Court Opinion

ID: 9645608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:29:49.042598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:29.850551
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I respectfully dissent in the Court’s conclusion, in Part II of the majority opinion, that the inculpatory statements of this juvenile were admissible because freely and voluntarily made. I otherwise concur in the majority opinion.
Our prior rejection of “a per se rule requiring the notification of an adult interested in a juvenile’s welfare prior to interrogation ...” has no proper weight in deciding the issue postured in this case. The undisputed fact is that here the parent was present. I am satisfied that he was deliberately employed by the police officer as a catalyst to get the juvenile to confess his involvement in the crimes of burglary and theft. It is undisputed that the father did, in fact, act as such a catalyst. The juvenile did not respond on his own initiative to the officer’s first interrogatory. He did so only after his father took up the cudgels of inquiry. It is undisputed that the father was not advised of the boy’s rights.
The applicable reasoning is well stated by Justice Nix of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the very similar case of Commonwealth v. Starkes, 461 Pa. 178, -, 335 A.2d 698, 703 (1975):
Where an informed adult is present the inequality of the position of the accused and police is to some extent neutralized and due process satisfied. However, where the adult is ignorant of the constitutional rights that surround a suspect in a criminal ease and exerts his or her influence upon the minor in reaching the decision, it is clear that due process is offended. An uninformed adult present during custodial interrogation presents an even greater liability. The minor in such a situation is given the illusion of protection, but is in fact forced to rely upon one who is incapable of providing the advice and counsel needed in such a situation.
Unless we require police officers to also advise parents, who are in the position to counsel minor suspects during custodial interrogation, we will not only fail to assure the full benefits sought to be attained by this type of counseling but we will also increase the likelihood that the suspect will be misinformed as to his rights.
Whether the pressure to respond to police questioning flows from the overzealousness of the police or the unadvised entreaties of a well-intentioned parent, the result is equally offensive to our concept of due process and frustrates the protection sought to be provided by our Constitution.
(Footnote omitted.) (Emphasis added.)
To allow this conviction to stand would be to treat this juvenile as if he had no constitutional rights solely because his unadvised parent unwittingly permitted himself to be used as a foil for his son’s undoing. Such a result does obvious violence to the juvenile’s rights and demeans the father’s understandable parental motives. I would vacate the convictions for burglary and theft.