JUVENILE INJUSTICE IN ARKANSAS - KIDS, COPS AND CONFESSIONS - Government - http://maxpages.com/darkevilworld/Kids_Cops_and_Confessions

By Mara Leveritt

Kids in Arkansas have a right to feel confused. The laws that apply to them are as erratic as a drunk behind the wheel. And, in the view of lawyers who defend the growing number of kids who end up in court, the laws affecting them are about as dangerous.

In the past half dozen years, Arkansas's legislature has upended traditional notions of how kids are to be treated by police. And the state's courts have approved of the changes. As a result, parents are frequently astonished when they learn how wildly inconsistent the laws affecting kids have become. Most assume that they would be notified if their son or daughter were picked up by police at school, handcuffed, and taken in for questioning about a serious crime. But no law requires that, and increasingly, young people are being interrogated by police, often for several hours, without a parent or guardian present.

Parents generally assume that if, under those conditions, a 15-year-old waived his or her right to a lawyer, the waiver would not be binding, any more than if the minor had signed a loan for a new car. But that assumption is wrong.

So is the belief that if parents learned of their child's arrest, went to the police station and demanded to be with him or her during questioning, that request would have to be honored. But the law requires no such thing. In fact, a teenager, alone in a room with police, may be signing away his most important constitutional rights while his parents are outside demanding to be allowed to be with him. For a state whose laws have differentiated between children and adults on matters from schooling to curfews, it is a stunning turn of events.

For decades, lawmakers have recognized that young people are not as mature as adults. Kids have been seen as needing -- and deserving -- certain special protections. They cannot be worked as hard or as long as persons who are older. They cannot enter into contracts. They cannot buy alcohol or cigarettes. They are barred from certain movies. They cannot have their ears pierced without a parent present.

Yet, if they get into trouble -- trouble so serious that it could send them to prison for the rest of their lives, or even to execution -- the protections disappear. There was a time when juveniles who were being questioned about serious crimes were viewed as deserving of special protections. They were not viewed as being on equal footing with adults, given the complexity of the law, its potential impact on their lives, and the adversarial nature of the system. But those days are over.

While teenagers are still protected on countless less consequential matters, those who face questioning about serious crimes are now presumed to be as competent as adults. And, as with adults, they are presumed to understand their legal rights and to waive them if they choose.

In recent opinions, the Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled that, when it comes to making what could amount to life-or-death decisions, kids are as mature as adults: They may make critical and binding legal decisions while in the custody of police, and they may do so without the benefit of having a parent or guardian present.

The Conner case

Shortly after the murder of a West Memphis man in 1996, a witness identified Corey Jermo Conner as one of the assailants. That evening, Conner voluntarily appeared at the police station, where he was arrested and charged as an adult with capital murder. It was the day before Conner's 17th birthday.

The next morning, under questioning by detectives, Conner, who had had no prior experience with the criminal justice system, signed a form waiving his right to an attorney and gave a tape-recorded statement. He denied involvement in the murder. The detectives began using the "good cop, bad cop" routine, as they interrogated Conner further. One of the officers falsely claimed that four or five witnesses had reported seeing Conner with a gun at the time of the shooting. Conner contended that neither he nor his two friends fired shots at the victim.

After warning Conner that only one of the three defendants would be able to obtain a plea bargain, the detective who was playing the "bad cop" went to work. "Do you know what will happen if you are proven guilty of capital murder," he asked. "They strap you to a table and stick a needle in your arm and you go to sleep and you never wake up, that's what happens, and I don't believe a damn thing you've said since you started opening your mouth, you follow me?" As the interrogation progressed, the detective's warning became more severe. At various times he said:

"We can save your life. We can save your life. We can be responsible for strapping you on the table, it's up to you...

"The others are going to burn, bubba. They are going to burn in hell. They are going to be strapped to a damn table, a damn needle stuck in their arm, and they are going to be gone. Your chance. I am going to offer it to you. You blow it, you ain't getting another one, because I got a whole lot to do today, and I am not going to set up here and plead with you to save your life, do you follow me?...

"I am a son of a bitch, do you follow me? I will give you a chance. Now, I'll bust my ass to help you if you try to help yourself. You don't, I'll burn your ass in a heart beat, that's the way I am. That's the way I work..."

"As far as I am concerned, you're a damn murderer. You deserve to be strapped to a table and stick a needle up your arm. If this new Huckabee have his way, your new governor, he's going to reinstate the electric chair. He ain't going this way no more. That's one of Huckabee's promises for law and order.É"

Conner did not change his statement. He was placed in a holding cell, where he was allowed to speak to a friend. After three hours in the holding cell, Conner asked to speak to the "good cop." Without repeating the Miranda warnings, the detective took a statement from Conner. He admitted that he had been near the scene of the shooting and that he had had a gun. But he claimed that he ran away from the incident without firing a shot as soon as the shooting began.

Conner was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. His lawyers based their appeal largely on the circumstances surrounding his questioning by police. They pointed out that Conner's mother had been at the police station, asking to speak with her son, but her requests had been refused. She protested that she had not consented to his decision to waive his right to counsel. But the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected that argument. It noted that, yes, a parent or guardian must consent to a juvenile's waiver of rights. But, because Conner had been charged as an adult, the court wrote, "these safeguards do not apply."

As for her request to speak with her son, the court ruled that it was not up to her to initiate the contact. The court ruled that the request for a parent or an attorney to be present must be made by the juvenile.

Members of the state Supreme Court admitted that they were "greatly troubled" by the detectives' use of the "good-cop, bad-cop" routine, by their misrepresentations, and by the verbal treatment of the boy during questioning. "Specifically," they wrote, "we cannot condone the severity of the statements [the detective made to a boy] who was only 17 years old and a stranger to the criminal justice system." Yet the court considered none of these concerns serious enough to suggest that the teenager's free will had been overborne.

Noting that the boy was physically larger than the detectives, the justices concluded that he did not seem to have been intimidated, and that the detectives' misrepresentations to him about the number of witnesses against him and the governor's plan to reinstitute the electric chair were not enough to have intimidated or coerced him.

CONTINUE

Sign Guestbook

View Guestbook

LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

USA

tantsy1@msn.com

Visitors: 02177

Page Updated Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:54am EST