Opinion ID: 1058362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of Jennifer's Juvenile Court Citations

Text: The defendants Worley and Brown also appeal the trial court's decision to exclude evidence of Jennifer's three juvenile court citations, including one citation finding that she had possessed and consumed alcohol and suspending her driver's license for one year. The other two citations were preserved in a jury-out proffer. Worley contends that the facts underlying the three juvenile court criminal citations are arguably the most important evidence of Jennifer Biscan's history of alcohol possession and consumption. As the Court of Appeals recognized, however, juvenile adjudications are generally inadmissible outside of juvenile court. Tennessee Code Annotated section 37-1-133(b) (2001) provides: The disposition of a child and evidence adduced in a hearing in juvenile court may not be used against such child in any proceeding in any court other than a juvenile court, whether before or after reaching majority, except in dispositional proceedings after conviction of a felony for the purposes of a pre-sentence investigation and report. Although this rule has been interpreted to permit admission of juvenile adjudications for purposes of criminal sentencing, see State v. Stockton, 733 S.W.2d 111, 112-13 (Tenn.Crim.App.1986), its plain terms clearly bar the introduction of Jennifer's juvenile record in this civil case. See, e.g., Planned Parenthood of Middle Tenn. v. Sundquist, 38 S.W.3d 1, 24 (Tenn.2000) ([W]hen the words of a statute are plain, clear, and unambiguous, we merely look to the statute's plain language to interpret its meaning.). We therefore affirm the trial court's decision to exclude the evidence of Jennifer's juvenile adjudications.