Court Opinion

ID: 9750153
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:24:08.725287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:03.628345
License: Public Domain

*52Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts :
I.
I do not believe that this boy could, without first seeing and being given advice by some adult friend or counsel, voluntarily agree to waive his constitutional rights in response to the Miranda warnings.
“No single litmus-paper test for constitutionally impermissible interrogation has been evolved: neither extensive cross-questioning—deprecated by the English judges; nor undue delay in arraignment—proscribed by McNabb; nor failure to caution a prisoner—enjoined by the Judges’ rules ;* nor refusal to permit communication with friends and legal counsel at stages in the proceeding when the prisoner is still only a suspect—prohibited by several state statutes. [Citations omitted]
“Each of these factors, in company with all the surrounding circumstances—the duration and conditions of the detention. (if the confessor has been detained), the manifest attitude of the police toward him, his physical and mental state, the diverse pressures which sap or sustain his powers of resistance or self-control— is relevant. [Footnote omitted] The ultimate test remains that which has been the only clearly established test in Anglo-American courts for two hundred years— the test of voluntariness. Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? If it is, if he has willed to confess, it may be used against him. If it is not, if his will has been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired, the use of his confession offends due process. [Citation omitted] The line of distinction is that at which governing self-direction is lost and compulsion, *53of whatever nature or however infused, propels or helps to propel the confession.” Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 601-02, 81 S. Ct. 1860, 1878-79 (1961).
The confession in the instant case was given by a fifteen year old youth who possessed an I.Q. of 76 and a mental age of eight and one half to eleven years, after four hours of police custody and after two and one half hours of questioning. The defendant did receive and did respond to the required Miranda warnings before his interrogation. This is not an easy case, but I am. compelled to conclude that this defendant did not make a knowing and intelligent waiver of his constitutional rights sufficient to sustain the validity of his confession. I take little comfort from the fact that the Miranda warnings were given. I do not believe that this defendant was truly capable, even given the knowledge gained by having heard the warnings recited, of making the free and rational choice which is a prerequisite of a valid confession.
“[W]hen, as here, a mere child—an easy victim of the law—is before us, special care in scrutinizing the record must be used. Age fifteen is a tender and difficult age for a boy of any race. He can not be judged by the more exacting standards of maturity. That which would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens. . . .
“[W]e are told that this boy was advised of his constitutional rights before he signed the confession and that, knowing them, he nevertheless confessed. That assumes, however, that a boy of 15, without aid of counsel, would have a full appreciation of that advice and that on the facts of this record he had a freedom of choice. We cannot indulge those assumptions. [W]e cannot give any weight to recitals which merely formalize constitutional requirements. Formulas of respect *54for constitutional safeguards cannot prevail over the facts of life which contradict them. They may not become a cloak for inquisitorial practices and make an empty form of the due process of law for which free men fought and died to obtain.” Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 599, 601, 68 S. Ct. 302, 303-04 (1948). Similarly, I cannot indulge in the assumption that a fifteen year old boy of greatly impaired mental ability could, without the aid of counsel or any adult friend, Commonwealth v. Harmon, 440 Pa. 195, 269 A. 2d 744 (1970), have the understanding and full appreciation of the advice given him which is the necessary prerequisite of a free and knowing decision to confess. Lending support to this conclusion is the fact that on the few prior occasions when the defendant had had some contact with the police it had been in the context of an informal meeting with the juvenile authorities, following each of which he had been allowed to go home, and the fact that the defendant was held for five days before he was even arraigned. See Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U.S. 49, 82 S. Ct. 1209 (1962).
Gallegos, supra, is of further relevance, for in that case the Supreme Court declared inadmissible a confession obtained from a juvenile almost immediately after his arrest, saying:
“The prosecution says that the boy was advised of his right to counsel, but that he did not ask either for a lawyer or for his parents. But a fourteen year old boy, no matter how sophisticated, is unlikely to have any conception of what will confront bim when he is made accessible only to the police. That is to say, we deal with a person who is not equal to the police in knowledge and understanding of the consequences of the questions and answers being recorded, and who is unable to know how to protect his own interests or how to get the benefits of his constitutional rights.
*55“The prosecution says that the youth and immaturity of the petitioner and the 5 day detention are irrelevant, because the basic ingredients of the confession came tumbling out as soon as he was arrested. But if we took that position, it would, with all deference, be in callous disregard of this boy’s constitutional rights. He cannot be compared with an adult in full possession of his senses and knowledgeable of the consequences of his admissions. He would have no way of knowing what the consequences of his confession were without advice as to his rights—■from someone concerned with securing him those rights—and without the aid of more mature judgment as to the steps he should take in the predicament in which he found himself. A lawyer or an adult relative or friend could have given the petitioner the protection which his own immaturity could not. Adult advice would have put him on a less unequal footing with his interrogators. Without some adult protection against this inequality, a 14 year old boy would not be able to know, let alone assert, such constitutional rights as he had. To allow this conviction to stand would, in effect, be to treat him as if he had no constitutional rights.” 370 U.S. at 54-55, 82 S. Ct. at 1212-13 (emphasis added). See also In re Carlo, 48 N.J. 224, 225 A. 2d 110 (1966) (“. . . it seems doubtful that these boys . . . had the mental capacity, particularly in the environment of a police station, to appreciate the extent of their rights and the consequences of a failure to exercise them. We do not third?: that these admonitions by the police should be given significant weight in our determination of voluntariness.”); In re Medina, 63 Cal. Reptr. 512 (1967).
It seems evident that this case is cut from the same cloth as Haley and Gallegos, and that it cannot be said that this defendant was capable of deciding to waive the advice of counsel and to confess to the crime *56without first receiving advice and guidance from some friendly adult source, either counsel or an adult friend.
I do not attempt to delineate any specified age, or I.Q. or combination thereof, below which a confession will automatically be found involuntary even though the Miranda warnings have been given. I prefer an approach that takes into account all the circumstances surrounding the youth’s alleged waiver, and examines those circumstances for evidence of voluntariness. Here, Darden deserves more protection than that given by a cold recitation of the Miranda warnings.
II.
I must also dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion which approves of the numerous testimonial references to the defendant’s prior juvenile contacts which were solicited by the Commonwealth from certain prosecution witnesses. The Commonwealth asserts that these questions were not, as the defendant claims, a deliberate attempt to show that the defendant was a “bad boy,” but were designed to demonstrate that the testimony of these men with regard to the defendant’s condition on the night of his arrest, including the question of defendant’s relative sobriety, took added validity from the fact that they could assess the defendant’s condition from the perspective of having known him fairly well. While I agree that the testimony was arguably relevant for this reason, I cannot believe that its use was sufficiently important to counterbalance our strong policy against the introduction of evidence concerning prior unrelated crimes. As we have made clear in the past, such evidence is inherently prejudicial and generally inadmissible. Commonwealth v. Burdell, 380 Pa. 43, 110 A. 2d 193 (1955) ; Commonwealth v. Williams, 307 Pa. 134, 160 Atl. 602 (1932). And it is my opinion that this general rule of *57inadmissibility is even stronger when tbe prior criminal contacts were juvenile offenses in view of tbe specific statutory proscription of tbe subsequent use of a juvenile record. Act of June 2, 1933, P. L. 1433, 11 P.S. §261. I cannot conclude that tbe relatively slight importance of tbis testimony was at all sufficient to overcome tbe strong policy favoring its exclusion.
Accordingly, I dissent.
Mr. Justice Jones joins in Part I of tbis dissent.

 A form of “cautioning” Is now, of course, required by Miranda.