Court Opinion

ID: 9694447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:41:51.933221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:01.555462
License: Public Domain

KERN, Associate Judge,
with whom KELLY, Associate Judge, joins, dissenting:
The court’s decision to entertain this concededly interlocutory appeal results from (1) its failure to apply the juvenile code the way Congress enacted it as a part of the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970 1 and (2) its refusal to recognize the long-standing distinction between criminal and juvenile proceedings first spelled out for this jurisdiction in comprehensive fashion by Judge Prettyman in Pee v. United States, 107 U.S.App.D.C. 47, 49-50, 274 F.2d 556, 558-559 (1959), and recently reaffirmed by this court. In re J. T., D.C.App., 290 A.2d 821 (1972).
We are required to start with the proposition enunciated by Mr. Justice Frankfurter concerning finality of an order or judgment as the absolute prerequisite to its appeal. He stated for the Supreme Court:
The general principle of federal appellate jurisdiction . . . requires that review of nisi prius proceedings await their termination by final judgment.

Congress has recognized the need of exceptions for interlocutory orders in certain types of proceedings where the damage of error unreviewed before the judgment is definitive and complete . . . has been deemed greater than the disruption caused by intermediate appeal. [DiBella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 124, 82 S.Ct. 654, 656, 7 L.Ed.2d 614 (1962).]
See 9 J. Moore, Federal Practice § 110.06 (2d ed. 1973).
*568Since it is conceded that the suppression order in this case is not a final judgment, we must ascertain whether Congress has provided for appellate review of this kind of interlocutory order. It is undisputed that the new juvenile code (i. e., Subchap-ter I of Chapter 23 of Title 16 of the D.C. Code) does not confer upon this court authority to review this particular interlocutory order.2 Neither has Congress in the statute governing our general appellate jurisdiction vested in us the right to hear interlocutory appeals in juvenile proceedings.3
Where then does the majority find authority for our jurisdiction to entertain the government’s interlocutory appeal in this case? Having found none in the carefully-drawn “juvenile code” enacted by Congress in 1970 to govern District of Columbia juvenile proceedings,4 it turns to that part of our Code denominated “Criminal Procedure.” Ignoring the multitude of decisions by this court, the federal circuit court, and the Supreme Court that a delinquency proceeding is not a criminal prosecution,5 the majority seizes upon Section 23-104(a), clearly a criminal statute,6 as being dispositive of the jurisdictional issue in this case. Section 104(a), contained in Title 23 which commences with a Section on “Conduct of Prosecutions” and ends with a Section on “Place of Execution”, reads in pertinent part:
The . . . District of Columbia may appeal an order, entered before the trial of a person charged with a criminal offense, which suppresses evidence if the Corporation Counsel conducting the prosecution for such violation certifies . . . the appeal is not taken for purpose of delay and the evidence is a substantial proof of the charge pending against the defendant. (Emphasis added.)
The majority then adopts the following syllogism: The petition filed in the Family Division in this case alleges the juvenile is a “delinquent child”;
a “delinquent child” is defined in D.C. Code 1973, § 16-2301 as a child who has “committed a delinquent act”;
Section 16-2301 further defines a “delinquent act” as an act “designated as an offense under the law of the District of Columbia” ;
and, therefore, the juvenile in this case is “a person charged with a criminal offense”, as provided by Section 23-104 and we may entertain this appeal.
But this approach ignores the fact that Section 104 expressly applies only to an order entered before “trial”, whereas the or*569der in the instant appeal was entered by the court before the “factfinding hearing”. The “factfinding hearing” in a juvenile proceeding, as enacted by Congress in the 1970 Act under which the instant case was brought, is a term of art which Congress (a) has defined as “a hearing to determine whether the allegations of a petition [of delinquency] are true” and (b) has provided may be conducted differently than the trial of an adult.7 Given the fact that Congress has specifically differentiated between a “trial” and a “factfinding hearing”, we cannot read the one term as synonymous with the other.
Also, under any accepted principle of statutory construction, Section 104 could not be read as applicable to the juvenile proceeding in this case because appellee is not “charged with a criminal offense”, In re Coward, D.C.App., 254 A.2d 730, 732 (1969), remanded on other grounds, 139 U.S.App.D.C. 30, 429 F.2d 214 (1970); the Corporation Counsel in this delinquency proceeding is not “conducting” a “prosecution”, D.C.Code 1973, § 16-2305(f); and, appellee is not “the defendant”, Pee v. United States, supra, 107 U.S.App.D.C. at 49, 274 F.2d 556.
Apparently realizing that its manner of construing Section 104 is contrary to the way that Section is written and elides the long-standing distinction between juvenile and criminal cases, the majority invokes the rubbery concepts of “fundamental fairness” and “beneficent purposes” to support its conclusion that we have jurisdiction of this appeal.8 But no principle is more crystal clear than that an appellate court may hear appeals from non-final orders, as is the order in the instant appeal, only if the legislature has expressly conferred jurisdiction to hear such an interlocutory appeal. Since Congress has not granted us authority to review this particular kind of interlocutory order in a juvenile proceeding any considerations of fairness and good purpose are of course beside the point.
It is true that the government in this case spins forth an alluring “public policy” argument that it should have the right to appeal from suppression orders in juvenile cases else dozens of delinquents charged with serious crimes will somehow escape unscathed from the toils of the law.9 This is good advocacy but wholly irrelevant to the issue of jurisdiction presented by this appeal. Historically, prosecutors made the same argument with respect to criminal suppression orders, which were formerly not reviewable on appeal, but the Supreme Court pointed out that it was for the legislature to grant the relief prosecutors sought. See Di Bella v. United States, supra, 369 U.S. at 130-131, 82 S.Ct. 654, 7 L.Ed.2d 614.
However desirable it may appear from a “public policy” standpoint for the court to remedy the omission by Congress from the 1970 Act and to confer upon the government the right to appeal from suppression orders in juvenile cases, it is up to Con-' gress, not this court, to remedy the disadvantage resulting from the statutory void *570about which the government now complains. As Judge Tamm of the Circuit Court here so recently reminded us :
[I]n supplanting congressional objectives with our own purposes and objectives, we are usurping a power which does not belong to us. For judges to think otherwise is not a mistake but a delusion. [Viola v. United States, 483 F.2d 1209 (D.C.Cir., dissenting opinion, June 13, 1973).]
Since I cannot join in the judicial activism the court today embraces, I respectfully dissent.

. Pub.L.No.91-358, July 29, 1970, 84 Stat. 473, 522-543.

. D.C.Code 1973, § 1&-2327.

. D.C.Code 1973, § 11-721 (a) (2).

. See Lawton, Juvenile Proceedings — The New Look, 20 Am.U.L.Rev. 342-43 (1970-71), which characterizes the chapter governing Family Division proceedings as “the first complete juvenile procedure code in the history of the District of Columbia outlining with precision the procedures to be followed in the post-Gault era.” (Emphasis added.)

. The mere fact that a juvenile in a delinquency hearing is afforded the same constitutional protection against an unreasonable search and seizure as a criminal defendant does not transmogrify his juvenile proceeding into a criminal proceeding so as now to entitle us to invoke ibe criminal provisions of Section 23-104 (a) (1) for a Family Division proceeding. McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 541, 91 S.Ct. 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 647 (1971); In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 366-367, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970); In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 21, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed. 2d 527 (1967).

.The Department of Justice witness sponsoring its enactment by Congress as a part of the Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970 explained that it was to provide “a comprehensive format for appeal by the prosecution in a criminal case.” (Emphasis added.) See Hearings on H.R.13689 and H.R. 12854 Before Subcomm. No. 1 of the Comm, on the District of Columbia, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. 109 (1969).

. See D.C.Code 1973, § 16-2301(16) and §§ 16-2316 to 16-2317.

. The majority says (at p. 563) :
We cannot conceive that it would be fundamentally unfair to allow the District to challenge an order entered prehearing, which suppresses evidence in a juvenile delinquency proceeding. Nor can we conceive that any beneficent purposes of the Juvenile Court Act will be defeated by such an appeal.

. Appellant’s Supplemental Memorandum, pp. 11-12, refers to astronomical increases in aggravated assault, robbery and burglary allegedly committed by persons over 16 years of age. Fortunately Congress recognized and provided for in the new juvenile code the right of the government to transfer juveniles to the Criminal Division for criminal prosecution. D.C.Code 1973, § 16-2307. As we have seen above, the government pursuant to Section 104 has the right to appeal from pretrial suppression orders in criminal prosecutions.