Jimmie Bowen v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections

[PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-11744
____________________
JIMMIE L. BOWEN,
Petitioner-Appellee,
versus
SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Respondent-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-23952-KMW
____________________
Before WILSON, G RANT, and B RASHER , Circuit Judges.
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
G RANT, Circuit Judge:
State criminal defendants can receive federal habeas corpus
relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 only in limited circumstances. One of
those is when the state court whose decision is under review
decided an issue in a way that involved an “unreasonable
application” of clearly established federal law. Jimmie Bowen says
the Florida courts did just that in his case. He argues that the
Florida trial court clearly violated Miranda by refusing to suppress
incriminating statements he made to a fellow suspect when police
placed the two in an interrogation room after he had invoked his
right to counsel. The district court agreed and overturned his
conviction. But the Supreme Court’s cases are—at best—murky
on when putting two suspects in a room together qualifies as
interrogation under Miranda. Because reasonable jurists could
disagree about whether Bowen was “interrogated” in the interview
room, federal courts lack the power to upset his state criminal
conviction. We therefore reverse the district court.
I.
Jimmie Bowen and his gang, New Moneii, had a bone to
pick with Pierre Roche, who was selling drugs on New Moneii’s
turf. Years before, the gang’s leaders had shot Roche for the same
perceived violation—but he did not change his habits. The turf
dispute continued, and when sixteen-year-old Bowen spotted
Roche playing dominoes nearby, he hatched a plan to execute him.
This time, the gang got its target. Bowen killed Roche, shooting
him from close range. He even stood directly over him, firing
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 3
more rounds to make sure the grisly task was complete. But Roche
was not the only victim. Bowen also wounded Christopher Smith,
another dominoes player, and shot and killed Derrick Days, Jr.—a
ten-month-old baby sitting in his father’s lap across the table.
Bowen was not immediately identified. He was wearing a
face covering, and witnesses could describe him only as a black
male, roughly five feet eight inches tall. The police had no leads
until an associate of Bowen’s identified him as the shooter. That
same person also told the police that Bernard Jones, a seventeen-
year-old member of the New Moneii gang, was the getaway driver.
Bowen and Jones were soon arrested.
The detectives first questioned Bowen and Jones separately.
After they advised Bowen of his Miranda rights, both he and his
mother invoked his right to counsel. The detectives then ceased
their questioning and left the interrogation room. Jones, by
contrast, waived his Miranda rights and spoke with Detective Jean
Solis that same day. The details of their conversation are not clear,
but at one point while they were together, Solis observed that
Bowen was calling Jones’s cell phone. Jones did not pick up.
Some time after Bowen invoked his rights, Solis moved him
to a second interrogation room. Soon enough, Jones was there too.
Solis informed the two suspects that they would remain there until
transportation to the Juvenile Assessment Center could be
arranged. He activated audio and video recording in the room, but
neither Solis nor any other law enforcement officer asked either
suspect to speak with the other about the murders. Nor did anyone
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
promise any benefit to one suspect in return for seeking
information from the other.
Even so, the two began talking almost immediately. The
microphone in the room picked up several incriminating
statements from Bowen, who implicitly acknowledged that he was
the shooter (and that Jones was the driver), accurately described
the scene of the crime, and incredulously wondered how the police
had “the two right motherf***ers.” He and Jones, Bowen said,
were the only living people to “know the truth.”
The state brought charges, and Bowen moved to suppress
his statements to Jones, alleging violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and
Sixth Amendments, the Florida Constitution, and Florida’s wiretap
statute. Bowen testified that he talked with Jones because he
“wanted to,” and knew that he could have refused to do so. Still,
he argued that Detective Solis, by placing Jones in the interview
room with him after he had invoked his Miranda rights, effectively
“interrogated” him in violation the Fifth Amendment.
At the suppression hearing, Solis shared several motivations
for putting Bowen and Jones in the room together. He first testified
that it was so they could await transportation to the Juvenile
Assessment Center. But he later admitted to recognizing that the
two suspects might speak to each other about the murders—
indeed, hoping they would—and conceded that this possibility
informed his decision to put them in the same room. After taking
evidence and hearing arguments, the state court issued a short oral
ruling denying Bowen’s suppression motion.
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 5
At the end of the trial, before both sides began their closing
arguments, Bowen renewed his motion to suppress. The state
court again denied it, and the jury found Bowen guilty on all
counts. The court sentenced him to life in prison with judicial
review after twenty-five years. He appealed to the Florida district
court of appeal, arguing, among other things, that the trial court
erred when it denied his motion to suppress. The appeal was
denied without opinion. Bowen v. State, 184 So. 3d 533 (Fla. Dist.
Ct. App. 2016). Bowen subsequently filed several other state post-
conviction motions, all of which were also denied.
He then moved to federal court, filing a petition for habeas
corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petition raised several claims
related to Bowen’s interrogation-room statements to Jones,
including that his placement in the room violated Miranda, federal
and state guarantees of due process, and the state wiretap statute.
Faced with the limited rationale offered in the state court’s
oral ruling, the magistrate judge properly attempted to theorize
what reasoning could have supported that court’s denial of the
motion to suppress. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 98, 102
(2011); Pye v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1035–
41 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc). The only plausible theory, she
concluded, was that placing Bowen and Jones together did not
amount to custodial interrogation. Bowen v. Sec’y, Florida Dep’t of
Corr., No. 19-23952-CV, 2020 WL 13281250, at *7–8 (S.D. Fla. July
29, 2020). But despite recognizing AEDPA’s deferential standard
of review, the magistrate judge found the state-court ruling
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
“patently unreasonable.” Id. at *10. The district court agreed and
granted the petition, concluding that “‘clearly established’
Supreme Court precedent left no ‘fairminded’ dispute” about the
alleged Miranda violation. Bowen v. Dixon, No. 19-CIV-23952, 2022
WL 1521983, at *1 (S.D. Fla. May 13, 2022). This appeal followed.
II.
We review a district court’s ruling on a petition for habeas
corpus de novo. Smith v. Comm’r, Alabama Dep’t of Corr., 924 F.3d
1330, 1336 (11th Cir. 2019).
III.
Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996, also known as AEDPA, a federal court may not grant habeas
relief to a state prisoner “with respect to any claim that was
adjudicated on the merits in State court,” unless the adjudication
(1) “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or
(2) “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the
State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
A state-court adjudication qualifies as “contrary to” clearly
established federal law if that court contradicted the Supreme
Court on a question of law, or if it arrived at a different conclusion
than the Supreme Court did in a case with materially
indistinguishable facts. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405–06
(2000). And a state-court adjudication involves an “unreasonable
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 7
application of” clearly established federal law if the decision was
“so obviously wrong that its error lies beyond any possibility for
fairminded disagreement.” Shinn v. Kayer, 592 U.S. 111, 118 (2020)
(per curiam) (quotation omitted).
By this standard, to justify habeas relief a Supreme Court
precedent must “clearly require the state court” to have adopted a
different result. Kernan v. Cuero, 583 U.S. 1, 3 (2017) (per curiam).
The unreasonable-application standard is thus significantly higher
than a showing that the state court was incorrect, or even that it
clearly erred. Shinn, 592 U.S. at 118. The bottom line is this: a
“state court’s determination that a claim lacks merit precludes
federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on
the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Pye, 50 F.4th at 1034
(quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 101).
On each claim for relief, we review the “last state-court
adjudication on the merits.” See Greene v. Fisher, 565 U.S. 34, 40
(2011). But when that final merits adjudication does not offer
specific reasons in support of its holding, we “‘look through’ the
unexplained decision to the last related state-court decision that
does provide a relevant rationale.” Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S. Ct. 1188,
1192 (2018). Still, even when “looking through” to another
opinion, federal courts must defer to the state court’s ruling, not its
specific reasoning. Pye, 50 F.4th 1035–41. Put simply, state-court
decisions must be “given the benefit of the doubt”—there must
have been “no reasonable basis” for the state court’s action.
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
Raulerson v. Warden, 928 F.3d 987, 996 (11th Cir. 2019) (quoting
Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011)); Richter, 562 U.S. at 98.
That is because federal habeas review of state convictions
“disturbs the State’s significant interest in repose for concluded
litigation, denies society the right to punish some admitted
offenders, and intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree matched
by few exercises of federal judicial authority.” Richter, 562 U.S. at
103 (quotation omitted). State courts—not federal—“play the
leading role in assessing challenges to state sentences based on
federal law.” Shinn, 592 U.S. at 124. The federal judiciary is a
backstop, guarding against only “extreme malfunctions” in state
courts, not engaging in “ordinary error correction through appeal.”
Richter, 562 U.S. at 102–03 (quotation omitted). AEDPA’s
standards are thus highly deferential and “difficult to meet”—
intentionally and for good reason. Pinholster, 563 U.S. at 181
(quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 102).
Habeas review, in short, is a uniquely powerful form of
federal intrusion into state affairs. AEDPA significantly—and
appropriately—constrains federal-court forays into state
convictions, denying us the authority to correct all but the most
obvious, and least arguable, state-court errors.
IV.
We now apply those standards here. Bowen argues that his
state conviction should be vacated because his self-incriminating
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 9
statements were the product of a Miranda violation.1 Specifically,
he claims that Officer Solis’s decision to place him in a seemingly
private space with a fellow suspect amounted to an interrogation—
and thus a violation of Miranda—under Rhode Island v. Innis, 446
U.S. 291 (1980). Bowen, however, relies on an incomplete account
of the Supreme Court’s precedents on interrogation, and the
Florida courts reasonably concluded that his Miranda rights were
not violated. Habeas relief is not appropriate because fairminded
jurists, applying clearly established federal law to this record, could
(rather straightforwardly) agree with the state court that Solis did
not violate Bowen’s Miranda rights.
A.
The Fifth Amendment provides that no person “shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”
U.S. Const. amend. V. In service of this privilege, the Supreme
Court held in Miranda v. Arizona that the government may not use
1 At oral argument, counsel for Bowen also argued, for the first time, that the
state court did not rule on the merits of the Fifth Amendment claim. We do
not consider this argument as it was not raised squarely before the district
court. Bryant v. Jones, 575 F.3d 1281, 1308 (11th Cir. 2009). But even in the
face of light reasoning—it was, after all, an oral ruling—we easily conclude
that the court did rule on the Miranda claim. To start, federal courts generally
presume that a state court rules on the merits when it denies relief after a
federal claim has been presented. Richter, 562 U.S. at 99. Neither party
disputed that presumption before the district court. See Bowen, 2020 WL
13281250, report and recommendation adopted, Bowen, 2022 WL 1521983. And as
a matter of logic, the trial judge could not have allowed the statements to be
introduced without rejecting Bowen’s Fifth Amendment claim.
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10 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
statements offered while a suspect was in “custodial interrogation”
unless that suspect was informed of his rights. 384 U.S. 436, 444
(1966). This post-arrest catechism is known as the Miranda
warning. Once that warning is made, if an individual invokes his
right to counsel, interrogation cannot resume until counsel is
present. Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484–85 (1981).
But Miranda does not require a warning, or otherwise
impose restrictions, anytime police speak with someone—even if
that someone is a suspect. Instead, its protections apply only in
custodial interrogation. Custodial interrogation, in turn, is defined
as “questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person
has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom
of action in any significant way.” Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444. Rhode
Island v. Innis further clarified that definition (or muddied it,
depending on who you ask). There, the Court explained that
interrogation includes both “express questioning” and “its
functional equivalent.” Innis, 446 U.S. at 300–01.
The functional equivalent of express questioning, according
to Innis, encompasses “any words or actions” by the police that
they “should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating
response from the suspect.” Id. at 301 (footnote omitted). This
part of the definition is objective, focusing “primarily upon the
perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police.” Id.
Although the officer’s subjective intentions may remain relevant to
the analysis, that is only because those intentions can inform the
objective inquiry. An action designed to elicit an incriminating
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 11
response, for example, is more likely to be one the officer should
know is objectively likely to do so. Id. at 301 & n.7.
“Interrogation” is more than just “subtle compulsion.” Id.
at 303. Under Miranda, interrogation “must reflect a measure of
compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself.” Id.
at 300. Still, as Bowen emphasizes, the Supreme Court has
recognized that any police knowledge of a suspect’s “unusual
susceptibility” to a “particular form of persuasion” can inform
whether the officer should have known the action taken was
reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Id. at 302 n.8.
What Bowen does not emphasize is that even after this
elaboration, the Innis Court found no interrogation. See id. at 302.
There, the police—with suspect Innis in the back of their car in easy
earshot of the conversation—had talked among themselves,
expressing their concern over a missing shotgun near a school for
handicapped children. Id. at 294–95. Innis remained silent at first,
but as the officers continued to worry out loud about the children’s
safety, he divulged the gun’s location. Id. The Supreme Court
concluded that such “subtle compulsion” was not the functional
equivalent of interrogation and that Innis’s Miranda rights were
respected. Id. at 302–03.
Over time, the Supreme Court has elaborated on Innis’s
definition of interrogation, emphasizing that whether a given
police practice amounts to interrogation must be determined in
light of Miranda’s purpose: “preventing government officials from
using the coercive nature of confinement to extract confessions
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12 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
that would not be given in an unrestrained environment.” Arizona
v. Mauro, 481 U.S. 520, 529–30 (1987). In Mauro, for example, the
Court found no error when the police allowed a suspect’s wife to
speak to him after he had invoked his Miranda rights. Id. at 521–25.
The police admitted they knew it was “possible” that Mauro would
incriminate himself, yet refused to allow the conversation unless it
was recorded and an officer was present. Id. at 522–24. The state
court concluded that an incriminating statement was “reasonably
likely” under Innis’s standard. Id. at 524–25. The Supreme Court
disagreed. It reversed, emphasizing that Mauro was not subject to
any “compelling influences, psychological ploys, or direct
questioning.” Id. at 525–30.
The majority and dissenting opinions in Mauro debated
whether incrimination was just a “possibility” as opposed to
“reasonably likely,” or even “highly probable” on the facts of that
case, and struggled to weigh the importance of the officers’
admissions about their subjective intentions. See id. at 526–28; id.
at 531–36 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Ultimately, the Court concluded
that Innis’s standard was not violated: the police had a permissible
purpose for sending Mrs. Mauro in to see her husband, and
allowing the two of them to speak was not the functional
equivalent of interrogation. Id. at 528–30 (majority opinion).
The majority, at least indirectly, suggested that the Miranda
inquiry should be infused with the core of the Fifth Amendment
privilege—protection against coercion. That it was Mrs. Mauro’s
idea to speak to her husband became highly relevant; how could a
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 13
conversation, held at the parties’ own insistence, compel them to
speak? See id. at 528. Given that Mauro “could have chosen not to
speak to his wife,” his “volunteered statements” were not properly
considered the “result of police interrogation.” Id. at 528 n.5, 529
(quotation omitted). Allowing someone to be in a position where
they may choose to make incriminating statements is not the “kind
of psychological ploy that properly could be treated as the
functional equivalent of interrogation.” Id. at 527. After all, officers
“do not interrogate a suspect simply by hoping that he will
incriminate himself.” Id. at 529. So there was no “interrogation”
when law enforcement officers were only witnesses to a
conversation between the accused and his spouse—even though
they knew about and recorded the conversation. Id. at 529.
Likewise, schemes to “mislead a suspect or lull him into a
false sense of security that do not rise to the level of compulsion or
coercion to speak are not within Miranda’s concerns.” Illinois v.
Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 297 (1990). In Perkins, police placed an
undercover agent in a jail cell and instructed the agent to engage a
suspect in casual conversation and report back anything he heard
about a murder they were investigating. Id. at 294–95. Without
first reading the suspect his rights, the agent asked him if he had
ever “done” anybody, at which point he made incriminating
statements about the murder. Id. The Supreme Court decided that
even this did not violate Miranda’s protections. Id. at 296–300.
“Conversations between suspects and undercover agents do not
implicate the concerns underlying Miranda” because the “essential
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14 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
ingredients of a ‘police-dominated atmosphere’ and compulsion
are not present.” Id. at 296.
The Court emphasized that “Miranda forbids coercion, not
mere strategic deception,” and coercion “is determined from the
perspective of the suspect.” Id. at 296–97 (citing Innis, 446 U.S. at
301). There is no coercion, the Court said, when the officer “wears
not police blue, but the same prison gray.” Id. at 297 (quotation
omitted). Perkins, unaware that he was talking with an undercover
agent, could not have been coerced into speaking because he had
“no reason to think that the listeners [had] official power over
him.” Id. Thus, in conversations where “the suspect does not
know that he is speaking to a government agent,” there is “no
reason to assume the possibility that the suspect might feel
coerced”—which means Miranda protections do not apply. Id. at
299.
The Perkins Court made explicit what had been suggested in
Mauro: some measure of compulsion is required before Miranda
rights attach. So the “reasonably likely” language from Innis does
not eliminate the fundamental requirement of coercion in deciding
whether police conduct is the functional equivalent of
interrogation. Courts instead must enforce the principles
underlying the Fifth Amendment privilege—a proscription against
compelled testimony. See U.S. Const. amend. V.
B.
A fairminded jurist, applying the Innis–Mauro–Perkins trio of
cases, could conclude that Solis’s decision to place Bowen in an
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22-11744 Opinion of the Court 15
interrogation room with Jones was not a Miranda violation. These
cases certainly do not “clearly require the state court” to have
reached the opposite conclusion. See Kernan, 583 U.S. at 3. In fact,
they show that police actions that lead to a suspect making
incriminating statements to a third party are the functional
equivalent of interrogation only if they involve some
“psychological ploy” with sufficient coercive elements. See Mauro,
481 U.S. at 527; Perkins, 496 U.S. at 297.
Here, there was no psychological ploy. Like the wife in
Mauro, Jones was operating completely independently from the
police, as was Bowen, who spoke to Jones only because he “wanted
to.” And just like the suspect in Perkins, Bowen did not believe that
he was in the presence of law enforcement officers, so it is not at
all clear why he would have felt the coercive pressure of police
interrogation. A fairminded jurist could thus conclude that placing
Bowen and Jones in a room together was the strategic use of a
neutral situation rather than a coercive psychological ploy.
Yes, an officer’s knowledge of a suspect’s young age may be
relevant because the risk of coercion is more “acute” when “the
subject of custodial interrogation is a juvenile.” J.D.B. v. North
Carolina, 564 U.S. 261, 269, 277 (2011); see also Innis, 446 U.S. at 302
n.8. But relevancy is not the same as certainty. Far from it. Neither
J.D.B. nor any other case affirmatively requires a court to determine
that Bowen’s youth was dispositive here.
What’s more, it is not obvious that all jurists would agree
that it was reasonably likely that Bowen would incriminate himself
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16 Opinion of the Court 22-11744
if Jones was placed in the same room. The Supreme Court has not
provided much guidance on Innis’s “reasonably likely” language,
but Mauro instructs us that a mere “possibility” of incrimination is
not enough. See Mauro, 481 U.S. at 528–29. Here, Solis did not
interrogate Bowen merely by “hoping” he would incriminate
himself. Id. at 529. And there is room for disagreement about
whether it was “reasonably likely” that Bowen would do so. After
all, he had been arrested and read his rights many times before—
and fully understood that he could have refused to speak to
anyone. That Bowen did incriminate himself is not enough to
show with certainty that it was reasonably likely that he would do
so when Jones was placed in the room.
In short, the facts place Bowen’s challenge in a gray area that
is not unambiguously dictated by Supreme Court precedent. That
is the exact type of case where § 2254 relief is inappropriate.
* * *
Federal courts have the power to overturn state criminal
convictions only in exceptional circumstances. This is not one of
them. The Florida court’s decision was not “so obviously wrong
that its error lies ‘beyond any possibility for fairminded
disagreement.’” Shinn, 592 U.S. at 118 (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at
103). Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court
and REMAND for further proceedings not inconsistent with this
opinion.
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22-11744 WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgement 1
WILSON, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment:
Due to AEDPA’s deferential standard of review, I concur in
the majority’s judgment. I write separately to emphasize the
significance of the defendant’s age and the heightened concern that
should attach to cases involving juveniles.
Our precedent maintains that Miranda rights are not
implicated where “[t]he essential ingredients of a ‘police-
dominated atmosphere’ and compulsion are not present.” Illinois
v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 296 (1990); see also United States v. Stubbs,
944 F.2d 828, 832 (11th Cir. 1991) (applying Perkins to find that
“Miranda and Fifth Amendment concerns are not implicated when
a defendant misplaces her trust in a cellmate who then relays the
information—whether voluntarily or by prearrangement—to law
enforcement officials.”).
Miranda, as the majority appropriately explains, turns on the
presence of a custodial interrogation, defined as “express
questioning or its functional equivalent.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446
U.S. 291, 300–01 (1980). Here, a co-defendant was placed, albeit
purposefully, in the same interrogation room with Bowen. Bowen
confessed to this co-defendant, and the police recorded the
confession. These facts are not sufficiently different from Perkins
to warrant finding that the state’s decision was “an unreasonable
application of, clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1).
But what I do find troubling is how Bowen’s age interplays
with the voluntariness of his confession. At the time he was taken
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2 WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgment 22-11744
into custody, Bowen was only sixteen years old with a ninth-grade
education. Prior to being left in the interrogation room, he clearly
invoked his Miranda rights, as did his mother on his behalf.
In Hall v. Thomas, I also wrote separately to emphasize that
“the greatest care must be taken to assure that the confession of a
juvenile [is] voluntary.” 611 F.3d 1259, 1294 (11th Cir. 2010)
(Wilson, J., concurring) (internal quotations omitted).
Ascertaining voluntariness requires understanding the totality of
the circumstances that led to a waiver and confession, including
evaluating “‘the juvenile’s age, experience, education, background,
and intelligence, and [] whether he has the capacity to understand
the warnings given him, the nature of his Fifth Amendment rights,
and the consequences of waiving those rights.’” Id. at 1285
(quoting Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 725 (1979)). Voluntariness
will thus turn on whether “the entire record was before the state
court . . . and [whether] the record amply supported that finding.”
Id. at 1287.
The year after Hall, the Supreme Court held that “so long as
the child’s age was known to the officer at the time of police
questioning, or would have been objectively apparent to a
reasonable officer, its inclusion in the custody analysis is consistent
with the objective nature of that [inquiry].” J.D.B. v. North Carolina,
564 U.S. 261, 277 (2011). In reaching this conclusion, the Court
wrote that “[t]ime and again,” it has expressed that children are to
be held in a different light than adults, seeing as they “generally are
less mature and responsible than adults” and more vulnerable and
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22-11744 WILSON, J., Concurring in the Judgement 3
susceptible to influence and psychological damage. Id. at 272
(quotations omitted).
Below, citing to J.D.B., the district court explained that the
risk of an involuntary confession is “acute” when dealing with
juveniles. Id. at 269. I echo their sentiments here. My analysis
diverges with the majority in that I believe the majority treats
J.D.B. too lightly. The majority writes that in considering a
suspect’s young age, “relevancy is not the same as certainty. . . .
Neither J.D.B. nor any other case affirmatively requires a court to
determine that Bowen’s youth was dispositive here.” I do not
contend that age should be dispositive. I do however, as I wrote in
Hall, contend that the “greatest care” should be exercised to ensure
that a juvenile’s statements were voluntarily and freely given.
USCA11 Case: 22-11744 Document: 32-1 Date Filed: 02/15/2024 Page: 19 of 19

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