OPINION OF THE COURT J. D. B. V. NORTH CAROLINA 564 U. S. ____ (2011) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 09-11121 J. D. B., PETITIONER v. NORTH CAROLINA

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of north
carolina

															[June 16, 2011]

															   Justice Sotomayor delivered the
opinion of the Court.

															   This case presents the question
whether the age of a child subjected to police questioning is
relevant to the custody analysis of Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U. S. 436 (1966). It is beyond
dispute that children will often feel bound to submit to police
questioning when an adult in the same circumstances would feel free
to leave. Seeing no reason for police officers or courts to blind
themselves to that commonsense reality, we hold that a child’s age
properly informs the Miranda custody analysis.

															I

															A

															   Petitioner J. D. B. was
a 13-year-old, seventh-grade student attending class at Smith
Middle School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina when he was removed
from his classroom by a uniformed police officer, escorted to a
closed-door conference room, and questioned by police for at least
half an hour.

															   This was the second time that
police questioned J. D. B. in the span of a week. Five
days earlier, two home break-ins occurred, and various items were
stolen. Police stopped and questioned J. D. B. after he
was seen behind a residence in the neighborhood where the crimes
occurred. That same day, police also spoke to J. D. B.’s
grandmother—his legal guardian—as well as his aunt.

															   Police later learned that a digital camera
matching the description of one of the stolen items had been found
at J. D. B.’s middle school and seen in
J. D. B.’s possession. Investigator DiCostanzo, the
juvenile investigator with the local police force who had been
assigned to the case, went to the school to question
J. D. B. Upon arrival, DiCostanzo informed the uniformed
police officer on detail to the school (a so-called school resource
officer), the assistant principal, and an administrative intern
that he was there to question J. D. B. about the
break-ins. Although DiCostanzo asked the school administrators to
verify J. D. B.’s date of birth, address, and parent
contact in-formation from school records, neither the police offi-
cers nor the school administrators contacted J. D. B.’s
grandmother.

															   The uniformed officer interrupted
J. D. B.’s afternoon social studies class, removed
J. D. B. from the classroom, and escorted him to a school
conference room.[ Footnote 1 ]
There, J. D. B. was met by DiCostanzo, the assistant
principal, and the administrative intern. The door to the
conference room was closed. With the two police officers and the
two administrators present, J. D. B. was questioned for
the next 30 to 45 minutes. Prior to the commencement of
questioning, J. D. B. was given neither Miranda warnings nor the opportunity to speak to his grandmother. Nor was
he informed that he was free to leave the room.

															   Questioning began with small talk—discussion
of sports and J. D. B.’s family life. DiCostanzo asked,
and J. D. B. agreed, to discuss the events of the prior
weekend. Denying any wrongdoing, J. D. B. explained that
he had been in the neighborhood where the crimes occurred because
he was seeking work mowing lawns. DiCostanzo pressed
J. D. B. for additional detail about his efforts to
obtain work; asked J. D. B. to explain a prior incident,
when one of the victims returned home to find J. D. B.
behind her house; and confronted J. D. B. with the stolen
camera. The assistant principal urged J. D. B. to “do the
right thing,” warning J. D. B. that “the truth always
comes out in the end.” App. 99a, 112a.

															   Eventually, J. D. B. asked whether
he would “still be in trouble” if he returned the “stuff.” Ibid . In response, DiCostanzo explained that return of the
stolen items would be helpful, but “this thing is going to court”
regardless. Id. , at 112a; ibid. (“[W]hat’s done
is done[;] now you need to help yourself by making it right”); see
also id. , at 99a. DiCostanzo then warned that he may need
to seek a secure custody order if he believed that
J. D. B. would continue to break into other homes. When
J. D. B. asked what a secure custody order was,
DiCostanzo explained that “it’s where you get sent to juvenile
detention before court.” Id. , at 112a.

															   After learning of the prospect of juvenile
detention, J. D. B. confessed that he and a friend were
responsible for the break-ins. DiCostanzo only then informed
J. D. B. that he could refuse to answer the
investigator’s questions and that he was free to leave.[ Footnote 2 ] Asked whether he
understood, J. D. B. nodded and provided further detail,
including information about the location of the stolen items.
Eventually J. D. B. wrote a statement, at DiCostanzo’s
request. When the bell rang indicating the end of the schoolday,
J. D. B. was allowed to leave to catch the bus home.

															B

															   Two juvenile petitions were filed
against J. D. B., each alleging one count of breaking and
entering and one count of larceny. J. D. B.’s public
defender moved to suppress his statements and the evidence derived
therefrom, arguing that suppression was necessary because
J. D. B. had been “interrogated by police in a custodial
setting without being afforded Miranda warning[s],” App.
89a, and because his statements were involuntary under the totality
of the circumstances test, id. , at 142a; see Schneckloth v. Bustamonte , 412 U. S. 218 , 226
(1973) (due process precludes admission of a confession where “a
defendant’s will was overborne” by the circumstances of the
interrogation). After a suppression hearing at which DiCostanzo and
J. D. B. testified, the trial court denied the motion,
deciding that J. D. B. was not in custody at the time of
the schoolhouse interrogation and that his statements were
voluntary. As a result, J. D. B. entered a transcript of
admission to all four counts, renewing his objection to the denial
of his motion to suppress, and the court adjudicated
J. D. B. delinquent.

															   A divided panel of the North
Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed. In re
J. D. B. , 196 N. C. App. 234,
674 S. E. 2d 795 (2009). The North Carolina Supreme Court
held, over two dissents, that J. D. B. was not in custody
when he confessed, “declin[ing] to extend the test for custody to
include consideration of the age … of an individual subjected to
questioning by police.” In re
J. D. B. , 363 N. C. 664, 672,
686 S. E. 2d 135, 140 (2009).[ Footnote 3 ]

															   We granted certiorari to determine whether the Miranda custody analysis includes consideration of a
juvenile suspect’s age. 562 U. S. ___ (2010).

															II

															A

															   Any police interview of an
individual suspected of a crime has “coercive aspects to it.” Oregon v. Mathiason , 429 U. S. 492 , 495 (1977) (per
curiam) . Only those interrogations that occur while a suspect
is in police custody, however, “heighte[n] the risk” that
statements obtained are not the product of the suspect’s free
choice. Dickerson v. United States , 530 U. S. 428 , 435
(2000).

															   By its very nature, custodial
police interrogation entails “inherently compelling pressures.” Miranda , 384 U. S., at 467. Even for an adult, the
physical and psychological isolation of custodial interrogation can
“undermine the individual’s will to resist and … compel him to
speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.” Ibid .
Indeed, the pressure of custodial interrogation is so immense that
it “can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess
to crimes they never committed.” Corley v. United
States , 556 U. S. __, __ (2009) (slip op., at 16) (citing
Drizin & Leo, The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA
World, 82 N. C. L. Rev. 891, 906–907 (2004)); see also Miranda , 384 U. S., at 455, n. 23. That risk is all the
more troubling—and recent studies suggest, all the more acute—when
the subject of custodial interrogation is a juvenile. See Brief for
Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth et al. as Amici
Curiae 21–22 (collecting empirical studies that “illustrate
the heightened risk of false confessions from youth”).

															   Recognizing that the inherently coercive
nature of custodial interrogation “blurs the line between voluntary
and involuntary statements,” Dickerson , 530 U. S., at 435,
this Court in Miranda adopted a set of prophylactic
mea-sures designed to safeguard the constitutional guarantee
against self-incrimination. Prior to questioning, a suspect “must
be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement
he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a
right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or
appointed.” 384 U. S., at 444; see also Florida v. Powell , 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 8) (“The
four warnings Miranda requires are invariable, but this
Court has not dictated the words in which the essential information
must be conveyed”). And, if a suspect makes a statement during
custodial interrogation, the burden is on the Government to show,
as a “prerequisit[e]” to the statement’s admissibility as evidence
in the Government’s case in chief, that the defendant “voluntarily,
knowingly and intelligently” waived his rights.[ Footnote 4 ] Miranda , 384 U. S., at 444,
475–476; Dickerson , 530 U. S., at 443–444.

															   Because these measures protect the individual
against the coercive nature of custodial interrogation, they are
required “ ‘only where there has been such a restriction on a
person’s freedom as to render him “in custody.” ’ ” Stansbury v. California , 511 U. S. 318 , 322 (1994) (per
curiam) (quoting Oregon v. Mathiason , 429 U. S. 492 , 495 (1977) (per
curiam) ). As we have repeatedly emphasized, whether a suspect
is “in custody” is an objective inquiry.

															“Two discrete inquiries are essential to the
determination: first, what were the circumstances surrounding the
interrogation; and second, given those circumstances, would a
reasonable person have felt he or she was at liberty to terminate
the interrogation and leave. Once the scene is set and the players’
lines and actions are reconstructed, the court must apply an
objective test to resolve the ultimate inquiry: was there a formal
arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated
with formal arrest.” Thompson v. Keohane , 516 U. S. 99 , 112
(1995) (internal quotation marks, alteration, and footnote
omitted).

															See also Yarborough v. Alvarado , 541 U. S. 652 ,
662–663 (2004); Stansbury , 511 U. S., at 323; Berkemer v. McCarty , 468 U. S. 420 , 442, and n. 35 (1984).
Rather than demarcate a limited set of relevant circumstances, we
have required police officers and courts to “examine all of the
circumstances surrounding the interrogation,” Stansbury ,
511 U. S., at 322, including any circumstance that “would have
affected how a reasonable person” in the suspect’s position “would
perceive his or her freedom to leave,” id. , at 325. On the
other hand, the “subjective views harbored by either the
interrogating officers or the person being questioned” are
irrelevant. Id. , at 323. The test, in other words,
involves no consideration of the “actual mindset” of the particular
suspect subjected to police questioning. Alvarado , 541 U.
S., at 667; see also California v. Beheler , 463 U. S. 1121 ,
1125, n. 3 (1983) (per curiam) .

															   The benefit of the objective custody analysis
is that it is “designed to give clear guidance to the police.” Alvarado , 541 U. S., at 668. But see Berkemer ,
468 U. S., at 441 (recognizing the “occasiona[l] … difficulty” that
police and courts nonetheless have in “deciding exactly when a
suspect has been taken into custody”). Police must make
in-the-moment judgments as to when to administer Miranda warnings. By limiting analysis to the objective circumstances of
the interrogation, and asking how a reasonable person in the
suspect’s position would understand his freedom to terminate
questioning and leave, the objective test avoids burdening police
with the task of anticipating the idiosyncrasies of every
individual suspect and divining how those particular traits affect
each person’s subjective state of mind. See id., at
430–431 (officers are not required to “make guesses” as to
circumstances “unknowable” to them at the time); Alvarado ,
541 U. S., at 668 (officers are under no duty “to consider …
contingent psychological factors when deciding when suspects should
be advised of their Miranda rights”).

															B

															   The State and its amici contend that a child’s age has no place in the custody analysis, no
matter how young the child subjected to police questioning. We
cannot agree. In some circumstances, a child’s age “would have
affected how a reasonable person” in the suspect’s position “would
perceive his or her freedom to leave.” Stansbury , 511 U.
S., at 325. That is, a reasonable child subjected to police
questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a
reasonable adult would feel free to go. We think it clear that
courts can account for that reality without doing any damage to the
objective nature of the custody analysis.

															   A child’s age is far “more than a
chronological fact.” Eddings v. Oklahoma , 455 U. S. 104 ,
115 (1982); accord, Gall v. United States , 552 U. S. 38 , 58
(2007); Roper v. Simmons , 543 U. S. 551 , 569 (2005); Johnson v. Texas , 509 U. S. 350 , 367
(1993). It is a fact that “generates commonsense conclusions about
behavior and perception.” Alvarado , 541 U. S., at 674
(Breyer, J., dissenting). Such conclusions apply broadly to
children as a class. And, they are self-evident to anyone who was a
child once himself, including any police officer or judge.

															   Time and again, this Court has drawn these
commonsense conclusions for itself. We have observed that children
“generally are less mature and responsible than adults,” Eddings , 455 U. S., at 115–116; that they “often lack the
experience, perspective, and judgment to recognize and avoid
choices that could be detrimental to them,” Bellotti v. Baird , 443
U. S. 622 , 635 (1979) (plurality opinion); that they “are more
vulnerable or susceptible to … outside pressures” than adults, Roper , 543 U. S., at 569; and so on. See Graham v. Florida , 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 17)
(finding no reason to “reconsider” these observations about the
common “nature of juveniles”). Addressing the specific context of
police interrogation, we have observed that events that “would
leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in
his early teens.” Haley v. Ohio , 332 U. S. 596 , 599
(1948) (plurality opinion); see also Gallegos v. Colorado , 370 U. S. 49 , 54 (1962)
(“[N]o matter how sophisticated,” a juvenile subject of police
interrogation “cannot be compared” to an adult subject). Describing
no one child in particular, these observations restate what “any
parent knows”—indeed, what any person knows—about children
generally. Roper , 543 U. S., at 569.[ Footnote 5 ]

															   Our various statements to this effect are far
from unique. The law has historically reflected the same assumption
that children characteristically lack the capacity to exercise
mature judgment and possess only an incomplete ability to
understand the world around them. See, e.g. , 1 W.
Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England *464–*465
(hereinafter Blackstone) (explaining that limits on children’s
legal capacity under the common law “secure them from hurting
themselves by their own improvident acts”). Like this Court’s own
generalizations, the legal disqualifications placed on children as
a class— e.g. , limitations on their ability to alienate
property, enter a binding contract enforceable against them, and
marry without parental consent—exhibit the settled understanding
that the differentiating characteristics of youth are
universal.[ Footnote 6 ]

															   Indeed, even where a “reasonable person”
standard otherwise applies, the common law has reflected the
reality that children are not adults. In negligence suits, for
instance, where liability turns on what an objectively reasonable
person would do in the circumstances, “[a]ll American jurisdictions
accept the idea that a person’s childhood is a relevant
circumstance” to be considered. Restatement (Third) of Torts §10,
Comment b , p. 117 (2005); see also id. ,
Reporters’ Note, pp. 121–122 (collecting cases); Restatement
(Second) of Torts §283A, Comment b , p. 15 (1963–1964)
(“[T]here is a wide basis of community experience upon which it is
possible, as a practical matter, to determine what is to be
expected of [children]”).

															   As this discussion establishes, “[o]ur history
is replete with laws and judicial recognition” that children cannot
be viewed simply as miniature adults. Eddings , 455 U. S.,
at 115–116. We see no justification for taking a different course
here. So long as the child’s age was known to the officer at the
time of the interview, or would have been objectively apparent to
any reasonable officer, including age as part of the custody
analysis requires officers neither to consider circumstances
“unknowable” to them, Berkemer , 468 U. S., at 430, nor to
“anticipat[e] the frailties or idiosyncrasies” of the particular
suspect whom they question, Alvarado , 541 U. S., at 662
(internal quotation marks omitted). The same “wide basis of
community experience” that makes it possible, as an objective
matter, “to determine what is to be expected” of children in other
contexts, Restatement (Second) of Torts §283A, at 15; see supra , at 10, and n. 6, likewise makes it possible to
know what to expect of children subjected to police
questioning.

															   In other words, a child’s age differs from
other personal characteristics that, even when known to police,
have no objectively discernible relationship to a reasonable
person’s understanding of his freedom of action. Alvarado ,
holds, for instance, that a suspect’s prior interrogation history
with law enforcement has no role to play in the custody analysis
because such experience could just as easily lead a reasonable
person to feel free to walk away as to feel compelled to stay in
place. 541 U. S., at 668. Because the effect in any given case
would be “contingent [on the] psycholog[y]” of the individual
suspect, the Court explained, such experience cannot be considered
without compromising the objective nature of the custody analysis. Ibid. A child’s age, however, is different. Precisely
because childhood yields objective conclusions like those we have
drawn ourselves—among others, that children are “most susceptible
to influence,” Eddings , 455 U. S., at 115, and “outside
pressures,” Roper , 543 U. S., at 569—considering age in
the custody analysis in no way involves a determination of how
youth “subjectively affect[s] the mindset” of any particular child,
Brief for Respondent 14.[ Footnote
7 ]

															   In fact, in many cases involving juvenile
suspects, the custody analysis would be nonsensical absent some
consideration of the suspect’s age. This case is a prime example.
Were the court precluded from taking J. D. B.’s youth
into account, it would be forced to evaluate the circumstances
present here through the eyes of a reasonable person of average
years. In other words, how would a reasonable adult understand his
situation, after being removed from a seventh-grade social studies
class by a uniformed school resource officer; being encouraged by
his assistant principal to “do the right thing”; and being warned
by a police investigator of the prospect of juvenile detention and
separation from his guardian and primary caretaker? To describe
such an inquiry is to demonstrate its absurdity. Neither officers
nor courts can reasonably evaluate the effect of objective
circumstances that, by their nature, are specific to children
without accounting for the age of the child subjected to those
circumstances.

															   Indeed, although the dissent suggests that
concerns “regarding the application of the Miranda custody
rule to minors can be accommodated by considering the unique
circumstances present when minors are questioned in school,” post , at 17 (opinion of Alito, J.), the effect of the
schoolhouse setting cannot be disentangled from the identity of the
person questioned. A student—whose presence at school is compulsory
and whose disobedience at school is cause for disciplinary
action—is in a far different position than, say, a parent volunteer
on school grounds to chaperone an event, or an adult from the
community on school grounds to attend a basketball game. Without
asking whether the person “questioned in school” is a “minor,” ibid., the coercive effect of the schoolhouse setting is
unknowable.

															   Our prior decision in Alvarado in no
way undermines these conclusions. In that case, we held that a
state-court decision that failed to mention a 17-year-old’s age as
part of the Miranda custody analysis was not objectively
unreasonable under the deferential standard of review set forth by
the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA),
110 Stat. 1214. Like the North Carolina Supreme Court here, see 363
N. C., at 672, 686 S. E. 2d, at 140, we observed
that accounting for a juvenile’s age in the Miranda custody analysis “could be viewed as creating a subjective
inquiry,” 541 U. S., at 668. We said nothing, however, of whether
such a view would be correct under the law. Cf. Renico v. Lett , 559 U. S. ___, ____, n. 3 (2010) (slip op., at
11, n. 3) (“[W]hether the [state court] was right or wrong is
not the pertinent question under AEDPA”). To the contrary, Justice
O’Connor’s concurring opinion explained that a suspect’s age may
indeed “be relevant to the ‘custody’ inquiry.” Alvarado ,
541 U. S., at 669.

															   Reviewing the question de novo today,
we hold that so long as the child’s age was known to the officer at
the time of police questioning, or would have been objectively
apparent to a reasonable officer, its inclusion in the custody
analysis is consistent with the objective nature of that
test.[ Footnote 8 ] This is not
to say that a child’s age will be a determinative, or even a
significant, factor in every case. Cf. ibid. (O’Connor,
J., concurring) (explaining that a state-court decision omitting
any mention of the defendant’s age was not unreasonable under
AEDPA’s deferential standard of review where the defendant “was
almost 18 years old at the time of his interview”); post ,
at 17 (suggesting that “teenagers nearing the age of majority” are
likely to react to an interrogation as would a “typical 18-year-old
in similar circumstances”). It is, however, a reality that courts
cannot simply ignore.

															III

															   The State and its amici offer numerous reasons that courts must blind themselves to a
juvenile defendant’s age. None is persuasive.

															   To start, the State contends that
a child’s age must be excluded from the custody inquiry because age
is a personal characteristic specific to the suspect himself rather
than an “external” circumstance of the interrogation. Brief for
Respondent 21; see also id. , at 18–19 (distinguishing
“personal characteristics” from “objective facts related to the
interrogation itself” such as the location and duration of the
interrogation). Despite the supposed significance of this
distinction, however, at oral argument counsel for the State
suggested without hesitation that at least some undeniably personal
characteristics—for instance, whether the individual being
questioned is blind—are circumstances relevant to the custody
analysis. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41. Thus, the State’s quarrel cannot
be that age is a personal characteristic, without more.[ Footnote 9 ]

															   The State further argues that age is
irrelevant to the custody analysis because it “go[es] to how a
suspect may internalize and perceive the circumstances of an
interrogation.” Brief for Respondent 12; see also Brief for United
States as Amicus Curiae 21 (hereinafter U. S. Brief)
(arguing that a child’s age has no place in the custody analysis
because it goes to whether a suspect is “particularly susceptible”
to the external circumstances of the interrogation (some internal
quotation marks omitted)). But the same can be said of every
objective circumstance that the State agrees is relevant to the
custody analysis: Each circumstance goes to how a reasonable person
would “internalize and perceive” every other. See, e.g. , Stansbury , 511 U. S., at 325. Indeed, this is the very
reason that we ask whether the objective circumstances “add up to
custody,” Keohane , 516 U. S., at 113, instead of
evaluating the circumstances one by one.

															   In the same vein, the State and its amici protest that the “effect of … age on [the]
perception of custody is internal,” Brief for Respondent 20, or
“psychological,” U. S. Brief 21. But the whole point of the custody
analysis is to determine whether, given the circumstances, “a
reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was … at liberty to
terminate the interrogation and leave.” Keohane , 516 U.
S., at 112. Because the Miranda custody inquiry turns on
the mindset of a reasonable person in the suspect’s position, it
cannot be the case that a circumstance is subjective simply because
it has an “internal” or “psychological” impact on perception. Were
that so, there would be no objective circumstances to consider at
all.

															   Relying on our statements that the objective
custody test is “designed to give clear guidance to the police,” Alvarado , 541 U. S., at 668, the State next argues that a
child’s age must be excluded from the analysis in order to preserve
clarity. Similarly, the dissent insists that the clarity of the
custody analysis will be destroyed unless a “one-size-fits-all
reasonable-person test” applies. Post , at 13. In reality,
however, ignoring a juvenile defendant’s age will often make the
inquiry more artificial, see supra , at 12–13, and thus
only add confusion. And in any event, a child’s age, when known or
apparent, is hardly an obscure factor to assess. Though the State
and the dissent worry about gradations among children of different
ages, that concern cannot justify ignoring a child’s age
altogether. Just as police officers are competent to account for
other objective circumstances that are a matter of degree such as
the length of questioning or the number of officers present, so too
are they competent to evaluate the effect of relative age. Indeed,
they are competent to do so even though an interrogation room lacks
the “reflective atmosphere of a [jury] deliberation room,” post , at 15. The same is true of judges, including those
whose childhoods have long since passed, see post , at 14.
In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge
of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or
expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a
child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a
7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.

															   There is, however, an even more fundamental
flaw with the State’s plea for clarity and the dissent’s singular
focus on simplifying the analysis: Not once have we excluded from
the custody analysis a circumstance that we determined was relevant
and objective, simply to make the fault line between custodial and
noncustodial “brighter.” Indeed, were the guiding concern clarity
and nothing else, the custody test would presumably ask only
whether the suspect had been placed under formal arrest. Berkemer , 468 U. S., at 441; see ibid. (acknowledging the “occasiona[l] … difficulty” police officers
confront in determining when a suspect has been taken into
custody). But we have rejected that “more easily administered
line,” recognizing that it would simply “enable the police to
circumvent the constraints on custodial interrogations established
by Miranda .” Ibid.; see also ibid., n.
33.[ Footnote 10 ]

															   Finally, the State and the dissent suggest
that excluding age from the custody analysis comes at no cost to
juveniles’ constitutional rights because the due process
voluntariness test independently accounts for a child’s youth. To
be sure, that test permits consideration of a child’s age, and it
erects its own barrier to admission of a defendant’s inculpatory
statements at trial. See Gallegos , 370 U. S., at 53–55; Haley , 332 U. S., at 599–601; see also post , at
17–18 (“[C]ourts should be instructed to take particular care to
ensure that [young children’s] incriminating statements were not
obtained involuntarily”). But Miranda ’s procedural
safeguards exist precisely because the voluntariness test is an
inadequate barrier when custodial interrogation is at stake. See
384 U. S., at 458 (“Unless adequate protective devices are employed
to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no
statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of
his free choice”); Dickerson , 530 U. S., at 442
(“[R]eliance on the traditional totality-of-the-circumstances test
raise[s] a risk of overlooking an involuntary custodial
confession”); see also supra , at 5–6. To hold, as the
State requests, that a child’s age is never relevant to whether a
suspect has been taken into custody—and thus to ignore the very
real differences between children and adults—would be to deny
children the full scope of the procedural safeguards that Miranda guarantees to adults.

															*  *  *

															   The question remains whether
J. D. B. was in custody when police interrogated him. We
remand for the state courts to address that question, this time
taking account of all of the relevant circumstances of the
interrogation, including J. D. B.’s age at the time. The
judgment of the North Carolina Supreme Court is reversed, and the
case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this
opinion.

															It is so ordered. Footnote 1 Although the State suggests that the “record
is unclear as to who brought J. D. B. to the conference
room, and the trial court made no factual findings on this specific
point,” Brief for Respondent 3, n. 1, the State agreed at the
certiorari stage that “the SRO [school resource officer] escorted
petitioner” to the room, Brief in Opposition 3. Footnote 2 The North Carolina Supreme Court noted that
the trial court’s factual findings were “uncontested and therefore
. . . binding” on it. In re J. D. B. , 363
N. C. 664, 668, 686 S. E. 2d 135, 137 (2009). The
court described the sequence of events set forth in the text. See id., at 670–671, 686 S. E. 2d, at 139.
(“Immediately following J. D. B.’s initial confession,
Investigator DiCostanzo informed J. D. B. that he did not
have to speak with him and that he was free to leave” (internal
quotation marks and alterations omitted)). Though less than
perfectly explicit, the trial court’s order indicates a finding
that J. D. B. initially confessed prior to DiCostanzo’s
warnings. See App. 99a.

															Nonetheless, both parties’ submissions to this Court suggest
that the warnings came after DiCostanzo raised the possibility of a
secure custody order but before J. D. B. confessed for
the first time. See Brief for Petitioner 5; Brief for Respondent 5.
Because we remand for a determination whether J. D. B.
was in custody under the proper analysis, the state courts remain
free to revisit whether the trial court made a conclusive finding
of fact in this respect. Footnote 3 J. D. B.’s challenge in the North
Carolina Supreme Court focused on the lower courts’ conclusion that
he was not in custody for purposes of Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U. S. 436 (1966). The North
Carolina Supreme Court did not address the trial court’s holding
that the statements were voluntary, and that question is not before
us. Footnote 4 Amici on behalf of
J. D. B. question whether children of all ages can
comprehend Miranda warnings and suggest that additional
procedural safeguards may be necessary to protect their Miranda rights. Brief for Juvenile Law Center et al.
as Amici Curiae 13–14, n. 7. Whatever the merit of
that contention, it has no relevance here, where no Miranda warnings were administered at all. Footnote 5 Although citation to social science and
cognitive science authorities is unnecessary to establish these
commonsense propositions, the literature confirms what experience
bears out. See, e.g. , Graham v. Florida ,
560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 17) (“[D]evelopments in
psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental
differences between juvenile and adult minds”). Footnote 6 See, e.g. , 1 E. Farnsworth,
Contracts §4.4, p. 379, and n. 1 (1990) (“Common law courts early
announced the prevailing view that a minor’s contract is ‘voidable’
at the instance of the minor” (citing 8 W. Holdsworth, History of
English Law 51 (1926))); 1 D. Kramer, Legal Rights of Children
§8.1, p. 663 (rev. 2d ed. 2005) (“[W]hile minor children have the
right to acquire and own property, they are considered incapable of
property management” (footnote omitted)); 2 J. Kent, Commentaries
on American Law *78–*79, *90 (G. Comstock ed., 11th ed. 1867); see
generally id., at *233 (explaining that, under the common
law, “[t]he necessity of guardians results from the inability of
infants to take care of themselves . . . and this inability
continues, in contemplation of law, until the infant has attained
the age of [21]”); 1 Blackstone *465 (“It is generally true, that
an infant can neither aliene his lands, nor do any legal act, nor
make a deed, nor indeed any manner of contract, that will bind
him”); Roper v. Simmons , 543 U. S. 551 , 569 (2005) (“In
recognition of the comparative immaturity and irresponsibility of
juveniles, almost every State prohibits those under 18 years of age
from voting, serving on juries, or marrying without parental
consent”). Footnote 7 Thus, contrary to the dissent’s
protestations, today’s holding neither invites consideration of
whether a particular suspect is “unusually meek or compliant,” post , at 9 (opinion of Alito, J.), nor “expan[ds]” the Miranda custody analysis, post , at 8, into a test
that requires officers to anticipate and account for a suspect’s
every personal characteristic, see post , at 11–12. Footnote 8 This approach does not undermine the basic
principle that an interrogating officer’s unarticulated, internal
thoughts are never—in and of themselves—objective circumstances of
an interrogation. See supra , at 7; Stansbury v. California , 511 U. S. 318 , 323 (1994) (per
curiam) . Unlike a child’s youth, an officer’s purely internal
thoughts have no conceivable effect on how a reasonable person in
the suspect’s position would understand his freedom of action. See id. , at 323–325; Berkemer v. McCarty , 468 U. S. 420 , 442 (1984). Rather than
“overtur[n]” that settled principle, post , at 13, the
limitation that a child’s age may inform the custody analysis only
when known or knowable simply reflects our unwillingness to require
officers to “make guesses” as to circumstances “unknowable” to them
in deciding when to give Miranda warnings, Berkemer , 468 U. S., at 430–431. Footnote 9 The State’s purported distinction between
blindness and age—that taking account of a suspect’s youth requires
a court “to get into the mind” of the child, whereas taking account
of a suspect’s blindness does not, Tr. of Oral Arg. 41–42—is
mistaken. In either case, the question becomes how a reasonable
person would understand the circumstances, either from the
perspective of a blind person or, as here, a 13-year-old child. Footnote 10 Contrary to the dissent’s intimation, see post , at 8, Miranda does not answer the question
whether a child’s age is an objective circumstance relevant to the
custody analysis. Miranda simply holds that warnings must
be given once a suspect is in custody, without “paus[ing] to
inquire in individual cases whether the defendant was aware of his
rights without a warning being given.” 384 U. S., at 468; see also id. , at 468–469 (“Assessments of the knowledge the
defendant possessed, based on information as to age, education,
intelligence, or prior contact with authorities, can never be more
than speculation; a warning is a clearcut fact” (footnote
omitted)). That conclusion says nothing about whether age properly
informs whether a child is in custody in the first place. ALITO, J., DISSENTING J. D. B. V. NORTH CAROLINA 564 U. S. ____ (2011) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 09-11121 J. D. B., PETITIONER v. NORTH CAROLINA

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of north
carolina

															[June 16, 2011]

															   Justice Alito, with whom The
Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join,
dissenting.

															   The Court’s decision in this case
may seem on first consideration to be modest and sensible, but in
truth it is neither. It is fundamentally inconsistent with one of
the main justifications for the Miranda[ Footnote 1 ] rule: the perceived need for a clear
rule that can be easily applied in all cases. And today’s holding
is not needed to protect the constitutional rights of minors who
are questioned by the police. Miranda ’s prophylactic regime places
a high value on clarity and certainty. Dissatisfied with the highly
fact-specific constitutional rule against the admission of in-
voluntary confessions, the Miranda Court set down rigid
standards that often require courts to ignore personal
characteristics that may be highly relevant to a particular
suspect’s actual susceptibility to police pressure. This rigidity,
however, has brought with it one of Miranda ’s principal
strengths—“the ease and clarity of its application” by law
enforcement officials and courts. See Moran v. Burbine , 475 U. S. 412 , 425–426
(1986). A key contributor to this clarity, at least up until now,
has been Miranda ’s objective reasonable-person test for
determining custody. Miranda ’s custody requirement is
based on the proposition that the risk of unconstitutional coercion
is heightened when a suspect is placed under formal arrest or is
subjected to some functionally equivalent limitation on freedom of
movement. When this custodial threshold is reached, Miranda warnings must precede police questioning. But in
the interest of simplicity, the custody analysis considers only
whether, under the circumstances, a hypothetical reasonable person
would consider himself to be confined.

															   Many suspects, of course, will differ from
this hypothetical reasonable person. Some, including those who have
been hardened by past interrogations, may have no need for Miranda warnings at all. And for other suspects—those who
are unusually sensitive to the pressures of police
questioning— Miranda warnings may come too late to be of
any use. That is a necessary consequence of Miranda ’s
rigid standards, but it does not mean that the constitutional
rights of these especially sensitive suspects are left unprotected.
A vulnerable defendant can still turn to the constitutional rule
against actual coercion and contend that that his
confession was extracted against his will.

															   Today’s decision shifts the Miranda custody determination from a one-size-fits-all reasonable-person
test into an inquiry that must account for at least one
individualized characteristic—age—that is thought to correlate with
sus-ceptibility to coercive pressures. Age, however, is in no way
the only personal characteristic that may correlate with
pliability, and in future cases the Court will be forced to choose
between two unpalatable alternatives. It may choose to limit
today’s decision by arbitrarily distinguishing a suspect’s age from
other personal characteristics—such as intelligence, education,
occupation, or prior experience with law enforcement—that may also
correlate with susceptibility to coercive pressures. Or, if the
Court is unwilling to draw these arbitrary lines, it will be forced
to effect a fundamental transformation of the Miranda custody test—from a clear, easily applied prophylactic rule into a
highly fact-intensive standard resembling the voluntariness test
that the Miranda Court found to be unsatisfactory.

															   For at least three reasons, there is no need
to go down this road. First, many minors subjected to police
interrogation are near the age of majority, and for these suspects
the one-size-fits-all Miranda custody rule may not be a
bad fit. Second, many of the difficulties in applying the Miranda custody rule to minors arise because of the unique
circumstances present when the police conduct interrogations at
school. The Miranda custody rule has always taken into
account the setting in which questioning occurs, and accounting for
the school setting in such cases will address many of these
problems. Third, in cases like the one now before us, where the
suspect is especially young, courts applying the constitutional
voluntariness standard can take special care to ensure that
incriminating statements were not obtained through coercion.

															   Safeguarding the constitutional rights of
minors does not require the extreme makeover of Miranda that today’s decision may portend.

															I

															   In the days before Miranda , this Court’s sole metric for evaluating the
admissibility of confessions was a voluntariness standard rooted in
both the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause and the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Bram v. United States , 168 U. S. 532 , 542
(1897) (Self-Incrimination Clause); Brown v. Mississippi , 297 U. S. 278 (1936)
(due process). The question in these voluntariness cases was
whether the particular “defendant’s will” had been “overborne.” Lynumn v. Illinois , 372 U. S. 528 , 534
(1963). Courts took into account both “the details of the
interrogation” and “the characteristics of the accused,” Schneckloth v. Bustamonte , 412 U. S. 218 , 226
(1973), and then “weigh[ed] … the circumstances of pressure against
the power of resistance of the person confessing.” Stein v. New York , 346 U. S. 156 , 185
(1953).

															   All manner of individualized,
personal characteristics were relevant in this voluntariness
inquiry. Among the most frequently mentioned factors were the
defendant’s education, physical condition, intelligence, and mental
health. Withrow v. Williams , 507 U. S. 680 , 693 (1993); see Clewis v. Texas , 386 U. S. 707 , 712
(1967) (“only a fifth-grade education”); Greenwald v. Wisconsin , 390 U. S. 519 , 520–521
(1968) (per curiam) (had not taken blood-pressure
medication); Payne v. Arkansas , 356 U. S. 560 , 562,
n. 4, 567 (1958) (“mentally dull” and “ ‘slow to
learn’ ”); Fikes v. Alabama , 352 U. S. 191 , 193, 196,
198 (1957) (“low mentality, if not mentally ill”). The suspect’s
age also received prominent attention in several cases, e.g. , Gallegos v. Colorado , 370 U. S. 49 , 54 (1962),
especially when the suspect was a “mere child.” Haley v. Ohio , 332
U. S. 596 , 599 (1948) (plurality opinion). The weight assigned
to any one consideration varied from case to case. But all of these
factors, along with anything else that might have affected the
“individual’s . . . capacity for effective choice,” were relevant
in determining whether the confession was coerced or compelled. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 , 506–507 (1966) (Harlan,
J., dissenting).

															   The all-encompassing nature of the
voluntariness inquiry had its benefits. It allowed courts to
accommodate a “complex of values,” Schneckloth , supra , at 223, 224, and to make a careful, highly
individualized determination as to whether the police had wrung “a
confession out of [the] accused against his will.” Blackburn v. Alabama , 361 U. S. 199 , 206–207
(1960). But with this flexibility came a decrease in both certainty
and predictability, and the voluntariness standard proved difficult
“for law enforcement officers to conform to, and for courts to
apply in a consistent manner.” Dickerson v. United
States , 530 U. S. 428 , 444 (2000).

															   In Miranda , the Court supplemented
the voluntariness inquiry with a “set of prophylactic measures”
designed to ward off the “ ‘inherently compelling pressures’
of custodial interrogation.” See Maryland v. Shatzer , 559 U. S. __, __ (2010) (slip op., at 4) (quoting Miranda , 384 U. S., at 467). Miranda greatly
simplified matters by requiring police to give suspects standard
warnings before commencing any custodial interrogation. See id., at 479. Its requirements are no doubt “rigid,” see Fare v. Michael C. , 439 U. S. 1310 , 1314
(1978) (Rehnquist, J., in chambers), and they often require courts
to suppress “trustworthy and highly probative” statements that may
be perfectly “voluntary under [a] traditional Fifth Amendment
analysis.” Fare v. Michael C. , 442 U. S. 707 , 718
(1979). But with this rigidity comes increased clarity. Miranda provides “a workable rule to guide police
officers,” New York v. Quarles , 467 U. S. 649 , 658 (1984) (internal
quotation marks omitted), and an administrable standard for the
courts. As has often been recognized, this gain in clarity and
administrability is one of Miranda ’s “principal
advantages.” Berkemer v. McCarty , 468 U. S. 420 , 430 (1984); see also Missouri v. Seibert , 542 U. S. 600 , 622
(2004) (Kennedy, J., con-curring in judgment).

															   No less than other facets of Miranda ,
the threshold requirement that the suspect be in “custody” is
“designed to give clear guidance to the police.” Yarborough v. Alvarado , 541 U. S. 652 , 668, 669
(2004). Custody under Miranda attaches where there is a
“formal arrest” or a “restraint on freedom of movement” akin to
formal arrest. California v. Beheler , 463 U. S. 1121 , 1125 (1983) (per
curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted) . This
standard is “objective” and turns on how a hypothetical “reasonable
person in the position of the individual being questioned would
gauge the breadth of his or her freedom of action.” Stansbury v. California , 511 U. S. 318 , 322–323,
325 (1994) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks
omitted).

															   Until today, the Court’s cases applying this
test have focused solely on the “objective circumstances of the
interrogation,” id. , at 323, not the personal
characteristics of the interrogated. E.g. , Berkemer , supra , at 442, and n. 35; but cf. Schneckloth , 412 U. S., at 226 (voluntariness inquiry
requires consideration of “the details of the interrogation” and “the characteristics of the accused”). Relevant
factors have included such things as where the questioning
occurred,[ Footnote 2 ] how long
it lasted,[ Footnote 3 ] what was
said,[ Footnote 4 ] any physical
restraints placed on the suspect’s movement,[ Footnote 5 ] and whether the suspect was allowed
to leave when the questioning was through.[ Footnote 6 ] The totality of these circumstances—the external circumstances, that is, of the
interrogation itself—is what has mattered in this Court’s cases.
Personal characteristics of suspects have consistently been
rejected or ignored as irrelevant under a one-size-fits-all
reasonable-person standard. Stansbury, supra, at
323 (“[C]ustody depends on the objective circumstances of the
interrogation, not on the subjective views harbored by either the
interrogating officers or the person being questioned”).

															   For example, in Berkemer v. McCarty, supra , police officers conducting a traffic stop
questioned a man who had been drinking and smoking marijuana before
he was pulled over. Id., at 423. Although the suspect’s
inebriation was readily apparent to the officers at the scene, ibid. , the Court’s analysis did not advert to this or any
other individualized consideration. Instead, the Court focused only
on the external circumstances of the interrogation itself. The
opinion concluded that a typical “traffic stop” is akin to a
“ Terry stop”[ Footnote
7 ] and does not qualify as the equivalent of “formal arrest.” Id. , at 439. California v. Beheler , supra , is another useful example. There, the circumstances
of the interrogation were “remarkably similar” to the facts of the
Court’s earlier decision in Oregon v. Mathiason , 429 U. S. 492 (1977) (per
curiam) —the suspect was “not placed under arrest,” he
“voluntarily [came] to the police station,” and he was “allowed to
leave unhindered by police after a brief interview.” 463 U. S., at
1123, 1121. A California court in Beheler had nonetheless
distinguished Mathiason because the police knew that
Beheler “had been drinking earlier in the day” and was “emotionally
distraught.” 463 U. S., at 1124–1125. In a summary reversal, this
Court explained that the fact “[t]hat the police knew more”
personal information about Beheler than they did about Mathiason
was “irrelevant.” Id. , at 1125. Neither one of them was in
custody under the objective reasonable-person standard. Ibid . ; see also Alvarado , supra, at 668, 669 (experience with law enforcement
irrelevant to Miranda custody analysis “as a de
novo matter”).[ Footnote
8 ]

															   The glaring absence of reliance on personal
characteristics in these and other custody cases should come as no
surprise. To account for such individualized considerations would
be to contradict Miranda ’s central premise. The Miranda Court’s decision to adopt its inflexible
prophylactic requirements was expressly based on the notion that
“[a]ssessments of the knowledge the defendant possessed, based on
information as to his age, education, intelligence, or prior
contact with authorities, can never be more than speculation.” 384
U. S., at 468–469.

															II

															   In light of this established
practice, there is no denying that, by incorporating age into its
analysis, the Court is embarking on a new expansion of the
established custody standard. And since Miranda is this
Court’s rule, “not a constitutional command,” it is up to the Court
“to justify its expansion.” Cf. Arizona v. Roberson , 486 U. S. 675 , 688
(1988) (Kennedy, J., dissenting). This the Court fails to do.

															   In its present form, Miranda ’s prophylactic regime already imposes “high
cost[s]” by requiring suppression of confessions that are often
“highly probative” and “voluntary” by any traditional standard. Oregon v. Elstad , 470 U. S. 298 , 312
(1985); see Dickerson, 530 U. S., at 444 (under Miranda “statements which may be by no means involuntary,
made by a defendant who is aware of his ‘rights,’ may nonetheless
be excluded and a guilty defendant go free as a result”).
Nonetheless, a “core virtue” of Miranda has been the
clarity and precision of its guidance to “police and courts.” Withrow v. Williams , 507 U. S. 680 , 694 (1993) (internal
quotation marks omitted); see Moran, 475 U. S., at 425
(“[O]ne of the principal advantages of Miranda is the ease
and clarity of its application” (internal quotation marks
omitted)). This increased clarity “has been thought to outweigh the
burdens” that Miranda imposes. Fare , 442 U. S.,
at 718. The Court has, however, repeatedly cautioned against
upsetting the careful “balance” that Miranda struck, Moran, supra, at 424, and it has “refused to
sanction attempts to expand [the] Miranda holding” in ways
that would reduce its “clarity.” See Quarles , 467 U. S.,
at 658 (citing cases). Given this practice, there should be a
“strong presumption” against the Court’s new departure from the
established custody test. See United States v. Patane , 542
U. S. 630 , 640 (2004) (plurality opinion). In my judgment, that
presumption cannot be overcome here.

															A

															   The Court’s rationale for
importing age into the custody standard is that minors tend to lack
adults’ “capacity to exercise mature judgment” and that failing to
account for that “reality” will leave some minors unprotected under Miranda in situations where they perceive themselves to be
confined. See ante , at 10, 8. I do not dispute that many
suspects who are under 18 will be more susceptible to police
pressure than the average adult. As the Court notes, our
pre- Miranda cases were particularly attuned to this
“reality” in applying the constitutional requirement of
voluntariness in fact. Ante, at 9 (relying on Haley, 332 U. S., at 599 (plurality opinion), and Gallegos , 370 U. S., at 54). It is no less a “reality,”
however, that many persons over the age of 18 are also
more susceptible to police pressure than the hypothetical
reasonable person. See Payne, 356 U. S., at 567 (fact that
defendant was a “mentally dull 19-year-old youth” relevant in
voluntariness inquiry). Yet the Miranda custody standard
has never accounted for the personal characteristics of these or
any other individual defendants.

															   Indeed, it has always been the
case under Miranda that the unusually meek or compliant
are subject to the same fixed rules, including the same custody
requirement, as those who are unusually resistant to police
pressure. Berkemer , 468 U. S., at 442, and n. 35
(“[O]nly relevant inquiry is how a reasonable man in the suspect’s
position would have understood his situation”). Miranda ’s
rigid standards are both overinclusive and underinclusive. They are
overinclusive to the extent that they provide a windfall to the
most hardened and savvy of suspects, who often have no need for Miranda ’s protections. Compare Miranda , supra , at 471–472 (“[N]o amount of circumstantial evidence
that the person may have been aware of ” his rights can
overcome Miranda ’s requirements), with Orozco v. Texas , 394
U. S. 324 , 329 (1969) (White, J., dissenting) (“Where the
defendant himself [w]as a lawyer, policeman, professional criminal,
or otherwise has become aware of what his right to silence is, it
is sheer fancy to assert that his answer to every question asked
him is compelled unless he is advised of those rights with which he
is already intimately familiar”). And Miranda ’s
requirements are underinclusive to the extent that they fail to
account for “frailties,” “idiosyncrasies,” and other individualized
considerations that might cause a person to bend more easily during
a confrontation with the police. See Alvarado , 541 U. S.,
at 662 (internal quotation marks omitted). Members of this Court
have seen this rigidity as a major weakness in Miranda ’s
“code of rules for confessions.” See 384 U. S., at 504 (Harlan, J.,
dissenting); Fare, 439 U. S., at 1314 (Rehnquist, J., in
chambers) (“[T]he rigidity of [ Miranda ’s] prophylactic
rules was a principal weakness in the view of dissenters and
critics outside the Court”). But if it is, then the weakness is an
inescapable consequence of the Miranda Court’s decision to
supplement the more holistic voluntariness requirement with a
one-size-fits-all prophylactic rule.

															   That is undoubtedly why this Court’s Miranda cases have never before mentioned “the suspect’s
age” or any other individualized consideration in applying the
custody standard. See Alvarado , supra, at 666.
And unless the Miranda custody rule is now to be radically
transformed into one that takes into account the wide range of
individual characteristics that are relevant in determining whether
a confession is voluntary, the Court must shoulder the burden of
explaining why age is different from these other personal
characteristics.

															   Why, for example, is age different from
intelligence? Suppose that an officer, upon going to a school to
question a student, is told by the principal that the student has
an I. Q. of 75 and is in a special-education class. Cf. In
re J. D. B. , 363 N. C. 664, 666, 686 S. E.
2d 135, 136–137 (2009). Are those facts more or less important than
the student’s age in determining whether he or she “felt … at
liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave”? See Thompson v. Keohane , 516 U. S. 99 , 112 (1995).
An I. Q. score, like age, is more than just a number. Ante , at 8 (“[A]ge is far ‘more than a chronological
fact’ ”). And an individual’s intelligence can also yield
“conclusions” similar to those “we have drawn ourselves” in cases
far afield of Miranda . Ante, at 12. Compare ibid. (relying on Eddings v. Oklahoma , 455 U. S. 104 (1982), and Roper v. Simmons , 543 U. S. 551 (2005)), with Smith v. Texas , 543 U. S. 37 , 44–45
(2004) (per curiam) .

															   How about the suspect’s cultural background?
Suppose the police learn (or should have learned, see ante , at 11) that a suspect they wish to question is a
recent immigrant from a country in which dire consequences often
befall any person who dares to attempt to cut short any meeting
with the police.[ Footnote 9 ] Is
this really less relevant than the fact that a suspect is a month
or so away from his 18th birthday?

															   The defendant’s education is another personal
characteristic that may generate “conclusions about behavior and
perception.” Ante , at 9 (internal quotation marks
omitted). Under today’s decision, why should police officers and
courts “blind themselves,” ante , at 1, to the fact that a
suspect has “only a fifth-grade education”? See Clewis ,
386 U. S., at 712 (voluntariness case). Alternatively, what if the
police know or should know that the suspect is “a college-educated
man with law school training”? See Crooker v. California , 357 U. S. 433 , 440
(1958), overruled by Miranda , supra, at 479, and
n. 48. How are these individual considerations meaningfully
different from age in their “relationship to a reasonable person’s
understanding of his freedom of action”? Ante , at 11. The
Court proclaims that “[a] child’s age . . . is different,” ante , at 12, but the basis for this ipse dixit is
dubious.

															   I have little doubt that today’s decision will
soon be cited by defendants—and perhaps by prosecutors as well—for
the proposition that all manner of other individual characteristics
should be treated like age and taken into account in the Miranda custody calculus. Indeed, there are already lower
court decisions that take this approach. See United States v. Beraun-Panez , 812 F. 2d 578, 581, modified 830
F. 2d 127 (CA9 1987) (“reasonable person who was an alien”); In re Jorge D. , 202 Ariz. 277, 280, 43 P. 3d 605, 608
(App. 2002) (age, maturity, and experience); State v. Doe, 130 Idaho 811, 818, 948 P. 2d 166, 173 (1997)
(same); In re Joshua David C., 116 Md. App. 580,
594, 698 A. 2d 1155, 1162 (1997) (“education, age, and
intelligence”).

															   In time, the Court will have to confront these
issues, and it will be faced with a difficult choice. It may choose
to distinguish today’s decision and adhere to the arbitrary
proclamation that “age . . . is different.” Ante , at 12.
Or it may choose to extend today’s holding and, in doing so,
further undermine the very rationale for the Miranda regime.

															B

															   If the Court chooses the latter
course, then a core virtue of Miranda —the “ease and
clarity of its application”—will be lost. Moran , 475 U.
S., at 425; see Fare , 442 U. S., at 718 (noting that the
clarity of Miranda ’s requirements “has been thought to
outweigh the burdens that the decision . . . imposes”). However,
even today’s more limited departure from Miranda ’s
one-size-fits-all reasonable-person test will produce the very
consequences that prompted the Miranda Court to abandon
exclusive reliance on the voluntariness test in the first place:
The Court’s test will be hard for the police to follow, and it will
be hard for judges to apply. See Dickerson v. United
States , 530 U. S. 428 , 444 (2000).

															   The Court holds that age must be
taken into account when it “was known to the officer at the time of
the interview,” or when it “would have been objectively apparent”
to a reasonable officer. Ante , at 11. The first half of
this test overturns the rule that the “initial determination of
custody” does not depend on the “subjective views harbored by . . .
interrogating officers.” Stansbury, 511 U. S., at 323. The
second half will generate time-consuming satellite litigation over
a reasonable officer’s perceptions. When, as here, the
interrogation takes place in school, the inquiry may be relatively
simple. But not all police questioning of minors takes place in
schools. In many cases, courts will presumably have to make
findings as to whether a particular suspect had a sufficiently
youthful look to alert a reasonable officer to the possibility that
the suspect was under 18, or whether a reasonable officer would
have recognized that a suspect’s I. D. was a fake. The inquiry
will be both “time-consuming and disruptive” for the police and the
courts. See Berkemer , 468 U. S., at 432 (refusing to
modify the custody test based on similar considerations). It will
also be made all the more complicated by the fact that a suspect’s
dress and manner will often be different when the issue is
litigated in court than it was at the time of the
interrogation.

															   Even after courts clear this initial hurdle,
further problems will likely emerge as judges attempt to put
themselves in the shoes of the average 16-year-old, or 15-year-old,
or 13-year-old, as the case may be. Consider, for example, a
60-year-old judge attempting to make a custody determination
through the eyes of a hypothetical, average 15-year-old. Forty-five
years of personal experience and societal change separate this
judge from the days when he or she was 15 years old. And this judge
may or may not have been an average 15-year-old. The Court’s answer
to these difficulties is to state that “no imaginative powers,
knowledge of developmental psychology, [or] training in cognitive
science” will be necessary. Ante , at 17. Judges “simply
need the common sense,” the Court assures, “to know that a
7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.” Ante, at 17. It is obvious, however, that application of
the Court’s new rule demands much more than this.

															   Take a fairly typical case in which today’s
holding may make a difference. A 16-year-old moves to suppress
incriminating statements made prior to the administration of Miranda warnings. The circumstances are such that, if the
defendant were at least 18, the court would not find that he or she
was in custody, but the defendant argues that a reasonable
16-year-old would view the situation differently. The judge will
not have the luxury of merely saying: “It is common sense that a
16-year-old is not an 18-year-old. Motion granted.” Rather, the
judge will be required to determine whether the differences between
a typical 16-year-old and a typical 18-year-old with respect to
susceptibility to the pressures of interrogation are sufficient to
change the outcome of the custody determination. Today’s opinion
contains not a word of actual guidance as to how judges are
supposed to go about making that determination.

															C

															   Petitioner and the Court attempt
to show that this task is not unmanageable by pointing out that age
is taken into account in other legal contexts. In particular, the
Court relies on the fact that the age of a defendant is a relevant
factor under the reasonable-person standard applicable in
negligence suits. Ante , at 11 (citing Restatement (Third)
of Torts §10, Comment b , p. 117 (2005)). But
negligence is generally a question for the jury, the members of
which can draw on their varied experiences with persons of
different ages. It also involves a post hoc determination,
in the reflective atmosphere of a deliberation room, about whether
the defendant conformed to a standard of care. The Miranda custody determination, by contrast, must be made in the first
instance by police officers in the course of an investigation that
may require quick decisionmaking. See Quarles , 467 U. S.,
at 658 (noting “the importance” under Miranda of providing
“a workable rule ‘to guide police officers, who have only limited
time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and
individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they
confront’ ”); Alvarado , 541 U. S., at 668, 669
(“[T]he custody inquiry states an objective rule designed to give
clear guidance to the police”).

															   Equally inapposite are the Eighth
Amendment cases the Court cites in support of its new rule. Ante , at 9, 11, 12 (citing Eddings, 455 U. S. 104 , Roper, 543 U. S. 551 , and Graham v. Florida , 560 U. S. ___ (2010)). Those decisions involve
the “judicial exercise of independent judgment” about the
constitutionality of certain punishments. E.g. , id. , at ___ (slip op., at 16). Like the negligence
standard, they do not require on-the-spot judgments by the
police.

															   Nor do state laws affording extra protection
for juveniles during custodial interrogation provide any support
for petitioner’s arguments. See Brief for Petitioner 16–17. States
are free to enact additional restrictions on the police over and
above those demanded by the Constitution or Miranda . In
addition, these state statutes generally create clear, workable
rules to guide police conduct. See Brief for Petitioner 16–17
(citing statutes that require or permit parents to be present
during custodial interrogation of a minor, that require minors to
be advised of a statutory right to communicate with a parent or
guardian, and that require parental consent to custodial
interrogation). Today’s decision, by contrast, injects a new,
complicating factor into what had been a clear, easily applied
prophylactic rule. See Alvarado , supra, at
668–669.[ Footnote 10 ]

															III

															   The Court’s decision greatly
diminishes the clarity and administrability that have long been
recognized as “principal advantages” of Miranda ’s
prophylactic requirements. See, e.g. , Moran, 475
U. S., at 425. But what is worse, the Court takes this step
unnecessarily, as there are other, less disruptive tools available
to ensure that minors are not coerced into confessing.

															   As an initial matter, the
difficulties that the Court’s standard introduces will likely yield
little added protection for most juvenile defendants. Most
juveniles who are subjected to police interrogation are teenagers
nearing the age of majority.[ Footnote 11 ] These defendants’ reactions to police
pressure are unlikely to be much different from the reaction of a
typical 18-year-old in similar circumstances. A one-size-fits-all Miranda custody rule thus provides a roughly reasonable
fit for these defendants.

															   In addition, many of the concerns that
petitioner raises regarding the application of the Miranda custody rule to minors can be accommodated by considering the
unique circumstances present when minors are questioned in school.
See Brief for Petitioner 10–11 (reciting at length the factors
petitioner believes to be relevant to the custody determination
here, including the fact that petitioner was removed from class by
a police officer, that the interview took place in a school
conference room, and that a uniformed officer and a vice principal
were present). The Miranda custody rule has always taken
into account the setting in which questioning occurs, restrictions
on a suspect’s freedom of movement, and the presence of police
officers or other authority figures. See Alvarado , supra, at 665; Maryland v. Shatzer , 559
U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 14). It can do so here as
well.[ Footnote 12 ]

															   Finally, in cases like the one now before us,
where the suspect is much younger than the typical juvenile
defendant, courts should be instructed to take particular care to
ensure that incriminating statements were not obtained
involuntarily. The voluntariness inquiry is flexible and
accommodating by nature, see Schneckloth, 412 U. S., at
224, and the Court’s precedents already make clear that “special
care” must be exercised in applying the voluntariness test where
the confession of a “mere child” is at issue. Haley, 332
U. S., at 599 (plurality opinion). If Miranda ’s rigid,
one-size-fits-all standards fail to account for the unique needs of
juveniles, the response should be to rigorously apply the
constitutional rule against coercion to ensure that the rights of
minors are protected. There is no need to run Miranda off
the rails.

															*  *  * The Court rests its
decision to inject personal characteristics into the Miranda custody inquiry on the principle that judges
applying Miranda cannot “blind themselves to … commonsense
reality.” Ante , at 1, 8, 10–11, 14. But the Court’s shift
is fundamentally at odds with the clear prophylactic rules that Miranda has long enforced. Miranda frequently
requires judges to blind themselves to the reality that many
un-Mirandized custodial confessions are “by no means involuntary”
or coerced. Dickerson, 530 U. S., at 444. It also requires
police to provide a rote recitation of Miranda warnings
that many suspects already know and could likely recite from
memory.[ Footnote 13 ] Under
today’s new, “reality”-based approach to the doctrine, perhaps
these and other principles of our Miranda jurisprudence
will, like the custody standard, now be ripe for modification.
Then, bit by bit, Miranda will lose the clarity and ease
of application that has long been viewed as one of its chief
justifications.

															   I respectfully dissent. Footnote 1 See Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U. S. 436 (1966). Footnote 2 Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.
S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 13–16). Footnote 3 Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420 , 437–438 (1984). Footnote 4 Oregon v. Mathiason , 429 U. S. 492 , 495 (1977) (per
curiam) . Footnote 5 New York v. Quarles , 467 U. S. 649 , 655 (1984). Footnote 6 California v. Beheler , 463 U. S. 1121 , 1122–1123 (1983) (per curiam) . Footnote 7 See Terry v. Ohio , 392 U. S. 1 (1968). Footnote 8 The Court claims that “[n]ot once” have any
of our cases “excluded from the custody analysis a circumstance
that we determined was relevant and objective, simply to make the
fault line between custodial and noncustodial ‘brighter.’ ” Ante , at 17. Surely this is incorrect. The very act of
adopting a reasonable-person test necessarily excludes all sorts of
“relevant and objective” circumstances—for example, all the
objective circumstances of a suspect’s life history—that might
otherwise bear on a custody determination. Footnote 9 Cf. United States v. Chalan , 812 F. 2d 1302, 1307 (CA10 1987) (rejecting
claim that Native American suspect was “in custody” for Miranda purposes because, by custom, obedience to tribal
authorities was “expected of all tribal members”). Footnote 10 The Court also relies on North Carolina’s
concession at oral argument that a court could take into account a
suspect’s blindness as a factor relevant to the Miranda custody determination. Ante , at 15, and n. 9. This is
a far-fetched hypothetical, and neither the parties nor their amici cite any case in which such a problem has actually
arisen. Presumably such a case would involve a situation in which a
blind defendant was given “a typed document advising him that he
[was] free to leave.” See Brief for Juvenile Law Center as Amicus Curiae 23. In such a case, furnishing this advice
in a form calculated to be unintelligible to the suspect would be
tantamount to failing to provide the advice at all. And advice by
the police that a suspect is or is not free to leave at will has
always been regarded as a circumstance regarding the conditions of
the interrogation that must be taken into account in making the Miranda custody determination. Footnote 11 See Dept of Justice, Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 2008 Crime in the United States (Sept. 2009), online
at http://www2.fbi.gov/ ucr/cius2008/data/table_38.html (all
Internet materials as visited June 8, 2011, and available in Clerk
of Court’s case file) (indicating that less than 30% of juvenile
arrests in the United States are of suspects who are under 15). Footnote 12 The Court thinks it would be “absur[d]” to
consider the school setting without accounting for age, ante , at 12, but the real absurdity is for the Court to
require police officers to get inside the head of a reasonable
minor while making the quick, on-the-spot determinations that Miranda demands. Footnote 13 Surveys have shown that “[l]arge majorities”
of the public are aware that “individuals arrested for a crime”
have a right to “remai[n] silent (81%),” a right to “a lawyer
(95%),” and a right to have a lawyer “appointed” if the arrestee
“cannot afford one (88%).” See Belden, Russonello & Stewart,
Developing a National Message for Indigent Defense: Analysis of
National Survey 4 (Oct. 2001), online at http://www.nlada.org/
DMS/Documents/1211996548.53/Polling%20results%20report.pdf.