Court Opinion

ID: 9941055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-15 19:01:08.070791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:46:11.261966
License: Public Domain

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                                                              [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-11744
                           ____________________

        JIMMIE L. BOWEN,
                                                      Petitioner-Appellee,
        versus
        SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,

                                                   Respondent-Appellant.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Florida
                     D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-23952-KMW
                           ____________________

        Before WILSON, GRANT, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
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        2                       Opinion of the Court              22-11744

        GRANT, Circuit Judge:
                State criminal defendants can receive federal habeas corpus
        relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 only in limited circumstances. One of
        those is when the state court whose decision is under review
        decided an issue in a way that involved an “unreasonable
        application” of clearly established federal law. Jimmie Bowen says
        the Florida courts did just that in his case. He argues that the
        Florida trial court clearly violated Miranda by refusing to suppress
        incriminating statements he made to a fellow suspect when police
        placed the two in an interrogation room after he had invoked his
        right to counsel. The district court agreed and overturned his
        conviction. But the Supreme Court’s cases are—at best—murky
        on when putting two suspects in a room together qualifies as
        interrogation under Miranda. Because reasonable jurists could
        disagree about whether Bowen was “interrogated” in the interview
        room, federal courts lack the power to upset his state criminal
        conviction. We therefore reverse the district court.
                                         I.
               Jimmie Bowen and his gang, New Moneii, had a bone to
        pick with Pierre Roche, who was selling drugs on New Moneii’s
        turf. Years before, the gang’s leaders had shot Roche for the same
        perceived violation—but he did not change his habits. The turf
        dispute continued, and when sixteen-year-old Bowen spotted
        Roche playing dominoes nearby, he hatched a plan to execute him.
        This time, the gang got its target. Bowen killed Roche, shooting
        him from close range. He even stood directly over him, firing
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        22-11744               Opinion of the Court                        3

        more rounds to make sure the grisly task was complete. But Roche
        was not the only victim. Bowen also wounded Christopher Smith,
        another dominoes player, and shot and killed Derrick Days, Jr.—a
        ten-month-old baby sitting in his father’s lap across the table.
               Bowen was not immediately identified. He was wearing a
        face covering, and witnesses could describe him only as a black
        male, roughly five feet eight inches tall. The police had no leads
        until an associate of Bowen’s identified him as the shooter. That
        same person also told the police that Bernard Jones, a seventeen-
        year-old member of the New Moneii gang, was the getaway driver.
        Bowen and Jones were soon arrested.
                The detectives first questioned Bowen and Jones separately.
        After they advised Bowen of his Miranda rights, both he and his
        mother invoked his right to counsel. The detectives then ceased
        their questioning and left the interrogation room. Jones, by
        contrast, waived his Miranda rights and spoke with Detective Jean
        Solis that same day. The details of their conversation are not clear,
        but at one point while they were together, Solis observed that
        Bowen was calling Jones’s cell phone. Jones did not pick up.
                Some time after Bowen invoked his rights, Solis moved him
        to a second interrogation room. Soon enough, Jones was there too.
        Solis informed the two suspects that they would remain there until
        transportation to the Juvenile Assessment Center could be
        arranged. He activated audio and video recording in the room, but
        neither Solis nor any other law enforcement officer asked either
        suspect to speak with the other about the murders. Nor did anyone
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11744

        promise any benefit to one suspect in return for seeking
        information from the other.
               Even so, the two began talking almost immediately. The
        microphone in the room picked up several incriminating
        statements from Bowen, who implicitly acknowledged that he was
        the shooter (and that Jones was the driver), accurately described
        the scene of the crime, and incredulously wondered how the police
        had “the two right motherf***ers.” He and Jones, Bowen said,
        were the only living people to “know the truth.”
                The state brought charges, and Bowen moved to suppress
        his statements to Jones, alleging violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and
        Sixth Amendments, the Florida Constitution, and Florida’s wiretap
        statute. Bowen testified that he talked with Jones because he
        “wanted to,” and knew that he could have refused to do so. Still,
        he argued that Detective Solis, by placing Jones in the interview
        room with him after he had invoked his Miranda rights, effectively
        “interrogated” him in violation the Fifth Amendment.
               At the suppression hearing, Solis shared several motivations
        for putting Bowen and Jones in the room together. He first testified
        that it was so they could await transportation to the Juvenile
        Assessment Center. But he later admitted to recognizing that the
        two suspects might speak to each other about the murders—
        indeed, hoping they would—and conceded that this possibility
        informed his decision to put them in the same room. After taking
        evidence and hearing arguments, the state court issued a short oral
        ruling denying Bowen’s suppression motion.
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        22-11744               Opinion of the Court                         5

              At the end of the trial, before both sides began their closing
        arguments, Bowen renewed his motion to suppress. The state
        court again denied it, and the jury found Bowen guilty on all
        counts. The court sentenced him to life in prison with judicial
        review after twenty-five years. He appealed to the Florida district
        court of appeal, arguing, among other things, that the trial court
        erred when it denied his motion to suppress. The appeal was
        denied without opinion. Bowen v. State, 184 So. 3d 533 (Fla. Dist.
        Ct. App. 2016). Bowen subsequently filed several other state post-
        conviction motions, all of which were also denied.
               He then moved to federal court, filing a petition for habeas
        corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petition raised several claims
        related to Bowen’s interrogation-room statements to Jones,
        including that his placement in the room violated Miranda, federal
        and state guarantees of due process, and the state wiretap statute.
               Faced with the limited rationale offered in the state court’s
        oral ruling, the magistrate judge properly attempted to theorize
        what reasoning could have supported that court’s denial of the
        motion to suppress. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 98, 102
        (2011); Pye v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1035–
        41 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc). The only plausible theory, she
        concluded, was that placing Bowen and Jones together did not
        amount to custodial interrogation. Bowen v. Sec’y, Florida Dep’t of
        Corr., No. 19-23952-CV, 2020 WL 13281250, at *7–8 (S.D. Fla. July
        29, 2020). But despite recognizing AEDPA’s deferential standard
        of review, the magistrate judge found the state-court ruling
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11744

        “patently unreasonable.” Id. at *10. The district court agreed and
        granted the petition, concluding that “‘clearly established’
        Supreme Court precedent left no ‘fairminded’ dispute” about the
        alleged Miranda violation. Bowen v. Dixon, No. 19-CIV-23952, 2022
        WL 1521983, at *1 (S.D. Fla. May 13, 2022). This appeal followed.
                                         II.
               We review a district court’s ruling on a petition for habeas
        corpus de novo. Smith v. Comm’r, Alabama Dep’t of Corr., 924 F.3d
        1330, 1336 (11th Cir. 2019).
                                         III.
               Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
        1996, also known as AEDPA, a federal court may not grant habeas
        relief to a state prisoner “with respect to any claim that was
        adjudicated on the merits in State court,” unless the adjudication
        (1) “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an
        unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as
        determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or
        (2) “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable
        determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the
        State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
               A state-court adjudication qualifies as “contrary to” clearly
        established federal law if that court contradicted the Supreme
        Court on a question of law, or if it arrived at a different conclusion
        than the Supreme Court did in a case with materially
        indistinguishable facts. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405–06
        (2000). And a state-court adjudication involves an “unreasonable
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        22-11744               Opinion of the Court                          7

        application of” clearly established federal law if the decision was
        “so obviously wrong that its error lies beyond any possibility for
        fairminded disagreement.” Shinn v. Kayer, 592 U.S. 111, 118 (2020)
        (per curiam) (quotation omitted).
               By this standard, to justify habeas relief a Supreme Court
        precedent must “clearly require the state court” to have adopted a
        different result. Kernan v. Cuero, 583 U.S. 1, 3 (2017) (per curiam).
        The unreasonable-application standard is thus significantly higher
        than a showing that the state court was incorrect, or even that it
        clearly erred. Shinn, 592 U.S. at 118. The bottom line is this: a
        “state court’s determination that a claim lacks merit precludes
        federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on
        the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Pye, 50 F.4th at 1034
        (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 101).
               On each claim for relief, we review the “last state-court
        adjudication on the merits.” See Greene v. Fisher, 565 U.S. 34, 40
        (2011). But when that final merits adjudication does not offer
        specific reasons in support of its holding, we “‘look through’ the
        unexplained decision to the last related state-court decision that
        does provide a relevant rationale.” Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S. Ct. 1188,
        1192 (2018). Still, even when “looking through” to another
        opinion, federal courts must defer to the state court’s ruling, not its
        specific reasoning. Pye, 50 F.4th 1035–41. Put simply, state-court
        decisions must be “given the benefit of the doubt”—there must
        have been “no reasonable basis” for the state court’s action.
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                   22-11744

        Raulerson v. Warden, 928 F.3d 987, 996 (11th Cir. 2019) (quoting
        Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011)); Richter, 562 U.S. at 98.
                That is because federal habeas review of state convictions
        “disturbs the State’s significant interest in repose for concluded
        litigation, denies society the right to punish some admitted
        offenders, and intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree matched
        by few exercises of federal judicial authority.” Richter, 562 U.S. at
        103 (quotation omitted). State courts—not federal—“play the
        leading role in assessing challenges to state sentences based on
        federal law.” Shinn, 592 U.S. at 124. The federal judiciary is a
        backstop, guarding against only “extreme malfunctions” in state
        courts, not engaging in “ordinary error correction through appeal.”
        Richter, 562 U.S. at 102–03 (quotation omitted). AEDPA’s
        standards are thus highly deferential and “difficult to meet”—
        intentionally and for good reason. Pinholster, 563 U.S. at 181
        (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 102).
               Habeas review, in short, is a uniquely powerful form of
        federal intrusion into state affairs. AEDPA significantly—and
        appropriately—constrains federal-court forays into state
        convictions, denying us the authority to correct all but the most
        obvious, and least arguable, state-court errors.
                                          IV.
               We now apply those standards here. Bowen argues that his
        state conviction should be vacated because his self-incriminating
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        22-11744                  Opinion of the Court                                9

        statements were the product of a Miranda violation.1 Specifically,
        he claims that Officer Solis’s decision to place him in a seemingly
        private space with a fellow suspect amounted to an interrogation—
        and thus a violation of Miranda—under Rhode Island v. Innis, 446
        U.S. 291 (1980). Bowen, however, relies on an incomplete account
        of the Supreme Court’s precedents on interrogation, and the
        Florida courts reasonably concluded that his Miranda rights were
        not violated. Habeas relief is not appropriate because fairminded
        jurists, applying clearly established federal law to this record, could
        (rather straightforwardly) agree with the state court that Solis did
        not violate Bowen’s Miranda rights.
                                              A.
              The Fifth Amendment provides that no person “shall be
        compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”
        U.S. Const. amend. V. In service of this privilege, the Supreme
        Court held in Miranda v. Arizona that the government may not use

        1 At oral argument, counsel for Bowen also argued, for the first time, that the

        state court did not rule on the merits of the Fifth Amendment claim. We do
        not consider this argument as it was not raised squarely before the district
        court. Bryant v. Jones, 575 F.3d 1281, 1308 (11th Cir. 2009). But even in the
        face of light reasoning—it was, after all, an oral ruling—we easily conclude
        that the court did rule on the Miranda claim. To start, federal courts generally
        presume that a state court rules on the merits when it denies relief after a
        federal claim has been presented. Richter, 562 U.S. at 99. Neither party
        disputed that presumption before the district court. See Bowen, 2020 WL
        13281250, report and recommendation adopted, Bowen, 2022 WL 1521983. And as
        a matter of logic, the trial judge could not have allowed the statements to be
        introduced without rejecting Bowen’s Fifth Amendment claim.
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 22-11744

        statements offered while a suspect was in “custodial interrogation”
        unless that suspect was informed of his rights. 384 U.S. 436, 444
        (1966). This post-arrest catechism is known as the Miranda
        warning. Once that warning is made, if an individual invokes his
        right to counsel, interrogation cannot resume until counsel is
        present. Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484–85 (1981).
               But Miranda does not require a warning, or otherwise
        impose restrictions, anytime police speak with someone—even if
        that someone is a suspect. Instead, its protections apply only in
        custodial interrogation. Custodial interrogation, in turn, is defined
        as “questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person
        has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom
        of action in any significant way.” Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444. Rhode
        Island v. Innis further clarified that definition (or muddied it,
        depending on who you ask). There, the Court explained that
        interrogation includes both “express questioning” and “its
        functional equivalent.” Innis, 446 U.S. at 300–01.
               The functional equivalent of express questioning, according
        to Innis, encompasses “any words or actions” by the police that
        they “should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating
        response from the suspect.” Id. at 301 (footnote omitted). This
        part of the definition is objective, focusing “primarily upon the
        perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police.” Id.
        Although the officer’s subjective intentions may remain relevant to
        the analysis, that is only because those intentions can inform the
        objective inquiry. An action designed to elicit an incriminating
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        22-11744               Opinion of the Court                        11

        response, for example, is more likely to be one the officer should
        know is objectively likely to do so. Id. at 301 & n.7.
               “Interrogation” is more than just “subtle compulsion.” Id.
        at 303. Under Miranda, interrogation “must reflect a measure of
        compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself.” Id.
        at 300. Still, as Bowen emphasizes, the Supreme Court has
        recognized that any police knowledge of a suspect’s “unusual
        susceptibility” to a “particular form of persuasion” can inform
        whether the officer should have known the action taken was
        reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Id. at 302 n.8.
               What Bowen does not emphasize is that even after this
        elaboration, the Innis Court found no interrogation. See id. at 302.
        There, the police—with suspect Innis in the back of their car in easy
        earshot of the conversation—had talked among themselves,
        expressing their concern over a missing shotgun near a school for
        handicapped children. Id. at 294–95. Innis remained silent at first,
        but as the officers continued to worry out loud about the children’s
        safety, he divulged the gun’s location. Id. The Supreme Court
        concluded that such “subtle compulsion” was not the functional
        equivalent of interrogation and that Innis’s Miranda rights were
        respected. Id. at 302–03.
               Over time, the Supreme Court has elaborated on Innis’s
        definition of interrogation, emphasizing that whether a given
        police practice amounts to interrogation must be determined in
        light of Miranda’s purpose: “preventing government officials from
        using the coercive nature of confinement to extract confessions
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        12                    Opinion of the Court                 22-11744

        that would not be given in an unrestrained environment.” Arizona
        v. Mauro, 481 U.S. 520, 529–30 (1987). In Mauro, for example, the
        Court found no error when the police allowed a suspect’s wife to
        speak to him after he had invoked his Miranda rights. Id. at 521–25.
        The police admitted they knew it was “possible” that Mauro would
        incriminate himself, yet refused to allow the conversation unless it
        was recorded and an officer was present. Id. at 522–24. The state
        court concluded that an incriminating statement was “reasonably
        likely” under Innis’s standard. Id. at 524–25. The Supreme Court
        disagreed. It reversed, emphasizing that Mauro was not subject to
        any “compelling influences, psychological ploys, or direct
        questioning.” Id. at 525–30.
               The majority and dissenting opinions in Mauro debated
        whether incrimination was just a “possibility” as opposed to
        “reasonably likely,” or even “highly probable” on the facts of that
        case, and struggled to weigh the importance of the officers’
        admissions about their subjective intentions. See id. at 526–28; id.
        at 531–36 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Ultimately, the Court concluded
        that Innis’s standard was not violated: the police had a permissible
        purpose for sending Mrs. Mauro in to see her husband, and
        allowing the two of them to speak was not the functional
        equivalent of interrogation. Id. at 528–30 (majority opinion).
               The majority, at least indirectly, suggested that the Miranda
        inquiry should be infused with the core of the Fifth Amendment
        privilege—protection against coercion. That it was Mrs. Mauro’s
        idea to speak to her husband became highly relevant; how could a
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        22-11744                Opinion of the Court                         13

        conversation, held at the parties’ own insistence, compel them to
        speak? See id. at 528. Given that Mauro “could have chosen not to
        speak to his wife,” his “volunteered statements” were not properly
        considered the “result of police interrogation.” Id. at 528 n.5, 529
        (quotation omitted). Allowing someone to be in a position where
        they may choose to make incriminating statements is not the “kind
        of psychological ploy that properly could be treated as the
        functional equivalent of interrogation.” Id. at 527. After all, officers
        “do not interrogate a suspect simply by hoping that he will
        incriminate himself.” Id. at 529. So there was no “interrogation”
        when law enforcement officers were only witnesses to a
        conversation between the accused and his spouse—even though
        they knew about and recorded the conversation. Id. at 529.
                Likewise, schemes to “mislead a suspect or lull him into a
        false sense of security that do not rise to the level of compulsion or
        coercion to speak are not within Miranda’s concerns.” Illinois v.
        Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 297 (1990). In Perkins, police placed an
        undercover agent in a jail cell and instructed the agent to engage a
        suspect in casual conversation and report back anything he heard
        about a murder they were investigating. Id. at 294–95. Without
        first reading the suspect his rights, the agent asked him if he had
        ever “done” anybody, at which point he made incriminating
        statements about the murder. Id. The Supreme Court decided that
        even this did not violate Miranda’s protections. Id. at 296–300.
        “Conversations between suspects and undercover agents do not
        implicate the concerns underlying Miranda” because the “essential
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                22-11744

        ingredients of a ‘police-dominated atmosphere’ and compulsion
        are not present.” Id. at 296.
               The Court emphasized that “Miranda forbids coercion, not
        mere strategic deception,” and coercion “is determined from the
        perspective of the suspect.” Id. at 296–97 (citing Innis, 446 U.S. at
        301). There is no coercion, the Court said, when the officer “wears
        not police blue, but the same prison gray.” Id. at 297 (quotation
        omitted). Perkins, unaware that he was talking with an undercover
        agent, could not have been coerced into speaking because he had
        “no reason to think that the listeners [had] official power over
        him.” Id. Thus, in conversations where “the suspect does not
        know that he is speaking to a government agent,” there is “no
        reason to assume the possibility that the suspect might feel
        coerced”—which means Miranda protections do not apply. Id. at
        299.
               The Perkins Court made explicit what had been suggested in
        Mauro: some measure of compulsion is required before Miranda
        rights attach. So the “reasonably likely” language from Innis does
        not eliminate the fundamental requirement of coercion in deciding
        whether police conduct is the functional equivalent of
        interrogation. Courts instead must enforce the principles
        underlying the Fifth Amendment privilege—a proscription against
        compelled testimony. See U.S. Const. amend. V.
                                         B.
               A fairminded jurist, applying the Innis–Mauro–Perkins trio of
        cases, could conclude that Solis’s decision to place Bowen in an
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        22-11744                Opinion of the Court                         15

        interrogation room with Jones was not a Miranda violation. These
        cases certainly do not “clearly require the state court” to have
        reached the opposite conclusion. See Kernan, 583 U.S. at 3. In fact,
        they show that police actions that lead to a suspect making
        incriminating statements to a third party are the functional
        equivalent of interrogation only if they involve some
        “psychological ploy” with sufficient coercive elements. See Mauro,
        481 U.S. at 527; Perkins, 496 U.S. at 297.
                Here, there was no psychological ploy. Like the wife in
        Mauro, Jones was operating completely independently from the
        police, as was Bowen, who spoke to Jones only because he “wanted
        to.” And just like the suspect in Perkins, Bowen did not believe that
        he was in the presence of law enforcement officers, so it is not at
        all clear why he would have felt the coercive pressure of police
        interrogation. A fairminded jurist could thus conclude that placing
        Bowen and Jones in a room together was the strategic use of a
        neutral situation rather than a coercive psychological ploy.
               Yes, an officer’s knowledge of a suspect’s young age may be
        relevant because the risk of coercion is more “acute” when “the
        subject of custodial interrogation is a juvenile.” J.D.B. v. North
        Carolina, 564 U.S. 261, 269, 277 (2011); see also Innis, 446 U.S. at 302
        n.8. But relevancy is not the same as certainty. Far from it. Neither
        J.D.B. nor any other case affirmatively requires a court to determine
        that Bowen’s youth was dispositive here.
                What’s more, it is not obvious that all jurists would agree
        that it was reasonably likely that Bowen would incriminate himself
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        16                     Opinion of the Court                  22-11744

        if Jones was placed in the same room. The Supreme Court has not
        provided much guidance on Innis’s “reasonably likely” language,
        but Mauro instructs us that a mere “possibility” of incrimination is
        not enough. See Mauro, 481 U.S. at 528–29. Here, Solis did not
        interrogate Bowen merely by “hoping” he would incriminate
        himself. Id. at 529. And there is room for disagreement about
        whether it was “reasonably likely” that Bowen would do so. After
        all, he had been arrested and read his rights many times before—
        and fully understood that he could have refused to speak to
        anyone. That Bowen did incriminate himself is not enough to
        show with certainty that it was reasonably likely that he would do
        so when Jones was placed in the room.
                In short, the facts place Bowen’s challenge in a gray area that
        is not unambiguously dictated by Supreme Court precedent. That
        is the exact type of case where § 2254 relief is inappropriate.
                                   *      *       *
               Federal courts have the power to overturn state criminal
        convictions only in exceptional circumstances. This is not one of
        them. The Florida court’s decision was not “so obviously wrong
        that its error lies ‘beyond any possibility for fairminded
        disagreement.’” Shinn, 592 U.S. at 118 (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at
        103). Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court
        and REMAND for further proceedings not inconsistent with this
        opinion.
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        22-11744     WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgement                 1

        WILSON, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment:
                Due to AEDPA’s deferential standard of review, I concur in
        the majority’s judgment. I write separately to emphasize the
        significance of the defendant’s age and the heightened concern that
        should attach to cases involving juveniles.
               Our precedent maintains that Miranda rights are not
        implicated where “[t]he essential ingredients of a ‘police-
        dominated atmosphere’ and compulsion are not present.” Illinois
        v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 296 (1990); see also United States v. Stubbs,
        944 F.2d 828, 832 (11th Cir. 1991) (applying Perkins to find that
        “Miranda and Fifth Amendment concerns are not implicated when
        a defendant misplaces her trust in a cellmate who then relays the
        information—whether voluntarily or by prearrangement—to law
        enforcement officials.”).
               Miranda, as the majority appropriately explains, turns on the
        presence of a custodial interrogation, defined as “express
        questioning or its functional equivalent.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446
        U.S. 291, 300–01 (1980). Here, a co-defendant was placed, albeit
        purposefully, in the same interrogation room with Bowen. Bowen
        confessed to this co-defendant, and the police recorded the
        confession. These facts are not sufficiently different from Perkins
        to warrant finding that the state’s decision was “an unreasonable
        application of, clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C.
        § 2254(d)(1).
               But what I do find troubling is how Bowen’s age interplays
        with the voluntariness of his confession. At the time he was taken
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        2             WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgment         22-11744

        into custody, Bowen was only sixteen years old with a ninth-grade
        education. Prior to being left in the interrogation room, he clearly
        invoked his Miranda rights, as did his mother on his behalf.
                In Hall v. Thomas, I also wrote separately to emphasize that
        “the greatest care must be taken to assure that the confession of a
        juvenile [is] voluntary.” 611 F.3d 1259, 1294 (11th Cir. 2010)
        (Wilson, J., concurring) (internal quotations omitted).
        Ascertaining voluntariness requires understanding the totality of
        the circumstances that led to a waiver and confession, including
        evaluating “‘the juvenile’s age, experience, education, background,
        and intelligence, and [] whether he has the capacity to understand
        the warnings given him, the nature of his Fifth Amendment rights,
        and the consequences of waiving those rights.’” Id. at 1285
        (quoting Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 725 (1979)). Voluntariness
        will thus turn on whether “the entire record was before the state
        court . . . and [whether] the record amply supported that finding.”
        Id. at 1287.
               The year after Hall, the Supreme Court held that “so long as
        the child’s age was known to the officer at the time of police
        questioning, or would have been objectively apparent to a
        reasonable officer, its inclusion in the custody analysis is consistent
        with the objective nature of that [inquiry].” J.D.B. v. North Carolina,
        564 U.S. 261, 277 (2011). In reaching this conclusion, the Court
        wrote that “[t]ime and again,” it has expressed that children are to
        be held in a different light than adults, seeing as they “generally are
        less mature and responsible than adults” and more vulnerable and
USCA11 Case: 22-11744     Document: 32-1      Date Filed: 02/15/2024     Page: 19 of 19

        22-11744     WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgement                3

        susceptible to influence and psychological damage. Id. at 272
        (quotations omitted).
                Below, citing to J.D.B., the district court explained that the
        risk of an involuntary confession is “acute” when dealing with
        juveniles. Id. at 269. I echo their sentiments here. My analysis
        diverges with the majority in that I believe the majority treats
        J.D.B. too lightly. The majority writes that in considering a
        suspect’s young age, “relevancy is not the same as certainty. . . .
        Neither J.D.B. nor any other case affirmatively requires a court to
        determine that Bowen’s youth was dispositive here.” I do not
        contend that age should be dispositive. I do however, as I wrote in
        Hall, contend that the “greatest care” should be exercised to ensure
        that a juvenile’s statements were voluntarily and freely given.