Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Juvenile Court, Do Not Collect Due Process: Why Waiving Juveniles into Adult Court Without a Fitness Hearing is a Denial of Their Basic Due Process Rights

Over the past decade, the United States Supreme Court increasingly recognized that juvenile offenders deserve more individualized constitutional protections within the criminal justice system. In Roper, Graham, and Miller, the Court held that juveniles are different than adults in maturity, susceptibility to outside pressures, and potential for reform. Therefore, constitutionally under the Eighth Amendment, juvenile offenders cannot be punished in the same manner as adult offenders. In J.D.B., the Court went beyond the Eighth Amendment and held that increased vulnerability to outside pressures merits granting juveniles greater Fifth Amendment protections during Wyoming LaW RevieW VOLUME 14 2014 NUMBER 2 * 2014 Graduate Criminal Justice Fellow at Santa Clara University School of Law; Northern California Civil Rights Coordinator at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). I am blessed to have been surrounded by so many supportive and inspiring people in my lifetime to whom I owe more gratitude than an author’s note will provide. I first want to thank my mother, who in the process of raising three children on her own demonstrated to me what it means to be a truly responsible and caring person in this world. I also want to thank the attorneys and staff at the juvenile division of the Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for putting up with all my curiosity and eagerness, trusting me with a heavy and complex workload, and treating me like family. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the editing staff at the Wyoming Law Review for putting up with my hectic schedule and really helping me grow as a writer. Finally, I want to extend a great deal of gratitude to Professor W. David Ball for his guidance and feedback on this paper, and for entertaining all my lingering curiosities over the past four years. Thank you for all the opportunities and guidance you have provided me. Know that I will endeavor to carry with me your rare combination of humanity, integrity, curiosity, and intellect, and pass it on wherever I may go in this life. governmental interrogations. These holdings came at the tail end of the “get tough” on crime era, a period in which states turned towards punishing juveniles, and away from rehabilitating them. One policy trend during that era, employed by California and dozens of other states, was enacting statutes either sending juvenile cases directly to the adult criminal system or allowing prosecutors to directly file juvenile cases in the adult criminal system via prosecutorial waiver. Both routes deprive juveniles of a fitness hearing before a judicial officer. A fitness hearing allows the juvenile to present evidence supporting whether refuge in juvenile court is proper or whether they must be siphoned into the adult criminal system. Existing scholarship on the juvenile to adult court waiver process focuses on punishment and rehabilitation theories in the juvenile context. These theories only hint at policy directions criminal justice systems should follow without coming right out and saying it—transferring a juvenile into the adult criminal system without a fitness hearing violates the juvenile’s basic due process rights. Part I of this article discusses a brief history of the juvenile court system, its foundation on rehabilitative principles, its movement towards punishment, and describes the current adult court transfer procedures. Part II discusses the recent United States Supreme Court holdings mentioned earlier and presents further scientific research on the distinction between juveniles and adults. Finally, Part III argues that the holdings of the Supreme Court and the bodies of scientific research they rest upon, considered against the structure and purpose of the juvenile court system, validate the liberty interest of juveniles in juvenile court adjudication. Based on this liberty interest, the Supreme Court should do what it had the opportunity to do forty years ago: hold that juveniles suffer such a grievous loss when transferred to the adult criminal system, that doing so without proper protection violates due process.