Opinion ID: 1470383
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Felony Cases

Text: Turning to the case before us, we note at the outset that the Family Court did not conduct a waiver hearing for Greenberg and that the indictment was not filed in Superior Court before the November Amendment became law. The failure of the state to secure an indictment of Greenberg before the November Amendment controls the result in that case, as set forth in our recent holding in State v. Jennings, 944 A.2d 171 (R.I.2008). In Jennings, we were faced with the question of whether the Superior Court or the Family Court had jurisdiction over a violation of G.L.1956 § 11-9-5.3, entitled Brendan's Law, when a jurisdictional statute was amended, subsequent to Jennings's arrest, but before the Attorney General filed a criminal information in the Family Court. Jennings, 944 A.2d at 172-73. After the statute was amended and the Family Court was divested of jurisdiction, Jennings's case was removed to the Superior Court, and the state appealed, arguing that the Family Court retained jurisdiction over the case because it was pending in that tribunal when the statute was amended. Id. at 175. However, the state failed to file a criminal information in the Family Court before the effective date of the amendment, and we declared that the case was not pending in the Family Court and jurisdiction was vested in the Superior Court. Id. It is noteworthy that our resolution in Jennings did not turn on retroactive versus prospective application of the legislative enactment. Jennings, 944 A.2d at 174. Rather, we held that a prosecution for a crime must be preceded by a formal accusation. Id. (quoting State v. Souza, 456 A.2d 775, 779 (R.I.1983)). With respect to a felony crime, the accusation must be by way of indictment by a grand jury or by information of the Attorney General. Id. We concluded that [t]he operative filing for the commencement of this criminal prosecution is the charge by information. Jennings, 944 A.2d at 175. The fact that a felony complaint, as opposed to an indictment or information, was filed in the Family Court was irrelevant because the complaint constituted nothing more than an initial bail-setting instrument. Id.; see also State v. Machado, 944 A.2d 865, 866 (R.I.2008) (mem.) (relying on Jennings in determining that the prosecution of the case was not pending as of the jurisdictional amendment [b]ecause a felony prosecution commences only after a charge by information). Because Greenberg is the only defendant charged with a felony who is properly before this Court, our review should end and the indictment should be held in abeyance pending a waiver hearing in the Family Court. However, it is undisputed that numerous seventeen-year-old offenders were arrested and have been prosecuted in the Superior Court pursuant to the July Amendment. Although these individuals are not properly before us, their entitlement to relief from the consequences of this jurisdictional fracture is compelling. Because we are of the opinion that the Family Court was not divested of jurisdiction over seventeen-year-olds, any juvenile accused of an offense that would constitute a felony if committed by an adult is entitled to a hearing in Family Court and a judicial determination of whether a waiver of that court's jurisdiction over the child is appropriate. [10] We pause to note that there is no legal distinction between an indictment and criminal information; each is embodied in the state constitution, which provides that a defendant in a noncapital case may be charged by indictment or criminal information signed by the Attorney General or by his or her designated assistant. R.I. Const. art. 1, sec. 7 (providing that no person shall be held to answer for any other felony unless on presentment or indictment by a grand jury or on information in writing signed by the [A]ttorney-[G]eneral or one of the [A]ttorney-[G]eneral's designated assistants   ). Either method constitutes the starting point of our whole system of adversary criminal justice. Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 689, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972). This Court has held that any criminal prosecution begins with a formal charge and that a formal accusation of a felony [offense] must be by way of indictment by a grand jury or by information of the Attorney General. Jennings, 944 A.2d at 174 (quoting Souza, 456 A.2d at 779). Because noncapital felony crimes may be prosecuted by grand jury indictment or criminal information, the law governing a trial justice's decision on a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction  whether an indictment or criminal information  is the same. In the context of this case, dismissal is not the appropriate remedy. Before this Court, defendants argue that, under the common-law rule of abatement, when a penal statute is repealed without a savings clause, all criminal proceedings instituted thereunder abate. We need not address this contention, however, because we are not confronted with an amendment to a penal statute. Rather, the legislation under review relates to jurisdictional changes over substantive criminal offenses, but not the offenses themselves. The law is well settled; when a trial justice determines that original subject-matter jurisdiction over an offense resides in another court within our unified court system, he or she shall order the case transferred to that court. In State v. Boucher, 468 A.2d 1227, 1228 (R.I.1983), a statewide grand jury returned an indictment charging the defendants with habitual cruelty to a child, a felony offense that was cognizable in and transferred to the Family Court, as well as two misdemeanor counts which the trial justice refused to transfer to the District Court. This Court vacated the defendants' convictions and ordered that the case be transferred to the District Court. Id. at 1229. We concluded that, after the felony charge was transferred to the Family Court, the Superior Court no longer retained jurisdiction over the remaining misdemeanor counts because the original subject-matter jurisdiction to try the misdemeanors remained in the District Court pursuant to the terms of [G.L.1956] § 12-3-1. Boucher, 468 A.2d at 1229. Likewise, in State v. Sickles, 470 A.2d 220, 220 (R.I.1984), the grand jury returned an indictment charging the defendant with the misdemeanor offense of willful and malicious injury to property, and he was convicted in the Superior Court. This Court vacated the conviction and ordered the case transferred to the District Court because original jurisdiction over misdemeanor crimes resided in the District Court. Id. at 221. Our holding in Boucher, 468 A.2d at 1229, and Sickles, 470 A.2d at 221, concerned subject-matter jurisdiction and the requirement that the trial justice order the case be transferred to the appropriate court. Where possible, the case should not be dismissed. In Boucher and Sickles, the District Court was vested with subject-matter jurisdiction over the crimes charged, and we ordered the cases transferred to that tribunal. We contrast these cases with our holding in In re Edward, 441 A.2d 543 (R.I. 1982), in which we concluded that the Family Court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over an offense that took place on the day immediately preceding Edward's eighteenth birthday[,] based on the common-law rule that a person reaches his or her next year in age at the first moment of the day prior to the anniversary date of his or her birth. Id. at 543. However, we remanded the case to the Family Court with directions to dismiss the petition. Id. at 544. Dismissal was appropriate in that case because the Family Court wholly lacked jurisdiction over Edward and the offense with which he was charged, and there was no court to which the delinquency petition could have been transferred. In the case before us, the Superior Court incontrovertibly has jurisdiction over felony crimes and eventually may have jurisdiction over Greenberg and other similarly situated seventeen-year-old offenders, if the Family Court elects to waive its jurisdiction over them. Therefore, we are of the opinion that our decision in Mastracchio, 546 A.2d at 170, should control the result in this case. In Mastracchio, this Court was confronted with a Superior Court conviction for a brutal homicide that was committed when the defendant was seventeen years old but prosecuted in Superior Court after the defendant's twenty-first birthday. Mastracchio, 546 A.2d at 167. This Court refused to vacate the conviction; we remanded the case to the Superior Court with directions to conduct a de novo hearing to determine whether [the] Family Court would have waived jurisdiction over the defendant in the first instance. Id. at 170. Notably, as a court of general jurisdiction, the Superior Court was vested with jurisdiction over first-degree murder and was not divested of that jurisdiction by virtue of the defendant's age, as long as the Family Court waived its jurisdiction over him. Accordingly, we are of the opinion that the Superior Court retains original jurisdiction over most felony crimes and those persons who are accused of committing them, and that the Superior Court may acquire jurisdiction over seventeen-year-old alleged offenders after a waiver hearing in the Family Court. Therefore, with respect to Greenberg, the next order of business is a waiver hearing in the Family Court.