GIST: "Shortly
after midnight on Thanksgiving Day 1983, teenagers Alfred Chestnut,
Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were pulled from their beds and
arrested for the murder of 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett. These three black
teenagers were subsequently
convicted
and condemned to spend the rest of their lives in prison based on the
now-recanted testimony of four teenage witnesses who were questioned
without the presence of parents or legal counsel, and pressured to
identify the suspects by Baltimore police officers and prosecutors. This week,
Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart
were freed following an investigation by the Conviction Integrity Unit
in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) — just in time to
spend their first Thanksgiving at home in 36 years. While this
exoneration seeks to right an egregious wrong, it leaves unanswered the
deeply troubling and pervasive practice of basing convictions on
statements taken from young people. Prosecutors
have a duty to administer justice with integrity. When a tragic
injustice occurs, we must work to ensure those mistakes never happen
again.That’s
why we need a new starting point when it comes to how we think about
youth interrogation practices. While facilitating pathways to
transitional assistance and supporting compensation for those who have
been wrongfully convicted are important — and are reforms the
Baltimore state’s attorney’s office is advancing
— prosecutors must implement changes that prevent unreliable or coerced
evidence from putting innocent individuals behind bars in the first
place. The
witnesses in this case were interrogated repeatedly by officers without
any adults present until the pressure of this coercive environment led
them to falsely identify the three young men as the perpetrators. The
resulting convictions were based largely on this false testimony. And
while the three exonerees always maintained their innocence, we know
that many kids who have ended up wrongfully convicted were driven to
falsely “confess” under the same coercive interrogation techniques that
led to the incriminating evidence in this case. We
all want to get to the truth in criminal cases, but interrogation —
especially of young people — is a tool that should be wielded carefully.
And concerns with interrogation of witnesses under 18 are even more
critical in the context of young suspects. In those cases, the starting
point must include an unequivocal requirement that parents and counsel
for the child be present for any law enforcement interrogation. This shift in policy is consistent with
research confirming
that we need to treat kids in the justice system differently.
Teenagers’ brains are still developing, particularly the region
responsible for logical decision-making. They are not able to fully
understand the implications of waiving their Miranda rights — which
include the “right to remain silent.” Indeed, up to
90 percent of young people waive their Miranda rights, and most kids under 18 do not understand
why these rights matter. Children are also uniquely susceptible to psychological pressure. Coercive interrogation strategies can
manipulate young people
who may not be able to appreciate long-term consequences of false
statements, and who are more likely to be afraid of authority figures. A
staggering
86 percent of individuals exonerated
for crimes that occurred before they turned 14 had falsely confessed.
And one study of more than 100 wrongful convictions of youth showed that
more than
34 percent were because of an unreliable statement by another young person. With
clear evidence that children are unable to protect themselves against
these pressures, it’s up to our legal system to establish safeguards to
prevent coercive tactics from being used to ensure that young children
are not interrogated to begin with. Some states have embraced this
starting point. California and
New Mexico have statutes placing strict limits on interrogations of youth. And the
Supreme Court acknowledged in
J. D. B. v. North Carolina
that children are at greater risk of influence by coercive
interrogation tactics that already induce a “frighteningly high”
percentage of adults to provide false confessions. Next session, the
Baltimore state’s attorney’s office will push the state legislature to
enact similar reforms. This
case underscores the need for elected prosecutors to implement changes
in their offices’ practices and call for legislative reforms. To begin,
we simply should not allow for interrogation of youths younger than 14.
Kids this young cannot be deemed to have “voluntarily” waived their
rights, and the risk of false confessions is simply too high. Statements
from children under 14 should be inadmissible as unreliable, and we
should not tolerate the risk of undue coercion or influence. Moreover,
experts have cautioned that youths below age 18 should have legal
counsel (to protect their legal rights) and a parent or supportive
guardian present during interrogation. As the
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
concluded, “parental presence alone may not be sufficient to protect
youth suspects.” The academy further recommended simplifying Miranda
warnings for kids — a practice implemented by the King County (Seattle)
Sheriff’s Office — and videotaping all such interrogations Alfred
Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart will never get back the
decades they lost to incarceration. But perhaps their cases will shed
light on the need for reforming youth interrogations and thereby prevent
future wrongful convictions. We owe that much, at least, to children
who come into contact with our justice system."
