Opinion ID: 1328164
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Appellant's Hearsay Contentions

Text: In the Appellant's second assignment of error, he maintains that testimony regarding the number of school days missed by the Appellant should not have been admitted into evidence during the March 2003 hearing because the truancy officer, as the individual officially in charge of such records, was unavailable to testify. As explained above, Appellant's counsel objected to the State's attempt to introduce evidence of lack of school attendance through Kathy Cox, a youth services worker. The youth services worker had obtained the information from an attendance report provided by the truancy officer. The truancy officer herself, however, was not present at the hearing. The court sustained the objection, in part, and prevented testimony as to specific days missed, but allowed that witness to testify regarding general information about the Appellant's continued lack of satisfactory school attendance. Two other witnesses, Tracy Keener and Kathy DeBose, testified about the Appellant's general absences from school without objection by Appellant's counsel. Despite the failure to object to continued investigation of this issue through testimony of Mr. Keener and Ms. DeBose, the Appellant contends on appeal that only the truancy officer should have been permitted to testify regarding absences, since she was the authority in charge of the official attendance records. During the hearing, the lower court observed as follows: I know Ms. Schillace [the truancy officer] wasn't here and ordinarily in Probation Revocation proceedings, hearsay is admissible. The Court can take into account the nature of the testimony that was presented and what weight to give it. In response to the Appellant's claims that the evidence should not have been introduced, the State argues that the Rules of Evidence did not apply to the dispositional hearing because it was similar in many respects to a probation revocation hearing, a proposition in accord with the lower court's quote above. Evidence of this nature is admissible, the State argues, as long as the juvenile's right to confront and cross-examine is preserved. In this case, Appellant's counsel freely and completely exercised his right to cross-examine the witnesses concerning their testimony. Further both the Appellant and his mother testified and admitted his excessive absences from school. In Damian, this Court reviewed the myriad of contexts in which this Court has previously addressed the issue of hearsay evidence in proceedings involving juveniles. This Court examined cases from the abuse and neglect, child custody, and juvenile transfer arenas, [11] and found that while it did not need to specifically rule on the [hearsay] issue raised in that appeal, the issues required clarification for future situations. 214 W.Va. at 619, 591 S.E.2d at 177. This Court consequently concluded as follows in Damian: ordinarily and in the absence of emergency circumstances a circuit court's decision under W.Va.Code, 49-5-11a(b)(2) [1998] to award custody of a juvenile status offender to the Department of Health and Human Resources and/or to place a juvenile status offender outside of their parents' home may not be based entirely upon hearsay evidence; and that the constitutional rights of due process, representation by counsel, notice, opportunity to be heard, and to present and cross-examine witnesses must be afforded to the juvenile and the affected parent in a proceeding brought pursuant to said statutory provision. Id. at 619, 591 S.E.2d at 177. Our review of the record reveals that the determinations made by the lower court subsequent to the March 2003 hearing were not based entirely upon hearsay evidence. In addition to the general information provided about the Appellant's absence from school, the Appellant and his mother also testified that the Appellant had not been attending school regularly. Moreover, the testimony regarding the failure of intervention techniques was also utilized by the lower court in arriving at the conclusion of home placement. Accordingly, we find no reversible error. We commend this Court's comments in Damian to the attention of the bench and bar for application in juvenile status offense matters such as the present case. Based upon the foregoing, we affirm the decision of the lower court. Affirmed.