Testimony and interrogation of minors: Assumptions about maturity and morality.

Abstract

This article examines the legal histories and social contexts of testimony and interrogation involving minors, developmental research on suggestibility and judgment, interactions between development and legal/sociological contexts, and the reasoning behind how minors are treated in different legal contexts. The authors argue (a) that young witnesses, victims, and suspects alike possess youthful characteristics that influence their ability to validly inform legal processes, some of which were recently recognized by the Supreme Court as they apply to the juvenile death penalty, and (b) that consideration should be given to reforming current practices in the context of juvenile interrogation. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Safeguarding Youth Interrogation Rights: The Effect of Grade Level and Reading Complexity of Youth Waiver Forms on the Comprehension of Legal Rights

“…Second, a non-offender population of high school students was used to test comprehension. However, research using more ecologically valid designs with adults suggests that recall of legal rights would be lower than that observed in tightly controlled laboratory settings (Rogers, Gillard, Wooley, & Fiduccia, 2011, also see Gudjonsson, Rutter, & Clare, 1995), and research on the cognitive capacities on delinquent youths suggests that they are at an even greater risk of not recalling their rights compared with non-offending youths (Owen-Kostelnik et al, 2006). Given these findings, it is likely that comprehension levels in real-world interrogations are even lower than what was found in the current study.…”

“…Youths generally lack the cognitive skills required to navigate a standard interrogation environment (Leo, 1996) and are thus more at risk to comply with the requests of authority figures and take responsibility for crimes they did not commit (Owen-Kostelnik, Reppucci, & Meyer, 2006;Redlich & Goodman, 2003). In recognition of such concerns, many countries have afforded enhanced legal protections to youths (e.g., Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), 2002; J. D. B.…”

Increasing the Elicitation of Truthful Information from Young Suspects: An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Temporal Discounting

“…Consistent with the temporal discounting principle, compared to adults, adolescents may make self-incriminating statements simply because they overvalue the proximal consequence of escaping an aversive, stressful situation more than the distal consequences associated with continued denials (Drizin & Leo, 2004;Owen-Kostelnik et al, 2006). This likely does not occur because adolescents blatantly disregard distal consequences, but because there are cognitive limitations on adolescents' abilities to realistically consider events that might occur sometime in the future.…”

“…Because youth is a known risk factor for false confession, recommendations (e.g., mandatory provision of a lawyer or appropriate adult, special training for law enforcement personnel, electronic recording of interrogation, the use of developmentally appropriate interrogation practices) have been made with the intent to safeguard youth during interrogation Owen-Kostelnik et al, 2006;Tepfer, Nirider, & Tricarico, 2010). However, these reforms were recommended without an informed empirical understanding of the factors underlying youths' increased vulnerability in interrogation.…”

“…While police interrogation usually elicits true confessions from guilty suspects, over the last decade, there has been a growing concern that the methods used during interrogation to obtain true confessions also put innocent suspects in danger of falsely confessing (OwenKostelnik, Reppucci, & Meyer, 2006).…”