Court Opinion

ID: 9678949
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:37:13.353337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:08.994177
License: Public Domain

Wilkie, J.
(dissenting). I would affirm the trial court’s order making the writ of prohibition absolute.
The majority concludes that the pertinent statute (sec. 48.12), giving the juvenile court exclusive jurisdiction over any “child who is alleged to be delinquent,” is ambiguous. I agree. But the majority’s statutory construction turns on its holding that the phrase “who is alleged to be delinquent” qualifies the word “child” and therefore concludes that whether or not the juvenile court has exclusive jurisdiction depends on whether the child is over eighteen when he is “alleged to be delinquent” even when the fact is that the child was under eighteen at the time the offense was actually committed. Such a construction is contrary to the basic purpose of the Children’s Code, which clearly contemplates special proceedings under special juvenile courts for persons considered to be children, which proceedings are wholly different from regular criminal proceedings for those who are no longer juveniles. No one would quarrel with the proposition that the statute of limitations runs from the time the offense is committed, or that determination of venue rests with the “county where the violation occurred,” 1 or that all defenses, including insanity, are based on circumstances at the time of the misconduct. It stands to reason that the question of whether the whole matter should be treated as a juvenile or criminal *501proceeding should also be based on the facts as they existed at the time the alleged act was committed.
The child welfare committee that spent years drafting the Children’s Code, recommended in 1955, through the Legislative Council, “that there be an orderly statutory procedure for determining which children should go before juvenile court and which should go before criminal court.” 2 It proposed “that all children under 18 go first into juvenile court where, if the child is 16 or older, the court may order the case transferred to criminal court either because the interest of the public or the best interest of the child requires that the criminal court deal with the case.” 3 The Children’s Code, as adopted in 1955, clearly intended to drop the previous system under which juvenile courts and criminal courts had concurrent jurisdiction over all delinquent children of sixteen to eighteen. The code provided that proceedings on any children between the ages of sixteen to eighteen be commenced in the juvenile court and gave that court the power to waive jurisdiction under proper circumstances. In recommending the new system, the legislative report objected to the old system on the grounds that: “The decision regarding the court into which a particular youngster is taken may be made by any official who handles the case before the court hearing — the arresting officer, the sheriff, the district attorney.” 4
In my opinion, the majority opinion will frustrate the declared intention of the Children’s Code, i.e., the promotion of the best interests of the children of Wisconsin, by permitting prosecutors, alerted to the commission of an alleged offense by an individual while under the age of eighteen, to delay filing charges against the alleged offender until after he has reached eighteen. *502In its opinion, the majority does not give a liberal construction to sec. 48.12, Stats., contrary to the express provisions of sec. 48.01 (3) .5
Where the public interest requires, when an individual, although a child over sixteen but under eighteen when an alleged offense is committed, is over eighteen when charged or proceeded against, the juvenile court may waive jurisdiction to the criminal court. I think the overall interests of the public, both in effective administration of criminal justice and in the administration of the entire Children’s Code, will be better served by having the juvenile court pass on the question of whether jurisdiction should be waived and thus have that court determine the entire matter, as the legislature intended, of whether proceedings should be handled as a juvenile or criminal matter and that court can better make its decision on the basis of the individual’s age at the time he committed the act.

 Sec. 48.16, Stats.

 Report of Wisconsin Legislative Council, Vol. VI, Part I, Conclusions and Recommendations of the Child Welfare Committee, March, 1955, at page 26.

 Id.

 Id. at pages 25, 26.

 See sec. 48.01 (3), Stats. “Construction. This chapter shall be liberally construed to effect the objectives in sub. (2). The best interests of the child shall always be of paramount consideration, but the court shall also consider the interest of the parents or guardian of the child and the interest of the public.”