Drafter
Clerk 08/19/2020
Title
AN ORDINANCE prohibiting law enforcement personnel from questioning, except in limited circumstances, persons under the age of eighteen when Miranda rights are administered and prohibiting law enforcement personnel from requesting permission from a person under the age of eighteen to conduct a search of the person or property, abodes or vehicles under that persons control unless legal counsel is provided for that person; and adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 2.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. Developmental and neurological science concludes that the process of cognitive brain development continues into adulthood and that the human brain undergoes "dynamic changes throughout adolescence and well into young adulthood." Regarding this, see Richard J. Bonnie, et al., Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, National Research Council (2013), p. 96 and Ch. 4.
2. As recognized by the United States Supreme Court in J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261 (2011), children are "generally are less mature and responsible than adults," "often lack the experience, perspective, and judgment to recognize and avoid choices that could be detrimental to them," "are more vulnerable or susceptible to... outside pressures than adults" and "characteristically lack the capacity to exercise mature judgment and possess only an incomplete ability to understand the world around them." As stated in Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), children "have limited understandings of the criminal justice system and the roles of the institutional actors within it."
3. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, according to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), custodial interrogation of an individual by law enforcement requires that the individual be advised of their rights and make a knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of those rights before the interrogation proceeds The individual must have "full awareness of both the ...
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