Yarborough v. Alvarado

Yarborough v. Alvarado
9th Cir. 2002); cert. granted, 539 U.S. 986 (2003).
Holding
A state court considered the proper factors and reached a reasonable conclusion that a minor was not in custody for Miranda purposes during his police interview, despite the fact that the state court did not consider age or experience with law enforcement in the custody determination.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas
Concurrence	O'Connor
Dissent	Breyer, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg

Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004), is a

The

Before custodial interrogations, police are required to give suspects a Miranda warning that informs suspects of their legal rights during interrogation. However, Alvarado was not given a Miranda warning at any time during questioning.^[2] This would form part of the basis for Alvarado's legal defense.

The State of California

Much of Alvarado's trial focused on whether Alvarado was in custody or not during his police interview. According to Thompson v. Keohane, to determine whether someone is in custody the courts apply a reasonable person test: whether a reasonable person would have felt free to leave or not.^[6]

After his conviction, Alvarado filed for a writ of habeas corpus claiming that the custody analysis was incorrect because the court had not considered Alvarado's age in its reasonable person test. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), a federal court can grant habeas corpus to a person held due to a state court judgment if the state court judgement "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States".^[7] Alvarado's habeas corpus petition thus depended on demonstrating that the state court's custody determination was more than debatable, but objectively incorrect.

The

Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted early in the oral argument that the case presented two questions. First, whether the Ninth Circuit's ruling was consistent with Supreme Court precedent. Second, whether the state courts' ruling was objectively unreasonable according to AEDPA.^[10] California Deputy Attorney General Deborah Chuang argued that the Ninth Circuit's ruling was not consistent with precedent because the Supreme Court had never addressed using age as a factor in custody analysis.^[11] Associate Justice Stephen Breyer remarked that he thought a Supreme Court precedent was not necessary because he thought it obvious that age affects whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave.^[12] John P. Elwood, at the time assistant to the Solicitor General, argued that age doesn't make a legal difference for Miranda purposes because it is a rule uniformly applied to all people^[13] and that police officers should not be required to get inside the head of each suspect.^[14]

Tara K. Allen, arguing for Alvarado, claimed that the state court's decision was objectively unreasonable because they did not consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the investigation as required by Thompson v. Keohane.^[15][16] Specifically, the considered circumstances of custody were not total because Alvarado's age was not considered. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia responded by saying that, according to Thompson v. Keohane, custody is an objective test^[17] and subjective factors like characteristics of the individual do not matter.^[18]

Central to the reversal of the Ninth Circuit was the fact that the state court did not take into account Alvarado's age and experience with law enforcement in the custody analysis.[9] The Court made several findings on this issue. The Court held that the use of age in custody analysis had not been explicitly required by previous rulings.^[22] Inexperience with law enforcement was rejected as well; the Court noted that previous opinions had rejected reliance on such factors.^[23]

In the matter of Alvarado's age, Breyer found that it was relevant to the custody analysis.[28] Further, Breyer held that nothing in the law prevents a judge from including age in the custody analysis.^[28] Breyer called the discussion of experience with law enforcement misleading; while experience with law enforcement can be difficult to determine, Breyer noted that Alvarado's age was a known objective fact.^[29]

The case received both positive and negative reception in scholarly publications.

A

Berry Feld, professor at University of Minnesota Law School, wrote: "the Court's decision ... treated juveniles as the functional equals of adults during interrogation. Over the past quarter-century, developmental psychological research consistently has emphasized adolescents' inability to understand or exercise Miranda rights".^[32] Paul Holland, professor at Seattle University School of Law, wrote that "the assumptions Justice Kennedy made in Alvarado are inapplicable to the schoolhouse context ... considering the age of a student-suspect questioned at school, would not present a significant risk of compromising the clarity the Court has sought to provide law enforcement. Officers questioning students at school are well aware of the students' status as minors".^[33]

Yarborough v. Alvarado has been cited in subsequent Supreme Court decisions as precedent for providing state courts leeway in reaching case by case determinations for general rules.^[34][35][36]

Though the Court rejected the argument that its previous holdings supported using age in the custody analysis,

• Text of Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004) is available from: CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress OpenJurist Oyez (oral argument audio)