Court Opinion

ID: 9726355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:45:55.263618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:26.348823
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SLATER, dissenting: I respectfully dissent because I believe the minor’s confession was made only as a result of illegal coercive questioning by the police. It should have been suppressed. The police falsely represented to the minor’s parents that he was to be questioned about “an incident at the high school.” After learning the minor was not home, the police waited for the minor and intercepted him in a parking lot before he could reach home and his parents. He was immediately arrested and transported to the police station. The parents were denied access to their son during his questioning at the police station despite the fact that they wanted to be present. The majority assumes that this 16-year-old, because he has previous juvenile adjudications for theft and robbery, is familiar with the interrogation process. Prior adjudication does not necessarily equate to an intimate knowledge of police methods used to obtain confessions. A 2V2- to 3-hour interrogation normally constitutes more than casual conversation between the interrogators and the interrogated. The minor claims that the police officers offered to let him go home to his parents if he confessed. Our supreme court has recognized that, because the taking of a juvenile’s confession is “a sensitive concern,” the greatest care must be taken to assure that the confession was not coerced, suggested, or the product of adolescent fantasy, fright or despair. In re G.O., 191 Ill. 2d 37, 54, 727 N.E.2d 1003, 1012 (2000). Because of a juvenile’s extreme vulnerability to coercive police tactics, “[c]ourts have repeatedly held that police conduct that frustrates a parent’s attempts to confer with his child prior to or during questioning is significant in determining the voluntariness of a confession.” In re L.L., 295 Ill. App. 3d 594, 601, 693 N.E.2d 908, 914 (1998). Here the police “ambushed” the minor in the parking lot of his home and then, at a minimum, discouraged his parents from attempting to see him. Under the totality of the circumstances, it is my view the minor’s confession was not made voluntarily.