Legal Commentary

One Murder Charge Dismissed Against 8 Year Old

By TChris

On Thursday, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the murder conviction of an Arizona man who confessed his guilt to the police when he was 17 after being interrogated for twelve hours in the absence of an attorney or parent. Considering the coercive nature of the persistent questioning and the boy's age, the court decided (pdf) the confession was involuntary and should not have been used as evidence. The decision represents a victory for the Constitution as well as his appellate lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.

The principle that the police cannot induce a confession by using coercive tactics to overcome a suspect's free will is particularly significant when the suspect is a juvenile. Children are easily influenced and therefore need greater protection to assure they make a voluntary choice to respond to police questioning. What, then, were the police in Apache County, Arizona thinking when they interrogated an 8 year old about the shooting of his father without arranging the presence of an attorney or adult relative to protect the child's rights?

That blunder may explain a prosecutor's decision to dismiss one of the murder charges he had filed against the 8 year old. A second charge is still pending. [more ...]

At this point the 8 year old is in juvenile court, but prosecutors have announced their intent to seek the prosecution's transfer to adult court. What is it about "8 year old" that screams "adult" to the prosecutors?

The 8 year old wasn't subjected to the 12 hour interrogation session that the 17 year old endured in the Ninth Circuit case, but even an hour long interrogation should be viewed as unreasonably coercive in the case of an 8 year old. How could this kid possibly have understood that he had a choice, that he didn't have to talk to the team of police detectives who were questioning him? The detectives didn't bother to tell him that.

The police respond that they considered the 8 year old to be a victim, not a suspect. Nonsense. If they viewed him as a victim they would have delivered him straight to a social worker who would have arranged for trauma counseling. If they thought he was a victim they wouldn't have rejected the first story he provided. They wouldn't have talked to him about the importance of telling the truth if they believed he was truthfully a victim.

Whatever happens in the case from this point, prosecutors should drop the idea of treating this child as an adult. The police did that and their actions will probably result in his confession being suppressed. It's time for Apache County to understand that an 8 year old isn't an adult and shouldn't be treated as one.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).