 J.D.B. v. North Carolina was a 2011 case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that age is relevant when determining police custody for Miranda purposes. Sotomayor was assigned to write the majority opinion in the case. J.D.B. was a 13-year-old student enrolled in special education classes whom police had suspected of committing two robberies. A police investigator visited J.D.B. at school, where he was interrogated by the investigator, a uniformed police officer, and school officials. J.D.B. subsequently confessed to his crimes and was convicted. J.D.B. was not given a Miranda warning during the interrogation, nor an opportunity to contact his legal guardian. During the trial, attempts to suppress the statements given by J.D.B. because he was not given a Miranda warning were denied on the grounds that J.D.B. was not in police custody. The case was appealed and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Sotomayor's opinion for the Court held that a child's age properly informs the Miranda custody analysis. Her opinion underscored the dangers of not applying age to the custody analysis, writing: "to hold ... 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 opinion cited Stansbury v. California where the Court held that a child's age "would have affected how a reasonable person" in the suspect's position "would perceive his or her freedom to leave". Yarborough v. Alvarado was also cited, where the Court wrote that a child's age "generates commonsense conclusions about behavior and perception". Finally, Sotomayor's opinion pointed out that the law reflects the idea that a child's judgment is not the same as an adult's, in the form of legal disqualifications on children as a class (e.g. limitations on a child's ability to marry without parental consent). Sotomayor's opinion was challenged by Associate Justice Samuel Alito who wrote a dissenting opinion for four Justices.
