Case Name: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carlton J. SMITH, Defendant-Appellant
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1988-07-12
Citations: 851 F.2d 706
Docket Number: No. 87-5683
Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carlton J. SMITH, Defendant-Appellant.
Judges: Before WINTER, Chief Judge, CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge, and SPENCER, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 851
Pages: 706–713

Head Matter:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carlton J. SMITH, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 87-5683.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Feb. 2, 1988.
Decided July 12, 1988.
Richard Luby Cannon, III, Greenville, N.C., for defendant-appellant.
John Stuart Bruce, Asst. U.S. Atty. (J. Douglas McCullough, Acting U.S. Atty., Matthew F. Bogdanos, Sp. Asst. U.S. Atty., Raleigh, N.C., on brief), for plaintiff-appel-lee.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge, and SPENCER, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

Opinion:
HARRISON L. WINTER, Chief Judge:
In a prior appeal, United States v. Juvenile Male, 819 F.2d 468 (4 Cir.1987), we held that defendant, who allegedly confessed to having murdered three of his relatives in 1981 when he was fifteen years old, but who was not apprehended and charged with the crime by juvenile information until 1986 when he was twenty, could not be prosecuted as an adult under the transfer provision of 18 U.S.C. § 5032 (Supp. II 1984), which had been added after the crimes were committed. In our view, the government could only proceed against the defendant as a juvenile delinquent under the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 5037 (1982), because to apply the subsequent amendment would violate the Constitutional prohibition against ex post facto legislation.
Before our decision was rendered, defendant became twenty-one; and after our decision was rendered, the government sought and was granted leave to dismiss the juvenile information. The information was dismissed on July 6, 1987, and on July 7, 1987, a grand jury indicted defendant, charging him with the three counts of first- degree murder allegedly committed by him when he was fifteen, and one count of alleged escape.
In the district court, defendant sought to dismiss the murder indictment on several grounds, viz. that the dismissal of the juvenile information constituted gross prosecu-torial misconduct, an abuse of discretion and prosecutorial harassment, that the dismissal of the juvenile information and subsequent indictment constituted vindictive prosecution, and that the Ex Post Facto clause and the Due Process clause barred defendant's indictment as an adult. The district court considered and rejected these contentions in a memorandum opinion, and defendant appeals. He essentially raises these same points, and the government, in addition to responding to his contentions, asserts that the denial of the motion to dismiss the indictment (as to the three counts charging murder) is not a final order and hence is not appealable. Thus we must decide if this appeal is properly before us, and if so, the correctness of the district court's denial of the motion to dismiss.
We hold that we have jurisdiction of this appeal, and we reverse.
I.
We think that the order denying defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment is appealable under the exception to the final decision requirement, 28 U.S.C. § 1291, formulated in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 545-47, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225-26, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). Cohen and subsequent decisions interpreting Cohen permit as an exception to the requirement that appeals may only be taken from final decisions, orders which "conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and [are] effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment." Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2458, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978). Certainly the district court's order in this ease conclusively establishes at the district court level that defendant may be tried as an adult and not as a juvenile. That issue is quite separate and distinct from whether he is or is not guilty of the crimes charged. While, if found guilty as an adult, defendant could still contest the legality of trying him as an adult, we think that much of the sequellae of his right to be tried as a juvenile, if that claim is meritorious, would be irrevocably lost, so that it may fairly be said that his claim is "effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment." An accused proceeded against as a juvenile delinquent has statutory rights not given to an accused who is tried as an adult. A juvenile is entitled to the sealing of court records, limitation of inquiries into records, protection from photographing and withholding of his name and picture from the news media. See 18 U.S.C. § 5038; United States v. C.G., 736 F.2d 1474 (11 Cir.1984).
We view these statutory protections given to juveniles as analogous to the guarantee against double jeopardy. The denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment on the ground of double jeopardy was held appeal-able in Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977). Similarly, the denial of a pretrial assertion of immunity under the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution was held to be within the collateral order exception in Helstoski v. Meanor, 442 U.S. 500, 99 S.Ct. 2445, 61 L.Ed.2d 30 (1979), and appellate review in juvenile cases from orders to transfer the juvenile for trial as an adult have been permitted in United States v. Juvenile Male, supra; United States v. C.G., supra; and United States v. A.W.J., 804 F.2d 492 (8 Cir.1986). Based upon these authorities, we think that the denial of the motion to dismiss the indictment in the present case is appealable, and we so hold.
II.
In the parties' and the district court's view, this case presents close issues of alleged prosecutorial vindictiveness and harassment and as involving the Due Process Clause and Ex Post Facto prohibition. We see it, however, as a simple issue of statutory application.
There is no question that Smith was proceeded against as a juvenile delinquent by the filing of a juvenile information against him while he was under the age of twenty-one. Both the statute in effect then and in effect now provided that if a juvenile is proceeded against as an alleged juvenile delinquent in a district court, "the Attorney General shall proceed by information, and no criminal prosecution shall be instituted for the alleged acts of juvenile delinquency except as provided below ", 18 U.S. C. § 5032. None of the exceptions is applicable here. They include a request by the juvenile to be tried as an adult, the transfer of juveniles fifteen years or older accused of the commission of a felony that is a crime of violence or other designated drug offenses for prosecution as an adult, and the transfer of a juvenile over sixteen accused of certain other felonies for prosecution as an adult.
Reduced to its simplest terms, the statute says that if one in Smith's circumstances is proceeded against as a juvenile delinquent by information, no other criminal prosecution shall be instituted against him except with certain exceptions, none of which applies here. Because the statute is plain and unambiguous, we conclude that it should be applied literally. We conclude that, although jeopardy had not yet attached at the time the district court dismissed the information against defendant, once the government invokes 18 U.S.C. § 5032, it may not in the future proceed against the defendant except in accordance with the terms of that provision. It is of little consequence that the government did not manufacture in bad faith the delays in prosecution which resulted in the defendant still awaiting trial as of his twenty-first birthday. The Act itself contemplates that jurisdiction over someone in the defendant's circumstances is not automatically lost once he attains the age of 21. See 18 U.S.C. § 5037(b); United States v. Doe, 631 F.2d 110, 112-13 (9 Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 867, 101 S.Ct. 202, 66 L.Ed.2d 86 (1980). Therefore the indictment insofar as it charges Smith with murder is invalid as being in violation of the statute. It follows that the indictment should be dismissed.
The order of the district court is accordingly reversed and the case remanded with directions to dismiss the counts of the indictment charging murder.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
. Leave to dismiss was sought and obtained under Rule 48(a), F.R.Crim.P.
. The escape was alleged to have occurred on January 10, 1987 before defendant became twenty-one. While dismissal of this count of the indictment was unsuccessfully sought in the district court, the correctness of the denial of dismissal is not raised in this appeal.
.The actual text of the pertinent portions of present § 5032 follow:
§ 5032. Delinquency proceedings in district courts; transfer for criminal prosecution
If an alleged juvenile delinquent is not surrendered to the authorities of a State or the District of Columbia pursuant to this section, any proceedings against him shall be in an appropriate district court of the United States. For such purposes, the court may be convened at any time and place within the district, in chambers or otherwise. The Attorney General shall proceed by information, and no criminal prosecution shall be instituted for the alleged act of juvenile delinquency except as provided below.
A juvenile who is alleged to have committed an act of juvenile delinquency and who is not surrendered to State authorities shall be proceeded against under this chapter unless he has requested in writing upon advice of counsel to be proceeded against as an adult, except that, with respect to a juvenile fifteen years and older alleged to have committed an act after his fifteenth birthday which if committed by an adult would be a felony that is a crime of violence or an offense described in section 841, 952(a), 955, or 959 of title 21, criminal prosecution on the basis of the alleged act may be begun by motion to transfer of the Attorney General in the appropriate district court of the United States, if such court finds, after hearing, such transfer would be in the interest of justice; however, a juvenile who is alleged to have committed an act after his sixteenth birthday which if committed by an adult would be a felony offense that has [as] an element thereof the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another, or that, by its very nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person of another may be used in committing the offense, or would be an offense described in section 32, 81, 844(d), (e), (f), (h), (i) or 2275 of this title, and who has previously been found guilty of an act which if committed by an adult would have been one of the offenses set forth in this subsection or an offense in violation of a State felony statute that would have been such an offense if a circumstance giving rise to Federal jurisdiction had existed, shall be transferred to the appropriate district court of the United States for criminal prosecution, (emphasis added)
. This provision was added in 1984 and under our holding in United States v. Juvenile Male, supra, does not apply in this case.
. Our dissenting colleague is of the view that Smith does not fall within the definition of "juvenile" because the information under § 5032 was dismissed, and Smith was not indicted until he had attained age 21. No explanation is advanced as to why dismissal of the juvenile information, which had been filed when Smith was under 21, was not a "disposition" of the proceeding within the meaning of § 5031. We think that the dismissal was a "disposition" of the proceedings so that Smith was squarely within the definition of "juvenile", and the prohibition against another criminal prosecution is fully applicable.
As the authorities cited by our brother demonstrate, this would be a far different case if the government had not filed an information against Smith or sought an indictment until after Smith became 21 or had merely filed a complaint which was not followed by an information while Smith was under the age of 21.
. We express no view with respect to the effect of the government's dismissal of the juvenile information on possible further proceedings. We note, however, as support to our reading of the statute and the effect to be given it, that had the information not been dismissed, the district court sitting as a juvenile court would not have lost jurisdiction of the case when defendant reached age twenty-one. Even then, if it adjudicated him a delinquent, it would have been authorized, under 18 U.S.C. § 5037(b), prior to its amendment by Pub.L. 99-646, 100 St. 3596, effective November 1, 1987, to order his commitment for not exceeding two years. We note, however, that since the 1987 amendment, the period of maximum detention is fixed at three years, unless the juvenile had attained the age of twenty-two. In the latter event, the statute, as amended in 1987, is silent as to probation or detention.