nakakaaliw naman ito, bravo!
Sotomayor, writing for the court’s four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy, explained that the pressure of a custodial interrogation is “so immense that it ‘can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed’ ” and referred to studies showing that youngsters are particularly susceptible to such pressure. Therefore, she explains, “a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go” and that—empathy alert!—”such conclusions apply broadly to children as a class. And, they are self-evident to anyone who was a child once himself, including any police officer or judge.”
Sotomayor points out that the law has no trouble setting distinct standards for children and adults based on the idea that events that “would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens.” And she notes that “these observations restate what ‘any parent knows’—indeed, what any person knows—about children generally.”
Sotomayor doubles down on the need to show special solicitude to the suspect’s age by mocking the absurdity of a judge trying her level best to imagine how “a reasonable adult [might] understand his situation, after being removed from a seventh-grade social studies class by a uniformed school resource officer; being encouraged Sotomayor, writing for the court’s four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy, explained that the pressure of a custodial interrogation is “so immense that it ‘can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed’ ” and referred to studies showing that youngsters are particularly susceptible to such pressure. Therefore, she explains, “a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go” and that—empathy alert!—”such conclusions apply broadly to children as a class. And, they are self-evident to anyone who was a child once himself, including any police officer or judge.”
Sotomayor points out that the law has no trouble setting distinct standards for children and adults based on the idea that events that “would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens.” And she notes that “these observations restate what ‘any parent knows’—indeed, what any person knows—about children generally.”
Sotomayor doubles down on the need to show special solicitude to the suspect’s age by mocking the absurdity of a judge trying her level best to imagine how “a reasonable adult [might] understand his situation, after being removed from a seventh-grade social studies class by a uniformed school resource officer; being encouraged by his assistant principal to ‘do the right thing’; and being warned by a police investigator of the prospect of juvenile detention and separation from his guardian and primary caretaker.” She concludes that empathy is hardly impossible to muster in these settings: “Just as police officers are competent to account for other objective circumstances that are a matter of degree such as the length of questioning or the number of officers present, so too are they competent to evaluate the effect of relative age. … The same is true of judges, including those whose childhoods have long since passed. … In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.”by his assistant principal to ‘do the right thing’; and being warned by a police investigator of the prospect of juvenile detention and separation from his guardian and primary caretaker.” She concludes that empathy is hardly impossible to muster in these settings: “Just as police officers are competent to account for other objective circumstances that are a matter of degree such as the length of questioning or the number of officers present, so too are they competent to evaluate the effect of relative age. … The same is true of judges, including those whose childhoods have long since passed. … In short, officers and judges need no imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental psychology, training in cognitive science, or expertise in social and cultural anthropology to account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.”
via J.D.B. v. North Carolina: Sonia Sotomayor shows Samuel Alito the value of judicial empathy. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine.
