Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/396/28/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 10:20:36+00:00

Document:
1. Appellant juvenile's challenge in habeas corpus proceeding on ground that he was unconstitutionally deprived of his right to trial by jury is inappropriate for resolution by this Court, since the hearing before a Nebraska juvenile court judge at which appellant was adjudged a delinquent was conducted before this Court's decisions in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, and Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 194, which were held in DeStefano v. Wood, 392 U. S. 631, to apply only prospectively, and appellant would therefore have had no constitutional right to a jury trial had he been tried as an adult in a criminal proceeding.
2. It is not appropriate for this Court to decide whether Nebraska law providing for proof of delinquency in a juvenile proceeding under a preponderance of the evidence standard violates due process requirements where no objection to that standard was made at the hearing by appellant, who took no direct appeal, and his counsel acknowledged that the evidence was sufficient to support the delinquency finding even under a reasonable doubt standard.
3. Because, standing alone, the issue could not be subject to review by an appeal, this Court declines, in view of the barrenness of the record, to exercise its certiorari jurisdiction to pass on appellant's contention that the prosecutor's assertedly unreviewable discretion under Nebraska case law whether to proceed against appellant in juvenile court, rather than in ordinary criminal proceedings, violated due process.
183 Neb. 461, 161 N.W.2d 508, appeal dismissed; certiorari dismissed as improvidently granted.
of this case, the appeal is dismissed. See Rescue Army v. Municipal Court, 331 U. S. 549.
"not reverse state convictions for failure to grant jury trial where trials began prior to May 20, 1968, the date of this Court's decisions in Duncan v. Louisiana and Bloom v. Illinois."
"[I]t has been pointed out that I did not attack the sufficiency of the evidence."
"Of course, the reason for that is obvious. The evidence is more than sufficient to sustain a conviction of what he did. An appeal on the sufficiency of the evidence would have been close to frivolous."
regarded as a grant of the certiorari writ" as to this issue, we dismiss such writ as improvidently granted. Mishkin v. New York, 383 U. S. 502, 383 U. S. 513.
"Delinquent child shall mean any child under the age of eighteen years who has violated any law of the state or any city or village ordinance." Neb.Rev.Stat. § 3-201(4). Appellant was charged with having a forged check in his possession with the intent to utter it as genuine, an act which, for an adult, would be forgery under Neb.Rev.Stat. § 2601(2).
Appellant was 17 when committed, and it appears that, under Nebraska law, he could be kept in the training school until his 21st birthday.
Four of the seven justices of the Nebraska Supreme Court thought the Nebraska statutory provisions which require that juvenile hearings be without a jury, Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-206.03(2), and be based on the preponderance of the evidence, Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-206.03(3), were unconstitutional. The Nebraska Constitution provides, however, that: "No legislative act shall be held unconstitutional except by the concurrence of five judges." Neb.Const., Art. V, § 2.
Although a comment made by appellant's counsel at oral argument before this Court (in response to a question) suggests reliance also on the Equal Protection Clause for the claim that a jury trial was constitutionally required (Tr. 5), an examination of the record clearly reveals that this was not any part of the basis on which probable jurisdiction was noted here. Appellant made no equal protection claim before the juvenile court, in his petition for habeas corpus to the state courts, or in his jurisdictional statement or brief in this Court. The Sixth Amendment, as reflected in the Fourteenth, was the exclusive basis for appellant's claim that he had a right to a jury trial. (See "Questions Presented" in Jurisdictional Statement 3-4, and Appellant's Brief 2.) Nor has any of the Nebraska courts below passed on any equal protection claim.
This Court has recently noted probable jurisdiction to consider this issue in In e Winship (No. 85, Misc.), probable jurisdiction noted, post, p. 885.
"Petitioner is deprived of his liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States when his right to a jury trial and the protective procedures of the criminal code are left to depend on the uncontrolled discretion of the prosecutor as to whether petitioner should be proceeded against in juvenile court or should be informed against in District Court under the provisions of the code of criminal procedure."
If it can be fairly said that the prosecutor's discretion under Nebraska law is "uncontrolled," or not subject to review, this is not because of any explicit statutory provision making it such, cf. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-205.04, but because of language in Nebraska case law. See State v. McCoy, 145 Neb. 750, 18 N.W.2d 101 (1945); Fugate v. Ronin, 167 Neb. 70, 75, 91 N.W.2d 240, 243-244 (1958).
For the reasons set forth herein and in the dissenting opinion of my Brother DOUGLAS, I dissent, and would reverse the judgment below.
In February, 1968, appellant, who was then 17 years old, was charged under the laws of Nebraska with being a "delinquent child" [Footnote 2/1] because he had a forged bank check which he intended to use for his own purposes. [Footnote 2/2] At the hearing on this charge, he asked for a jury trial, arguing that this was a right guaranteed him by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution and that a statute prohibiting juries in "delinquency" proceedings [Footnote 2/3] was therefore unconstitutional.
result of committing a criminal act were entitled to certain constitutional safeguards -- namely, notice of the issues involved, benefit of counsel, protection against compulsory self-incrimination, and confrontation of the witnesses against them. I can see no basis whatsoever in the language of the Constitution for allowing persons like appellant the benefit of those rights and yet denying them a jury trial, a right which is surely one of the fundamental aspects of criminal justice in the English-speaking world.
that decision, yet this Court treats these equal deprivations with clearly unequal justice. I cannot agree to such refusals to apply what appear to me to be the clear commands of the Constitution.
"Delinquent child shall mean any child under the age of eighteen years who has violated any law of the state or any city or village ordinance."
"unlawfully, feloniously and knowingly [had] in his possession and custody a certain false, forged and counterfeited bank check . . . with the intent . . . to utter and publish said false, forged and counterfeited bank check as true and genuine, knowing the same to be a false, forged and counterfeited bank check, and with the intent then and there and thereby to prejudice, damage and defraud . . well knowing the same to be falsely made, forged and counterfeited, contrary to the form of the Statutes in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Nebraska."
App. 1-2. It is undisputed that such acts constitute the crime of forgery under state law. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 2601(2).
Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-206.03(2) provides that juvenile hearings "shall be conducted by the judge without a jury in an informal manner. . . ."
Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 381 U. S. 640 (1965) (dissenting opinion); Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 384 U. S. 736 (1966) (dissenting opinion); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293, 388 U. S. 302, 388 U. S. 303 (1967) (dissenting opinions); DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631, 392 U. S. 635 (1968) (dissenting opinion); Halliday v. United States, 394 U. S. 831, 394 U. S. 835 (1969) (dissenting opinion); see also Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 394 U. S. 254 (1969) (concurring in judgment).
In DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631, 392 U. S. 635, I stated my view that the decisions in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, and Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 194, which guaranteed to adults in serious criminal cases and contempts the right to a trial by jury, should be given retroactive effect. * In light of this view, I am unable to join the Court's per curiam opinion in this case, holding that, because appellant's juvenile court hearing was held prior to the date of the decisions in Duncan and Bloom, the Court is precluded from deciding appellant's right to a jury trial.
I would reach the merits and hold that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments require a jury trial as a matter of right where the delinquency charged is an offense that, if the person were an adult, would be a crime triable by jury. Such is this case, for behind the facade of delinquency is the crime of forgery.
As originally conceived, the juvenile court was to be a clinic, not a court; the judge and all of the attendants were visualized as white-coated experts there to supervise, enlighten, and cure -- not to punish.
years in public punishment and disgrace, the legislature surely may provide for the salvation of such a child, if its parents or guardian be unable or unwilling to do so, by bringing it into one of the courts of the state without any process at all, for the purpose of subjecting it to the state's guardianship and protection. The natural parent needs no process to temporarily deprive his child of its liberty by confining it in his own home, to save it and to shield it from the consequences of persistence in a career of waywardness, nor is the state, when compelled, as parens patriae, to take the place of the father for the same purpose, required to adopt any process as a means of placing its hands upon the child to lead it into one of its courts. When the child gets there and the court, with the power to save it, determines on its salvation, and not its punishment, it is immaterial how it got there. The act simply provides how children who ought to be saved may reach the court to be saved."
Commonwealth v. Fisher, 213 Pa. 48, 53, 62 A.198, 200 (1905).
This new agency -- which stood in the shoes of the parent or guardian -- was to draw on all the medical, psychological, and psychiatric knowledge of the day and transform the delinquent. These experts motivated by love were to transform troubled children into normal ones, saving them from criminal careers.
influences that possessed the troubled youngster. Fourth, correctional institutions designed to care for these delinquents often became miniature prisons, with many of the same vicious aspects as the adult models. Fifth, the secrecy of the juvenile proceedings led to some overreaching and arbitrary actions.
"There is evidence, in fact, that there may be grounds for concern that the child receives the worst of both worlds: that he gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children."
"a hearing, including access by . . . counsel to the social records and probation or similar reports which presumably are considered by the court, and . . . a statement of reasons for the Juvenile Court's decision."
Id. at 383 U. S. 557. Although the opinion in that case emphasized that "the basic requirements of due process and fairness" be satisfied in such proceedings, id. at 383 U. S. 553, the decision itself turned on the language of a federal statute.
of the charges against him, the right to counsel, the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and the privilege against self-incrimination.
Since the decision in Gault, lower courts have divided on the question whether there is a right to jury trial in juvenile proceedings. Those courts which have granted the right felt that it was implicit in Gault. Nieves v. United States, 280 F.Supp. 994 (D.C.S.D.N.Y.1968); Peyton v. Nord, 7 N.M. 717, 437 P.2d 716 (1968); In re Rindell, 2 BNA Cr.L. 3121 (Providence, R.I., Fam.Ct., Jan.1968). Those who have denied the right have reasoned either that jury trial is not a fundamental right applicable to the States or that it is not consistent with the concept of a juvenile court. People v. Anonymous, 56 Misc.2d 725, 289 N.Y.S.2d 782 (Sup.Ct.1968); Commonwealth v. Johnson, 211 Pa.Super. 62, 234 A.2d 9 (1967). Duncan and Bloom have negated the former reason. Whether a jury trial is in conflict with the juvenile court's underlying philosophy is irrelevant, for the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land.
Given the fundamental nature of the right to jury trial as expressed in Duncan and Bloom, there is, as I see it, no constitutionally sufficient reason to deprive the juvenile of this right. The balancing of the rehabilitative purpose of the juvenile proceeding with the due process requirement of a jury trial is a matter for a future Constitutional Convention.
The idea of a juvenile court certainly was not the development of a juvenile criminal court. It was to have a healthy specialized clinic, not to conduct criminal trials in evasion of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Where there is a criminal trial charging a criminal offense, whether in conventional terms or in the language of delinquency, all of the procedural requirements of the Constitution and Bill of Rights come into play.
* This has been my position with respect to all comparable constitutional decisions. See, e.g., Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 394 U. S. 255-256 (dissenting opinion); DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631, 392 U. S. 635 (dissenting opinion), and cases cited therein.

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