J.D.B. v. North Carolina

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.

Adolescents are more susceptible than adults to peer influence and to external pressure or coercion, with susceptibility greatest in mid-adolescence; the mere presence of peers measurably increases adolescents' risk-taking and shifts their decisions toward immediate rewards.

Juveniles, especially those age 15 and younger, frequently do not adequately comprehend or appreciate the Miranda warnings they waive: as a group they understand the words of the warnings, and the function and significance of the rights to silence and counsel, less well than adults -- raising doubt about whether a juvenile's waiver is knowing and intelligent.

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.