During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito suggested trial judges would need great "imaginative powers" to put themselves in the mind of a 13-year-old and speculate if the suspect felt free to end the interrogation. "When you take a particular set of circumstances, and the judge would say -- if I were 13, I would not understand that I could go. However, if I were 15, I would understand I could go. Can you slice it like that?"  "Do we need either imaginative powers or empirical data to know that when a 13-year-old is brought into a room in his school, and taken out of class," countered Justice Elena Kagan, sitting next to Alito, "and threatened with custody, that that person is not going to feel free to take off and leave?"  "J.D.B." was a 13-year-old special-needs public school student in 2005. He was escorted from his seventh-grade class and taken to a conference room. There a Chapel Hill, North Carolina, police investigator -- along with an assistant principal, school resource officer and an intern -- asked the boy if he wanted to talk about some recent criminal activity in the area. The African-American boy agreed to talk. The door was closed but not locked.  After first denying any involvement, J.D.B. admitted to breaking into several neighborhood homes and stealing items, including a camera. After the confession, the police officer told the boy he did not have to answer further questions, but he continued talking and gave further incriminating statements. The adults testified the youngster never asked to cease the questioning or to leave the room.  When the 30- to 45-minute session ended, the boy was allowed to leave and catch his bus for home. Officers later that day obtained a search warrant of the house and found the stolen goods. He was again questioned.
The Supreme Court offered split assessments Wednesday over the questioning in school of a 13-year-old robbery suspect, and whether the child felt free to walk away from the interrogation.At issue is...