good morning your honor to please the court my name is michael dunn and how i am from the federal defender's office in the district of montana and i represent the juvenile in this case proceed to address the court's question i  take from that question that the court understands the nature of my argument so i don't think there's any point in wavering over that i think the court's question the answer to it is is that if the congress put in the year two thousand and two the language in the revocation aspects of the statute that express sleeth tells the district court to use the juveniles age at the time of the revocation in the absence of any such which from the aspect of the statute that deals with the original disposition demands an interpretation that the age of the juvenile at the time of the offense or at the time of the conduct should be the governing if that makes sense to me well let me ask about that the statute provides for the then juvenile for simplicity also if the individual is between eighteen and twenty one basically what i'm trying to do here is not buy a whore than i can chew i have a child or a youngster that was involved in some fairly substantial conduct here but it was our impatient after the disposition that and actually i think during the disposition the age was discussed if you are looked at the record there and i think the district are sensitive to the fact he tried to mark that out pretty clearly that he was one aged one time and when he did another crime and maybe that was troubling to him i don't know but at this point it just seems to me that we need to sense in the people with respect to the age that they were at the time of the conduct and that's the conclusion that i'm trying to gain here if i could speculate and maybe i don't want to but i will if we jump ahead to a revocation paper i think i have the same problem if  that doesn't look like it was all crafted with these questions in mind is that you've got a sentencing provision that he's on when a juvenile turns twenty one and if the situation arises a mon short of that day even though the offensive conduct took place some time before say when he's under eighteen well you don't want to encourage it to be in a position where the most you can do is tell someone you're you've got twenty five days left you turn twenty one that's all the time of the b at sentencing at the filing of the of the charges or in the revocation context the the revocation hearing and if we do that then you're looking at a there are those problems in these kinds of cases but in the end no matter how we look at these these issues in this context they're treated as criminal proceedings and if you're going to play with the age didn't want to fight off more than i could to here are me asking this court for and i understand i'm here with my hat in my hand given that i'm on a plane or standard here but good morning i'm lori stark from the great falls montana representing the united states the question posed by the court i chose to answer this way and let me explain in prior to two thousand and two we didn't even have the juvenile supervision section of the statute that you referenced in your order we have the official detention just the official dispositional hearing section under subsection a and the probation section that was very limited in fact the stanton's read in that section the provisions dealing with probation set forth in sections three five six three three five six that would have interpreted that revocation of probation section prior to the the amendment that put the qualifying language of at the time of the revocation proceeding and i found a very recent case out a second revocation perceiving on a juvenile who'd originally been sentenced when she was fifteen and she was approaching the age of twenty one and the second revocation proceeding which occurred in october of two thousand and one prior to this amendment and the court was posed with the exact question that we're facing here only under the revocation proceeding what age provision governs should i look to the age at the time right now at the time of the seating or the age of the instance of things and the court when page nine seventy seven looked at two factors the plain meaning of the statute first of all because the statute is written in therefore the plain meaning of the statute tells me that i need to be using the age now at the time of the revocation proceeding in addition the courts if that was the age of the original sentencing th at would be an on reasonable conclusion in the example given was that a violation two months before this juvenile reaches twenty twenty one with not only a two month window for the court to use ages between eighteen and twenty one so now let's import this reasoning to where we are today we've got two options the court can look to the age of the time of the offense or that the age at the time of the  adopt the meaning that these courts sort of have utilized the plain meaning of the statute and the verb is not was that would make sense if you adopt the interpretation that it would have to be the age at the time of the offense you would be writing out a complete section of the statute because the judge clifton pointed out there would be no juvenile that would ever be sentenced originally under the provision of eighteen to twenty one because a but they didn't well i found no cases that ever raised this issue yet there are these cases on the books that raise the issue with respect to revocation and when you look at the two thousand and two add that really did do a watershed change to the juvenile delinquency act it added a number of additional options juvenile supervision restitution you took out  before we could only we could impose probation or restitution and if you look at the legislative history in the overall discussion of what they were trying to do with juveniles it makes sense to not limit in this way a court's ability to sentence a juvenile who is between eighteen and twenty one this provision falls in line with the qualifying language that they put in the revocation proceeding that a juvenile who is between eighteen and twenty one at the time of the proceeding the court shouldn't be cut off in terms of this ability to address the conduct which should be allowed to have that five year window or three year window or the maximum  could receive whatever that may be so the if you interpret the statute as the judge hadn't did in this case and apply five zero three seven b two you will be true to the plain meaning of the statute the verb is you will be true to what congress was trying to do by changing the juvenile delinquency statutes and by adding different penalties at the same time that it  qualifying language that's about all i can figure out with respect to this except for one additional point i will make i didn't find one case u s versus t f f one fifty five f third one one one eight six nineteen ninety five and page eleven twenty two i only tell you this because it's the only cases i could find on this issue with not very instructive because what happened there is the court didn't say that you use the age it was the original dispositional hearing and you used the age of the juvenile at the time of the dispositional hearing but then there was a footnote the said the reason we're doing that is because  defendant wants us to do when we're still mean that for purposes of argument that's the only case i could find that dealt with our specific issue i think you true i've seen cases languishing in the juvenile system in this case the youngster turned from the age of was at the time of the offense to an older age in the penalty response if your concern is a turns out to be an element of an offense and i don't know if that makes sense to anybody it does to me if we skip ahead to a revocation say well if you're this age now you're going to get this penalty that that's an element that's introduced at the time of that revocation they did not exist at the time of the original revocation so i harken back to my original argument there's no symmetry there anymore between the revocation being sentenced for what you were originally convicted