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On 'custody'.

Article Excerpt
Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage--Richard Lovelace (1)

Recently, the Supreme Court in Yarborough v. Alvarado found itself contemplating the nature of confinement. (2) More specifically, it considered the meaning of "custody" for the purposes of determining whether Miranda warnings should have been given to a suspect. (3) Like the 17th-century British poet Lovelace, all nine justices agreed that "custody" is a state of mind, not necessarily a purely physical condition. However, the justices divided 5-4 on the nature of the "reasonable person" whose state of mind decides whether a person was, in fact, in custody.

A few months before his 18th birthday, Michael Alvarado agreed to help a friend steal a truck in a mall parking lot. During the crime, the friend shot and killed the truck's driver, and Alvarado helped hide the gun.

A month later, a county sheriff's detective, Cheryl Comstock, contacted Alvarado's parents and told them that she wanted to interview their son. They brought him to the sheriff's station and waited in the lobby while Alvarado went with Comstock to be interviewed. Alvarado later claimed that Comstock denied his parents' request to be present during the interview.

Without giving Alvarado Miranda warnings, Comstock conducted a two-hour tape-recorded interview during which Alvarado admitted to participating in the attempted robbery and helping to hide the gun. (4) He was convicted of second-degree murder.

The conviction was upheld by a state appellate court and then by a federal district court on Alvarado's habeas corpus petition. The Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that because the interview had been "custodial," Alvarado should have received Miranda warnings.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted that because this was a habeas corpus case, the issue for the federal courts was not simply whether Alvarado's interrogation had been custodial. Rather, the Antiterrolism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) applied. Under its terms, the issue was whether a state court adjudication had "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an...