How should police read teen suspects their rights?

But here's the catch: Miranda warnings are only required for questioning done once a suspect has been taken into custody "or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way," according to the Miranda opinion.

Alvarado was not under arrest. But Miranda warnings could still be required under a somewhat broader test: Would a reasonable person in Alvarado's position feel free to end the police interview at any point and walk out of the police station?

If the answer is yes, then no Miranda warnings were necessary. If the answer is no, police should have given Alvarado the warnings, and any statements he made - including a full confession - may not be used as evidence against Alvarado.

Applying this test, a federal judge rejected Alvarado's claim. But a federal appeals court panel reversed, saying that as a juvenile Alvarado should have received the Miranda warnings.

The case is important because, if the high court agrees with Alvarado, it would establish for the first time a special Miranda rule for juveniles.

Juvenile-justice experts have long emphasized that teens are developmentally different than adults and should be treated differently in the criminal justice system. "Minors are generally less mature, more submissive in the face of police authority, and lack critical knowledge and experience, as compared to adults," says Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, in a friend-of-the-court brief.

A similar argument about the developmental differences of juveniles is being made in a Missouri case challenging the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty. The high court has agreed to decide that case, which is likely to be heard next term.

Ms. Levick says the circumstances of the police encounter in the Alvarado case were critically different for a 17-year-old than for someone even slightly older. "The reason age matters is because the 18- or 19- or 20-year-old would not have had his parents called to act as the intermediary with police," Levick says.

Both California and the Solicitor General's Office say that a new Miranda rule for juveniles would complicate law-enforcement efforts, making it harder to solve certain crimes. "An overly broad Miranda rule for juveniles would potentially exclude free and voluntary confessions deserving of the highest credit," writes Ms. Chuang.

The justices could sidestep the juvenile Miranda question altogether should a majority conclude that the federal appeals court decision in the Alvarado case violated the terms of the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

That law limits the ability of federal courts to second-guess state court judgments to only the extremely rare cases in which state judges blatantly ignore well-established Supreme Court precedents. Alvarado's case was prosecuted in state court and was appealed to the federal level on habeas corpus grounds.

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