Check this:

Because Alvarado was in custody of the police, he should have been warned of his rights, the three-judge panel held. "A criminal defendant's age has long been a relevant factor…. We do not believe that a reasonable 17-year-old in Alvarado's position would have felt 'at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave,' " wrote Judge Richard D. Cudahy, quoting an earlier Supreme Court ruling.

And what was Alvarado's position?

Det. Cheryl Comstock, who was investigating the murder, had contacted Alvarado's parents and said she needed to speak with Michael. They took him out of school and to the station house. There, according to Alvarado's account, the police told his parents that they would have to wait in the lobby while the detective questioned him.

Now when you were 17, what would you think was going on if the police removed you from school, took you to the precinct and told you your parents can't see you until they were done questioning you? Would you feel free to leave? And what do you think would have happened if he just stood up and tried walking out?

In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said "ordinary common sense" called for a different result. "Would a reasonable person in Alvarado's position have felt free simply to get up and walk out of the small room in the station house at will during his two-hour police interrogation? I ask the reader to put himself, or herself, in Alvarado's circumstances and then answer that question," Breyer said. Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with him.

The real problem here is this is now a precedent, and you can believe it's not going to be limited to 17 year olds.

THE NATION
Teens' Miranda Rights Redefined
No Special Treatment Because of Age, Supreme Court Says
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

June 2, 2004

WASHINGTON — The police need not always warn a teenage crime suspect of his rights before formally questioning him, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The 5-4 ruling gives police a bit more leeway to question suspects without warning them of their Miranda rights, and it says that a suspect's youth is not reason enough to treat him with more caution.

The decision upholds the second-degree murder conviction of a Los Angeles County man who was 17 at the time of the crime.

Michael Alvarado was charged with being an accessory to the 1995 murder of a truck driver at a shopping mall in Santa Fe Springs. He was convicted based on tape-recorded comments he made during an interview with a Los Angeles County sheriff's detective.

At issue in the Supreme Court was whether those comments should have been excluded from his trial because Alvarado had not been warned of his rights.

In the past, the court has ruled that suspects who are "in custody" of the police must be told, before being questioned, that they have rights to remain silent and to see a lawyer. People are said to be in custody when they are in the control of the police and do not feel free to leave.

But deciding whether a suspect is in custody often comes down to a judgment call.

On Tuesday, the high court agreed with state judges in California who said that Alvarado was not in custody when he was questioned at a police station in Pico Rivera.