Supreme Court Rules on Case Involving Miranda Rights

The question in the case concerning prisoners, Howes v. Fields, No. 10-680, was whether an inmate’s confession to a sex crime should have been suppressed because he did not receive the familiar warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona before he was questioned. The answer turned on whether he was in custody at the time.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 decision, said that “custody” for these purposes “is a term of art that specifies circumstances that are thought generally to present a serious danger of coercion.”

The inmate, Randall L. Fields, was in a Michigan jail for disorderly conduct when he was taken to a conference room in the jail in the evening and was questioned for five to seven hours by armed deputies who used a sharp tone and profanity. He was told he was free to return to his cell but was not given Miranda warnings.

The key inquiry, Justice Alito said, was whether a reasonable person in those circumstances would have felt free to end the questioning and leave. He said the fact of imprisonment did not by itself provide the answer.

Being moved from one sort of confinement to another, Justice Alito wrote, is unlike “the shock that very often accompanies arrest,” where “detention represents a sharp and ominous change, and the shock may give rise to coercive pressures.” People already in prison or jail, moreover, he said, are “unlikely to be lured into speaking by a longing for prompt release.” And law enforcement officials questioning a prisoner “probably lack the authority to affect the duration of his sentence.”

Justice Alito acknowledged that some of the factors present in the questioning — including the length, hour and tone of the questioning — suggested that Mr. Fields had been taken into “custody” for purposes covered by the Miranda decision. But other circumstances, notably that he was told he was free to leave, suggested the opposite. On balance, Justice Alito said, Mr. Fields was not in custody, and so no warnings were required.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for herself and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said there was little question that Mr. Fields had been confined in a stressful and coercive setting. “Was Fields ‘held for interrogation’?” she asked, quoting from the Miranda decision. “Brought to, and left alone with, the gun-bearing deputies, he surely was in my judgment.”

“Today,” Justice Ginsburg concluded, “for people already in prison, the court finds it adequate for the police to say: ‘You are free to terminate this interrogation and return to your cell.’ Such a statement is no substitute for one ensuring that an individual is aware of his rights.”

Also on Tuesday, the court issued a revised argument schedule for the challenges to the 2010 health care overhaul. On March 26, the first of three days of arguments, the court will hear 90 minutes of arguments, instead of an hour, about whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case before 2015 in light of a federal law that bans challenges to tax penalties until they become due. That brings the total time allotted to the challenges to six hours.

In a third development, Chief Justice Roberts agreed to a request from Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to release a 1991 resolution concerning gifts and outside income. In it, the justices on the court at the time said regulations on those subjects did not apply to the Supreme Court but added that they would “comply with the substance” of the regulations.

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New Rules Planned on School Vending Machines

The Obama administration is working on setting nutritional standards for foods that children can buy outside the cafeteria. With students eating 19 percent to 50 percent of their daily food at school, the administration says it wants to ensure that what they eat contributes to good health and smaller waistlines. The proposed rules are expected within the next few weeks.

Efforts to restrict the food that schoolchildren eat outside the lunchroom have long been controversial.

Representatives of the food and beverage industries argue that many of their products contribute to good nutrition and should not be banned. Schools say that overly restrictive rules, which could include banning the candy sold for school fund-raisers, risk the loss of substantial revenue that helps pay for sports, music and arts programs. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that about $2.3 billion worth of snack foods and beverages are sold annually in schools nationwide.

Nutritionists say that school vending machines stocked with potato chips, cookies and sugary soft drinks contribute to childhood obesity, which has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about one in every five children are obese.

No details of the proposed guidelines have been released, but health advocates and snack food and soft drink industry representatives predict that the rules will be similar to those for the government’s school lunch program, which reduced amounts of sugar, salt and fat.

Those rules set off a fight between parents and health advocates on one side, who praised the standards, and the food industry, which argued that some of the proposals went too far. Members of Congress stepped in to block the administration from limiting the amount of potatoes children could be served and to allow schools to continue to count tomato paste on a pizza as a serving of vegetables.

Nancy Huehnergarth, executive director of the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance in Millwood, N.Y., said she expected a similar fight over the vending machine rules.

“I think the food and beverage industry is going to fight tooth and nail over these rules,” Ms. Huehnergarth said.

But representatives of the food and beverage industry say they generally support selling healthier snacks and drinks in schools.

“But we are a little concerned that they might make the rules too stringent,” said James A. McCarthy, president of the Snack Food Association, a trade group in Washington.

Mr. McCarthy said the industry supported nutritional snacks and was working with the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, headed by the former president, in an initiative called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to establish voluntary guidelines for healthier foods in schools.

The foods include baked rather than fried potato chips, dry-roasted nuts and low-sodium pretzels, Mr. McCarthy said.

Christopher Gindlesperger, director of communications for the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Pepsi, said his industry had also worked with schools to reduce or eliminate sugary drinks and replace them with healthier alternatives.

“Our members have voluntarily reduced the calories in drinks shipped to schools by 88 percent and stopped offering full-calorie soft drinks in elementary school vending machines,” Mr. Gindlesperger said.

But a study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine released this month shows that despite industry efforts and those of others, snacking behavior among children remains largely unchanged. One reason is that healthier snacks were being offered alongside less nutritious offerings.

Between 2006 and 2010, the study found, about half of the schools had vending machines, stores and cafeterias that offered unhealthy foods.

The availability of high-fat foods in schools followed regional patterns. In the South, where rates of childhood obesity are the highest, less nutritious food was more prevalent. In the West, where childhood obesity rates are lower, high-fat food was not as common, the study found.

Health advocates say the study points to the need for national standards.

Jessica Donze Black, director of the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, gave the food industry credit for trying to reduce sugary drinks and fatty snacks, but said the voluntary guidelines did not go far enough.

“What we have is a fragmented system where some schools do a good job of limiting access to junk food and others don’t,” she said. “We need a national standard that ensures that all schools meet some minimum guidelines.”

Still, some school districts question whether students would buy healthy foods offered in vending machines and school stores. Frequently vending machines with healthy alternative snacks are ignored, and children bring snacks from home or buy them at local stores off-campus during lunch periods. Roger Kipp, food service director for the Norwood school district in Ohio, said children could be persuaded to eat healthy foods and schools could still make a profit.

Two years ago, Mr. Kipp eliminated vending machines and school stores in his district and replaced them with an area in the lunchroom where they could buy wraps, fruit or yogurt. Children ate better, and the schools made some money.

“It took a while, but it caught on,” Mr. Kipp said. “You have to give the kids time. You can’t replace 16 years of bad eating habits overnight.”

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