Case Title: McClintock v. State

Citation: 253 Ind. 333, 253 N.E.2d 233

Docket Number: 

State: indiana

Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Date: 1969-12-17T00:00:00Z

Document:
253 Ind. 333 (1969)
253 N.E.2d 233
McCLINTOCK
v.
STATE OF INDIANA.
No. 1068-S-171.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
Filed December 17, 1969.
*334 Walter A. Cornell, Sheridan, for appellant.
Theodore L. Sendak, Attorney General, Robert F. Hassett, Deputy Attorney General, Curtis C. Plopper, Deputy Attorney General, for appellee.
JACKSON, J.
Appellant was charged by verified petition filed in the above named court with being a delinquent child. The court, after hearing, found that appellant had committed an act of delinquency, that she was fifteen years of age, and ordered her committed to the Indiana Girls School until she reached the age of twenty-one years. The special judge then suspended said order of commitment, placed appellant on probation, ordered her placed in the custody of her grandfather until June 6, 1968, then in the custody of her brother and ordered appellant's father to pay support for her. It is from this finding and judgment this appeal stems.
The verified petition involving appellant was filed November 1, 1967, in the office of the Clerk of the Hamilton Circuit Court and reads in pertinent part as follows:
*336 Trial was had, without formal reply to the petition, on the issues raised thereby. In the absence of a formal pleading to the petition, we treat the matter in the same manner as if a defendant in a criminal cause stands mute, in which case he is considered to have entered a plea of not guilty. In the instant case it is considered that appellant denied the averments of the petition and the State had the burden of proving the charges embodied in the petition.
At the conclusion of the evidence on the hearing there was filed on behalf of appellant on March 11, 1968, a motion to dismiss the cause and for the discharge of appellant. Such motion, omitting heading and signature, reads as follows:
Thereafter, on May 29, 1968, the following proceedings were had:
On June 24, 1968, appellant filed a Motion For New Trial containing two specifications as follows:
The motion was accompanied by a memorandum in several lengthy paragraphs. The first of which challenges the sufficiency of the petition on the ground "[t]he Petition fails to state what act the juvenile was alleged to have committed."
Sub-paragraphs a, b and c of said paragraph relate to certain evidence and the statement of appellant, all of which will be discussed later and is here omitted for that reason. This portion of the memorandum is addressed to the first specification of the motion.
The second paragraph and the several sub-paragraphs of the memorandum are addressed to the second specification of the motion. Sub-paragraph (a) alleges: "The Court erred in overruling Juvenile's motion to suppress the statement set out above" referring to State's Exhibit No. 2 which will be *340 shown later herein. The allegation of sub-paragraph (b) "[t]he Court erred in overruling Juvenile's motion, after the close of the evidence to Dismiss said cause and to discharge said Juvenile." Sub-paragraph (c) alleges: "[t]he Proceedings from the time of arrest of the Juvenile herein until and including the filing of the petition against said Juvenile were contrary to the statutes governing the procedures in juvenile matters and the Court's Finding based on such procedures and said petition were contrary to law." These several sub-paragraphs are supported by pages of record far too long to incorporate herein, but will be discussed briefly hereafter.
The Motion for New Trial was overruled July 22, 1968.
Appellant's Assignment of Errors is as follows:
State's Exhibit No. 1 reads as follows:
State's Exhibit No. 2 reads as follows:
*343 For the purpose of this opinion we shall take appellee's summary of the evidence most favorable to the State as follows:
On November 29, 1967, Officer Boots, on duty in Hamilton County, observed an auto having license number 93H5029 parked across Cumberland Road. He saw a rifle protruding from the auto and he heard nine (9) shots. Boots drove up to the auto and told the driver he was under arrest and to stop. The driver then backed up his auto rapidly and drove up a gravel road. Later, Boots learned the idenity of the occupants. The Appellant was sitting in the middle of the front seat. Boots identified her in court. Another girl was on Appellant's right. A boy was on the left. He was Dennis Love. As Boots pursued the auto, he received a radio call that the auto was a stolen car. Another call told him there had been an accident. Upon arrival at the scene, he saw a green two door Olds wrecked. He identified it as the one he had just previously seen.
Carroll Lundy, a resident of Marion County, testified that on November 29, 1967, he owned a 1965 Olds two door green hardtop. When he awoke the next day his car was gone. He reported the car missing. He went to Noblesville and identified the wrecked car as his. It had the same license number and description.
Town Marshal Howard arrived at the scene of the wrecked Olds and saw the three occupants in a cornfield. He pursued them and found 2 females and one male crouching in the field. He identified Appellant in court as one of the girls.
Trooper Shrock arrived at the scene and found a wrecked 1965 Olds 2 door green car with license number 93H5029. The car was registered to Mr. Lundy.
Appellant's signed statement, State's Exhibit #2, admitted into evidence, recited that she met Dennis Love on October 29, 1967, (the date she signed the statement). He was driving a blue 1965 Olds Dynamic 88. He told her the night before that *344 he had stolen it that same day. They then picked up Sharon Ogle, and drove to Hamilton County where Dennis stopped on Cumberland Road to fire a .22 rifle at an empty house. He shot at the house about 6 times when she saw a policeman coming. She told Dennis and he turned the car around and drove north about 60-100 mph. He was unable to stop and he wrecked the car. She knew Dennis since May, 1967. Her statement then recites several prevoius escapades of auto theft.
The record is undisputed that at the time appellant signed the statement, State's Exhibit #2, she had already been placed under arrest; she was at the Noblesville Police Department; present at that time were State Police Officers Shrock and Bradley and Conservation Officer Boots along with the appellant and Sharon Ogle. All of the officers were adults. Ogle and appellant were minors and, in fact, at the time said statement was taken the officer taking the same specifically knew appellant to be fourteen (14) years of age. It further appears that just prior to the execution of State's Exhibit #2, the officers presented to and had appellant read and sign what is designated a "WARNING AND WAIVER" which was admitted in evidence as State's Exhibit #1. The same appears herein, supra.
We are of the opinion that the interrogation and obtaining of State's Exhibits No. 1 and 2, under the circumstances here delineated, vitiated this entire proceeding and requires the reversal of the judgment here appealed from The Supreme Court in the case of In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1966), stated that
Further, in Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.S. 596 (1946), Mr. Justice Douglas, speaking for the majority of the Court, said:
Neither can we indulge in the assumption that the appellant here, a mere child of 14, had a full appreciation of that advice which would have been available to her had counsel been present at the time of her questioning and subsequent signing of the waiver and statement. The Court in In Re Gault, supra, makes known the fact that "The President's Crime Commission has recently recommended that in order to assure `procedural justice for the child,' it is necessary that `Counsel * * * be appointed as a matter of course wherever coercive action is a possibility, without requiring any affirmative choice by child or parent.'" In the case at bar, not only was counsel absent at the stationhouse, but the absence of the parents was conspicuous indeed. At the time of the taking of the statement no notice had been given or issued to appellant's parents of her arrest or of the fact that she was in custody of the police at the Noblesville Police Department. The admission by Officer Shrock that he obtained the names and addresses of appellant's parents but did not notify them because "* * * she (appellant) did not want them to know about it" seems shallow indeed when viewed in light of the language of In Re Gault, supra, wherein the Court concluded that:
Appellant also argues that the court's finding that appellant committed a "delinquent act" is vague and indefinite as to what appellant committed and is, therefore, contrary to law. There is much case law authority in Indiana to support this contention. This Court in the case of State ex rel. Jones v. Geckler, Judge (1938), 214 Ind. 574, 16 N.E.2d 875, held that "When a child is charged with delinquency, some specific act or conduct must be charged as constituting the delinquency * * *." This sentiment was echoed in the case of In Re Coyle (1951), 122 Ind. App. 217, 101 N.E.2d 192, wherein the court held that:
The judgment of the Hamilton County Juvenile Court is reversed and the cause is remanded to said court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
DeBRULER, C.J., HUNTER and GIVAN, JJ., concur; ARTERBURN, J., dissents with opinion.
ARTERBURN, J.
I dissent for the reason that I differ with the basic philosophy and trend of the opinions of this Court and the United States Supreme Court in juvenile proceedings. The purpose of juvenile legislation is to get away from prosecuting a child as a criminal in a criminal proceeding. The proceedings were to give the judge and the court more of a parental relationship with the child for the purpose of reformation and discipline. We have stated that the proceedings were not criminal but civil in nature.
Now, however, we find the courts step by step converting these proceedings into nothing more than a criminal trial. Under the guise of saying that a child has all the constitutional rights of an adult, the courts have held that they have a right to a jury trial, to an attorney, and now they must be informed that they need not answer any questions when interrogated under the Miranda rule. Such proceedings, of course, have no relationship to parental supervision which is too important to an immature child. It does, however, encourage in that child arrogance and disrespect for authority when he knows that he will be defended in any escapades by taxpayers' money and a lawyer. The soundness of any principle is to test how well it works under all circumstances. If the basic reason for the present trend is that the child is entitled to all the constitutional rights of an adult, then certainly, when his parents determine to punish him he is entitled to have the Miranda rule stated to him and entitled to have an attorney at taxpayers' expense. The absurdity of the announced principle is evident at once, since the court in a juvenile proceeding (which is not supposed to be criminal) stands in the same position as a parent.
This trend of the courts will defeat itself, since it will eventually eliminate juvenile proceedings, and trial courts, since they have to conform to all the principles of a criminal *348 trial, will immediately transfer every juvenile case to the criminal side of the court and try the child as a criminal, thus giving him all the "safeguards" of the Constitution.
NOTE.  Reported in 253 N.E.2d 233.