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U.S. Supreme Court · 1962
370 U.S. 49 (1962)
Held that the confession of a 14-year-old, obtained during a five-day detention in which he was cut off from any parent, lawyer, or adult advisor, was taken in violation of due process. Admissibility turns on the totality of the circumstances, judged with "special care" when the suspect is a child: a boy in his early teens "cannot be judged by the more exacting standards of maturity" and "is not equal to the police in knowledge and understanding of the consequences" of interrogation, so adult advice "would have put him on a less unequal footing with his interrogators." Decided before Miranda; it does not address spontaneous admissions made at arrest, nor whether youth alone, absent isolation, renders a confession inadmissible.
Later courts cite it without significant positive or negative signal.
Treatment last confirmed July 18, 2026. Case-wide subsequent treatment; human-set. Not specific to any one passage.
Juveniles are over-represented among proven false confessions, and adolescents are at elevated risk of false confession relative to adults — a dispositional vulnerability (immaturity of judgment, suggestibility, and compliance with authority) that interacts with situational interrogation pressure. The claim concerns the composition of known and proven cases and comparative risk, not a known absolute rate among all juvenile confessions.
A child's age objectively affects how they experience police questioning: minors are more susceptible than adults to perceived pressure and authority, are more suggestible, and are at greater risk of falsely confessing, so age is materially relevant to whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave or to remain silent.