misunderstandings of rights (such as the common perception that non-cooperation with
police or invoking rights may lead to punishment by judges).
222
216
Barry C. Feld, “Real Interrogation: What Actually Happens When Cops Question Kids,” Law & Society Review 47, no. 1 (2013): 12.; Jodi L. Viljoen
et al., “Legal Decisions of Preadolescent and Adolescent Defendants: Predictors of Confessions, Pleas, Communication with Attorneys, and Appeals,”
Law and Human Behavior 29, no. 3 (2005): 253–77; and Thomas J. Grisso and Carolyn Pomicter, “Interrogation of Juveniles: An Empirical Study of
Procedures, Safeguards, and Rights Waiver,” Law and Human Behavior 1, no. 4 (1977): 321–342. 15.2 percent of youth exercised Miranda rights
immediately and another 4.5 percent after some interrogation. See Jessica Owen-Kostelnik et al., “Testimony and Interrogation of Minors:
Assumptions about Maturity and Morality,” American Psychology 61, no. 4 (2006): 286–304; and Allison D. Redlich et al., “Pre-adjudicative and
Adjudicative Competence in Juveniles and Young Adults,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 21 no. 3 (2003): 393–410) Ten to 20 percent of youth
exercise Miranda rights. See Judith B. Jones, Access to Counsel, Juvenile Justice Bulletin (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, OJJDP, June
2004), <https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/204063.pdf> (5 December 2014); and Alan Goldstein and Naomi E. Sevin Goldstein, Evaluating
Capacity to Waive Miranda Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
217
Three separate studies—one in the United Kingdom and two in the United States—have observed that approximately 80 percent of suspects waived
their Miranda rights. See Paul Softley, “Police Interrogation: An Observational Study in Four Police Stations,” Home Office Research Unit Report
(1980): 28, 29; Richard A. Leo, “Inside the Interrogation Room,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86 (1996): 266, 276; and Paul G. Cassell
and Bret S. Hayman, “Police Interrogation in the 1990s: An Empirical Study of the Effects of Miranda,” UCLA Law Review 43 (1996): 839, 859. See
also Mark A. Godsey, “Reformulating the Miranda Warnings in Light of Contemporary Law and Understandings,” Minnesota Law Review 90 (2006):
781, 792 (“Modern studies demonstrate that roughly 80% of suspects waive their Miranda rights and talk to the police”).
218
Percentages do not equal 100 due to rounding. See Barry C. Feld, Law and Society Review, 47: p. 17–18. Among adults, 76 percent made
incriminating admissions. See Richard A. Leo, The Impact of Miranda Revisited, 86 J.
CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 621 (1996) (76% of adults made
incriminating admissions); and Michael Wald et al., Interrogations in New Haven: The Impact of Miranda, 76 Y
ALE L.J. 1519 (1967) (64% of adults
made incriminating admissions).
219
At over 175 words, 65 percent of Miranda warnings are “very long.” See Richard Rogers et al., “Juvenile Miranda Warnings: Perfunctory Rituals or
Procedural Safeguards?” Criminal Justice and Behavior,
39 (2012): 229.
220
Most—92 percent—of Miranda warnings were above a sixth-grade level, which was above most interrogated youth’s reading levels. Ibid. Seventy
percent of all prison inmates read at or below the sixth-grade level, and 20–70 percent of juveniles in delinquency proceedings are estimated to have
learning disabilities as compared to five percent in the general population. See Allison D. Redlich, “The Susceptibility of Juveniles to False
Confessions and False Guilty Pleas,” Rutgers Law Review
62, no.4 (2010): 943, 953 (citing National Center for Education Statistics, “Literacy Behind
Prison Walls,” U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 20–23 (1994),
<http://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/94102.pdf> (5 December 2014) (finding that 70 percent of all prison inmates read at or below the sixth-grade level and
20–70 percent of juveniles in delinquency proceedings are estimated to have learning disabilities as compared to 5 percent in the general population).
See also Richard Rogers et al., “Development and Initial Validation of the Miranda Vocabulary Scale,” Law and Human Behavior 33, no. 5 (2009):
381, 386–88; Jeffrey L. Helms, “Analysis of Miranda Reading Levels Across Jurisdictions: Implications for Evaluating Waiver Competency,”
Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 3,
no. 1 (2003): 25, 29–34; and Richard Rogers et al., “The Language of Miranda Warnings in American
Jurisdictions: A Replication and Vocabulary Analysis,” Law and Human Behavior 32, no. 2 (2008): 124.
221
Sixty-three percent of juveniles (compared to 37 percent of adults) misunderstood at least one key word (such as “consult,” “attorney,”
“interrogation,” “appoint,” “entitled,” and “right”) in a Miranda warning. See Thomas Grisso, “Juveniles’ Capacities to Waive Miranda Rights: An
Empirical Analysis,” California Law Review 68, no. 6 (1980): 1134, 1151–54; Richard Rogers et al., “The Language of Miranda Warnings in
American Jurisdictions: A Replication and Vocabulary Analysis,” Law and Human Behavior 32, no. 2 (2008): 124, 130; and Alan Goldstein and
Naomi E. Sevin Goldstein, Evaluating Capacity to Waive Miranda Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). See also Gallegos v. Colorado,
370 U.S. 49, 54 (1962), stating that: “[A] 14-year-old boy, no matter how sophisticated, is unlikely to have any conception of what will confront him
when he is made accessible only to the police. That is to say, we deal with a person who is not equal to the police in knowledge and understanding of
the consequences of the questions and answers being recorded and who is unable to know how to protect his own interests or how to get the benefits
of his constitutional rights…. Without some adult protection against this inequality, a 14-year-old boy would not be able to know, let alone assert,
such constitutional rights as he had.”
222
Sixty-two percent of detained juveniles thought they could be punished for maintaining silence. See Thomas Grisso, “Juveniles’ Capacities to Waive
Miranda Rights: An Empirical Analysis,” California Law Review 68, no. 6 (1980): 1134, 1158.