02-1221 Young v. Walls

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“Young cannot count backward. He does not know which direction is ‘east’ and thus cannot tell where the sun appears. Asked to name the Presidents since 1950, he answered ‘Washington’ and ‘Lincoln.’ He knows that winter means cold and snow but cannot explain what ‘seasons’ are. He cannot describe a ship (which of course he does not encounter in daily life). His command of analogies and categories is poor; he can’t explain in what respects a dog is similar to a lion. But he knows that a ‘PD’ in Illinois is a public defender, and he knows what a trial is for even though he cannot describe how the jury works. In other words, he has concrete knowledge suited to his occupation as a career criminal, but poor verbal skills, a low fund of general knowledge, and an inability to reason (or talk) abstractly.

“Do these deficiencies mean that a person such as Young is unable to confess to a crime? If entitlement to talk to the police depends on capacity to reason abstractly about the legal system and understand the long-term consequences of one’s acts (such as the effect that a confession will have at trial), then the answer must be yes. See Morgan Cloud, George B. Shepherd, Alison Nodvin Barkoff & Justin V. Shur, Words Without Meaning: The Constitution, Confessions, and Mentally Retarded Suspects, 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 495 (2002) (concluding that retarded suspects do not understand the legal significance of Miranda warnings or the consequences of confessions). Yet Miranda is not about abstract understanding, nor does the Constitution protect suspects against confessions that are made for reasons other than official coercion. See Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157 (1986) (a confession given by a suspect who believed that God had instructed him to confess, and who therefore did not care about the legal system’s agents such as lawyers, is nonetheless admissible). Recall the point of the warnings: to protect the suspect’s privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. Miranda scuttled the rationale of Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964), which had relied on the sixth amendment. There is scant risk that Young was being compelled to be a witness against himself; he confessed because he wanted to talk. This may have been an uninformed, self-destructive decision, but it was not the result of the third degree.

Custodial interrogation played no role; the psychiatrists believe that Young would have confessed in any setting. Miranda is simply beside the point for persons who confess because they don’t think that their words will harm them-the position in which, according to his lawyers, Young found himself following his arrest. Young had enough awareness (the state court found) to understand what a lawyer is and his entitlement to direct the police to stop asking questions. This is all the fifth amendment demands.

“That Young may have been unable to understand why a lawyer’s assistance might be important, as one of the psychiatrists concluded, is not legally material. Suspects need not know how legal skills could be employed to best advantage. That’s asking too much and is too far removed from the goal that Miranda warnings are designed to implement. It is sufficient if the suspect has enough mental capacity to make decisions in daily life. An infant, or a person so incompetent that a guardian had been appointed, would be a different matter; the legal system generally does not allow such persons to form contracts or otherwise bind themselves.

Young, though, is among the great majority of adults who can live independent lives, and as part of those lives can make choices with effects both good and bad.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Kocoras, J., Easterbrook, J.