Court Opinion

ID: 9674286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:26:05.431296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.716281
License: Public Domain

POPE, Justice
(dissenting).
The question presented is whether George Rivera Santana, a fourteen year old boy, was entitled to be tried for the offense of rape, at the adjudicatory stage of a delinquency proceeding, under the quantum of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, instead of by the preponderance of the evidence. The court of civil appeals reversed the trial court’s judgment because Santana was not tried by the reasonable doubt measure of proof. 431 S.W.2d 558. I would affirm the judgment of the court of civil appeals.
A delinquent child is, among other statutory definitions, one who, within age limits, “violates any penal law of this state of the grade of felony.” Sec. 3, Art. 2338-1, Vern.Ann.Tex.Civ.Stats. The definition of a felony is found in the Texas Penal Code and is one which “may — not must — be punishable by death or by confinement in the penitentiary * * Art. 47, Vern.Ann.Tex.Penal Code. The issue submitted to the jury in the adjudication of Santana asked, “Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that George Rivera Santana raped Frone Mintz at the time and on the occasion in question?” The court instructed the jury that “ ‘rape,’ as used in this charge is a violation of the penal law of this State of the grade of a felony. You are further charged that ‘rape’ is the carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent, obtained by force or threats.” Then followed instructions about “force,” “threats,” “consent,” and “alibi.” Following the trial, Santana was committed to the Texas Youth Council, thence to confinement and treatment. This is the nature of this “civil” trial.

The Adjudicatory Stage

A correct decision requires us to focus upon the stage of the juvenile proceeding with which we are dealing. Settled practices recognize three stages in juvenile’ proceedings, (1) the intake, (2) the adjudicatory hearing, and (3) the disposition. The first stage is the pre-judicial or intake stage, at which time juvenile authorities are confronted with and handle, for varying periods of time, cases of all kinds — truancy, insolence, smoking, runaways, morals, misdemeanors, felonies. The second stage is that of adjudication, the purpose of which is to determine judicially the truth of the allegations in a petition in delinquency. The third stage, disposition, is the process in reaching a considered judgment of the best method for handling the child adjudged a delinquent. See, In the Matter of J. F., 17 Ohio Misc. 40, 242 N.E.2d 604 (1968).
To accommodate the aims of juvenile philosophy with realities, it. is important that one recognize the significant difference in juvenile procedures between the intake stage up to the adjudicatory hearing and the procedures required at the adjudicatory or judicial stage. The U.S. Supreme Court, in In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967) carefully limited its decision to the adjudicatory stage, saying:
“We do not even consider the entire process relating to juvenile ‘delinquents.’ For example, we are not here concerned with the procedures or constitutional rights applicable to the pre-judicial stages of the juvenile process, nor do we direct our attention to the post-adjudicative or dispositional process * * * We consider only the problems presented to us by this case. These relate to the proceedings by which a determination is made as to whether a juvenile is a ‘delinquent’ as a result of alleged misconduct on his part, with the consequence that he may be committed to a state institution. As to these proceedings, there appears to be little current dissent from the proposition *624that the Due Process Clause has a role to play.” 387 U.S. at 13, 87 S.Ct. at 1436.
The court also carefully distinguished non-criminal misconduct and conduct, which, if done by an adult, would be criminal. It made a third distinction, that of a disposition by commitment to an institution and a disposition other than a deprivation of liberty:
“We conclude that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that in respect of proceedings to determine delinquency which may result in commitment to an institution in which the juvenile’s freedom is curtailed, the child and his parents must be notified of the child’s right to be represented by counsel retained by them, * * 387 U.S. at 41, 87 S.Ct. at 1451.
By this process the court looked at the judicial stage of the proceedings and the sanctions imposed rather than the State’s good motives. Cadena, Due Process and the Juvenile Offender, 1 St. Mary’s Law Review, 23, 28.
Santana is located at the same stage as was Gault, at the adjudicatory stage, with a felony charged, which resulted in the loss of liberty by commitment to an institution. We are not, therefore, concerned with any limitations upon care, counseling, treatment, rehabilitation, or other beneficences which he might have received and during some period of the first or third stages. Our concern is not with juvenile philosophy generally. Our concern is whether Santana has, in fact, been judicially found to be a delinquent according to due process. He declares he is innocent of the charge of delinquency; and upon principles of justice, fairness, and equal treatment that others receive when charged with rape, that he neither needs nor deserves the State’s benevolence.
To hold that an act of the Legislature settles this case because it says that juvenile misconduct is a civil or a non-criminal proceeding is too easy an answer. Gault faced this issue squarely, and held that labels one way or the other were inconclusive. It did not jettison the juvenile philosophy of treatment and rehabilitation. It recognized that there is room for the benefits of juvenile procedures which classify as non-criminal a juvenile who is adjudged delinquent. The court expressly emphasized that a delinquency adjudication did not operate as a civil disability or disqualify him for civil service appointment. Following those statements, the court said, “There is no reason why the application of due process requirements should interfere with such provisions.” (Emphasis added).

General Acceptance of Gault

Gault has had a great impact upon all professionals interested in juvenile behavior. Juvenile courts have begun to take their correct posture as courts, and rights of juveniles have been brought back into the mainstream of fairness under our received principles of due process. The decision in Gault has met with general approval, except for the consensus that it should have come sooner. In proper perspective, “ * * * courts do not solve problems; they resolve issues. As long as it remains a court, the juvenile court must be limited to this role.” Tenney, The Utopian World of Juvenile Courts, Vol. 383, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Paul Tappan was among the first who questioned irregular and loose practices in handling juveniles. He wrote in 1949 in Juvenile Delinquency: “The presumption is commonly adopted that since the State has determined to protect and save its wards, it will do no injury to them through its diverse officials so that these children need no due process protections against injury. Several exposures to court; a jail remand of days, weeks, or even months; and a long period in a correctional school with young thieves, muggers, and murderers — these can do no conceivable harm if the State’s purpose be beneficent and the procedure be ‘chancery’. Children are adjudicated in this way every day with*625out visible manifestations of due process. They are incarcerated. They become adult criminals, too, in thankless disregard of the State’s good intentions as parens patriae."
Scholars, who work in the field of juvenile offenders, are harmonious in their views that Gault was long overdue. Some of their conclusions are collected in the transcript of recent programs sponsored by The Institute of Continuing Legal Education, published in the volume entitled, Gault: What-Now for the Juvenile Court? (1968). Norval Morris, Professor of Law and Criminology, University of Chicago, said: “What I have anxiety about are the reality problems which develop when these types of rescue operations become institutionalized. What happens is that rescue operations are likely to ignore the preferences of those who are to be rescued. * * * If an inquisitorial, nonadversary system is right for children, why is it not right for adults? If benevolence is what guides us, why should benevolence stop short with children? The case was not easy to make even before Gault, but certainly after Gault it is impossible.”
Henry H. Foster, Professor of Law, New York University, said: “The commendable objectives of juvenile court legislation, whether illusory or not, never did justify the abandonment of the accumulated wisdom and experience of the common law.” He quotes Gault for the idea that the informal procedures, “contrary to the original expectation, may themselves constitute a further obstacle to effective treatment of the delinquent to the extent that they engender in the child a sense of injustice provoked by seemingly all-powerful and chal-lengeless exercise of authority by judges and probation officers.” He concludes:
“The infatuation of law with behavioral science has not been a happy one whenever law has forsaken her traditional character. A court is a court is a court. Dignity, decorum, fair procedure, and tradition are essential to and expected of the judicial process * * *.
t( * * ⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ‡
“In retrospect, it seems incredible that we should ever have abdicated the judicial function of fact finding or have departed from the lessons every real lawyer knows in his bones. Moreover, it is not good social work, criminology, or psychiatry, to treat people unfairly, to deny them due notice or to deprive» them of a fair hearing.”
Robert D. Vinter, Associate Dean and Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work, University of Michigan, said: “If it did nothing else, however, Gault affirmed that juvenile proceedings cannot be justified as feasting on a different kind of law and thereby immune from the requirements of due process and constitutional privileges.”
These conclusions had been published in the Report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement even before Gault. Instead of getting children into juvenile court to help them, the Report concluded that the pronouncement of delinquency should be used only as a last resort, and it recommended that the range of conduct for which courts intervene should be narrowed. “Serious consideration, at least, should be given to complete elimination of the court’s power over children for non-criminal conduct.” But, when a case does reach court level, the Report said:
“Court adjudication and disposition of those offenders should no longer be viewed solely as a diagnosis and prescription for cure, but should be frankly recognized as an authoritative court judgment expressing society’s claim to protection * * *. Accordingly, the adjudicatory hearing should be consistent with basic principles of due process.”
A juvenile court, therefore, which works with juveniles at the adjudicatory stage, is at last a court; a court which sits to resolve issues under principles of due process, which is the best method yet devised for fair play. Gault accords a juvenile at the adjudicatory stage the due process *626rights to notice, counsel, confrontation and cross-examination, and the privilege against self incrimination that any other person charged with a felony receives. In according these rights and privileges Gault took note of “the awesome prospect of incarceration in a State institution,” and so did Kent. It took notice of the proceeding in which “the issue is whether the child will be found to be ‘delinquent’ and subjected to the loss of liberty for years.” It said “There is no difference in this respect between adult and juvenile proceedings of the sort here involved.” (Emphasis added).

The Reasonable Doubt Rule and Due Process

The real question then is not what is best for Santana; it is whether the reasonable doubt standard in a proceeding of a felony grade which may lead to a deprivation of liberty, is a part of due process. Why does the law recognize a division in standards of proof? The. reasons for the “preponderance of evidence standard are found in the policy of the law to indulge no presumption in favor of either party to a dispute of a civil nature, or one between persons or entities in cases involving pecuniary damages or civil status, when, even in the event of loss, the party may retrieve his loss by his future efforts. Criminal cases have required the presumption of innocence as well as the greater measure of proof because the law has learned that one’s liberty, reputation, future livelihood, career, or even one’s life may depend upon the outcome. It is for that reason that one is presumed innocent of crime, while a civil litigant is not presumed correct in his claim or defense. See Underhill, Criminal Evidence, 4th Ed. § 7 (1935). “This rule is obviously based upon broad principles of humanity, which forbid the infliction of punishment until the commission of the crime is to a reasonable certainty established. It has received the sanction of the most enlightened jurists in all civilized communities, and in all ages; and with the increasing regard for human life and individual security, it is quite apparent that the energy of the rule is in no degree impaired.” 30 Am.Jur.2d Evidence, § 1170.
A jury and a reviewing court perform differently when testing a record under the two rules. Under the preponderance of the evidence standard, a finding may be supportable as tipping the scales even by weak circumstances, so long as the inferential leap is not too great. A search of the record for direct evidence or strong circumstances is the limit of a review. A trial by the reasonable doubt standard compels a conviction of the mind. Here a search of the record of evidence which compels a moral, not an absolute, certainty of the truth is required.
An adult charged with a felony, “however degraded or debased he may be, and no matter what may be the enormity of the crime charged against him, must always be presumed innocent of the crime for which he is indicted until his guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Underhill’s Criminal Evidence, § 41 (4th ed. 1935); Powell v. State of Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932). Such is the rule in all states of this Union. Few precedents concerning the rule have been written by the United States Supreme Court, which is understandable because of the universality of the principle. Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 15 S.Ct. 394, 39 L.Ed. 481 (1894), traces the rule to the common law as well as the Roman law. Mr. Justice White wrote the opinion, and while his historical research has been criticized by Thayer in his, “A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law, (1898), at pages 551-576; Thayer attributes substantially the same statement of the rule of presumptive innocence to Bracton as early as 1260, and also to a number of later English decisions. Thayer, supra, 553. Cf. IX, Wigmore on Evidence (§§ 2497, 2498, 3rd ed. 1940). In 1958 the United States Supreme Court said in Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958):
“Where one party has at stake an interest of transcending value — as a crim*627inal defendant his liberty — this margin of error is reduced as to him by the process of placing on the other party the burden of producing a sufficiency of proof in the first instance, and of persuading the factfinder at the conclusion of the trial of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process commands that no man shall lose his liberty unless the government has borne the burden of producing the evidence and convincing the factfinder of his guilt.” 357 U.S. 513, 78 S.Ct. 1332 (1958).
In Brooks v. United States, 164 F.2d 142 (5th Cir.1947) the court said:
“[D]ue process as to each defendant required for a conviction that the evidence be strong enough to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis than the guilt of that defendant of the precise conspiracy charged.”
United States v. Costanzo, 395 F.2d 441 (4th Cir.1968), in discussing the standard of proof required in a juvenile case, discussed the “reasonable doubt” standard and said it was a part of due process. Its language is instructive:
“For nearly two centuries this higher standard of proof required in criminal cases has been recognized as a basic procedural safeguard and has been adopted by virtually every jurisdiction in this country. See IX, Wigmore on Evidence, § 2497 (3rd ed., 1940, Supp.1964); see also McCormick, Evidence, § 321 (1954). The Supreme Court has termed the Government’s obligation to prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt ‘a settled standard of the criminal law.’ Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 138, 75 S.Ct. 127, 137, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954). In Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 174, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1310, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949), the Court observed that, ‘Guilt in a criminal cause must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt,’ and explained that requirement in Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 525-526, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 1342, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1957), noting: ‘Where one party has at stake an interest of transcending value —as a criminal defendant his liberty— * * * [the Government has the burden] of persuading the factfinder at the conclusion of the trial of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process commands that no man shall lose his liberty unless the Government has borne the burden of producing the evidence and convincing the factfinder of his guilt.’ A juvenile’s liberty demands no less protection.” (Emphasis added).

Unsettled State of The Law

Juvenile cases, decided after Gault, have not been consistent in their decisions concerning the measure of proof. Some have held the reasonable doubt rule should be followed, either because of due process or upon principles of equal protection. In re Urbasek, 38 Il1.2d 535, 232 N.E.2d 716 (1968); United States v. Constanzo, 395 F.2d 441 (4th Cir.1968). Others have approved the preponderance of the evidence standard. In re Dennis M., 75 Cal.Rptr. 1, 450 P.2d 296 (1969); In re Ellis, 253 A.2d 789 (D.C.App.1969); In the Matter of Samuel W., 24 N.Y.2d 196, 299 N.Y.S.2d 414, 247 N.E.2d 253 (1969); In re Agler, 15 Ohio App.2d 240, 240 N.E.2d 874 (1968); State v. Arenas, 453 P.2d 915 (Or.1969). A plethora of law review articles and notes is equally in disagreement.
One case needs discussion, since its history is the occasion for this opinion. This court at first refused the application for writ of error and approved the decision of the court of civil appeals which held that the standard for proof in juvenile adjudicatory hearings was the reasonable doubt rule. After the United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in DeBacker v. Brainard, 183 Neb. 461, 161 N.W.2d 508 (1968), we granted the writ in this case. In my opinion DeBacker should be reversed without regard to the question about standard of proof. The court wrote twelve pages about the right of Nebraska to deny a juvenile a jury trial *628and one casual paragraph about the standard of proof. Santana had a jury trial and that point is not before us. The majority of the court in DeBacker correctly held that the proof should be beyond a reasonable doubt. The majority also held that the juvenile was entitled to a jury trial. However, the Nebraska Constitution requires more than a mere majority to declare a law unconstitutional, so notwithstanding the majority views, that view failed, and the juvenile wound up without a jury trial and without a trial by the reasonable doubt rule. Where are we? The majority upheld both of the juvenile’s contentions, yet had to deny them. Moreover, the minority but prevailing view was voiced in an opinion which picked a fight with the Supreme Court about Gault. Sound reasons existed for the Supreme Court’s taking jurisdiction of the DeBacker case. The Supreme Court, either in that case or this one, can settle this problem.
Liberty is our real concern. Perhaps no greater harm could come to Santana than the State’s misguided efforts to rehabilitate him if, in fact, he is innocent to begin with. His plea is that he wants fairness first; therapy second. With equal logic, one could have reasoned before Gault that the benefits of treatment accorded a juvenile are so helpful and beneficial to the juvenile that the State can be careless in notifying him or his parents about the offense, or providing him a lawyer, or permitting hearsay from an absent complainant, or by tolerating his self incrimination. The rights which Gault accords a juvenile reduce the chances for unfairness and injustice. The reason for the reasonable doubt rule is no different.
The Uniform Juvenile Court Act, as finally drafted and adopted in August, 1968, like Urbasek, in my opinion, follows the spirit of fairness which surfaced after six decades, in Gault. It would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Section 29b of the proposed act provides:
“If the court finds on proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the child committed the acts by reason of which he is alleged to be delinquent or unruly it shall proceed immediately or at a postponed hearing to hear evidence as to whether the child is in need of treatment or rehabilitation and to make and file its findings thereon. In the absence of evidence to the contrary evidence of the commission of acts which constitute a felony is sufficient to sustain a finding that the child is in need of treatment or rehabilitation. If the court finds that the child is not in need of treatment or rehabilitation it shall dismiss the proceeding and discharge the child from any detention or other restriction theretofore ordered.”
The Texas Juvenile Act does not provide for adjudications of juveniles by the preponderance of the evidence rule, and no decisions of this court have so held. Generally it has been held by this court, that while constitutional rights of juveniles must be protected, procedures should be those used in civil cases. State v. Thomasson, 154 Tex. 151, 275 S.W.2d 463 (1955); Dendy v. Wilson, 142 Tex. 460, 179 S.W.2d 269, 151 A.L.R. 1217 (1944). This court can and should accord the fairer and more protective rule of reasonable doubt without impairing the Juvenile Law and the philosophy of our former opinions even though the Supreme Court should ultimately hold that a preponderance of the evidence is satisfactory in delinquency trials.
I would hold that a juvenile, at the adjudicatory stage, when his liberty is at issue, has the right to have his denial of the accused act tested by the standard, beyond a reasonable doubt. I would affirm the judgment of the court of civil appeals.
SMITH and STEAKLEY, JJ., concur.