House Floor Leader Joseph James N. Camacho on Wednesday introduced a bill that would require the notification of parents or guardians before police can question juveniles.<\/p>\n
Camacho\u2019s legislation also seeks to require the presence of parents and guardians during police\u2019s interrogation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOftentimes, in juvenile cases, government resources are spent fighting in court whether a juvenile willingly and knowingly waived his or her constitutional rights,\u201d the Floor Leader told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Having a parent or guardian present during questioning by the police, the lawmaker pointed out, will protect the juvenile\u2019s rights and minimize cost of delays, hearings, and appeals.<\/p>\n
In the bill, Camacho said teenagers, particularly those who are younger than 15 years old, do not fully understand their constitutional rights when taken into police\u2019s custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet under current Commonwealth law, there is no requirement that law enforcement officials notify a parent that they have a juvenile in custody for questioning or provide the juvenile with an opportunity to consult with a parent before waiving his or her constitutional rights,\u201d he said. (Ferdie de la Torre)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House Floor Leader Joseph James N. Camacho on Wednesday introduced a bill that would require the notification of parents or guardians before police can question juveniles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}