Court Opinion

ID: 9573360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:53:23.93423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:35:11.330237
License: Public Domain

Fátzer, J.,
concurring and dissenting: I do not find the issues of this case as simple and straightforward as does the court. For me, the record is not susceptible to the reading given it. The court has proceeded to declare portions of the 1966 juvenile code (L. 1965, Chs. 278, 279, 280, effective January 1,1966) unconstitutional purely upon the assumption that some of the questions decided are presented in the record1. I would rest the decision of this case solely on the basis that the judge of the juvenile court of Sedgwick County had jurisdiction of the alleged wayward child it discharged and direct that it assume jurisdiction of all alleged juvenile offenders sixteen and seventeen years of age and dispose of their cases in accordance with the juvenile code as the facts and circumstances warrant. I cannot agree the court should here go further and strike down the provisions of K. S. A. 38-826 (a) (5) upon the grounds that the commitment of sixteen and seventeen-year-old youths to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory is unconstitutional. As hereafter indicated, the question is simply not before the court for consideration.
It is unnecessary to further detail the progressive and humani*235tarian purpose of the Kansas juvenile code. That has been done in the court’s opinion and in the decisions of this court which are cited. The revised juvenile code which went into effect on July 1, 1957 (L. 1957, Ch. 256 [K. S. A. 38-801 — 38-838]) carries out the philosophy that an act committed by a juvenile, no matter what the act might be, is not considered a crime, but a juvenile offense. This philosophy has been a conscientious state policy of long standing, and the Kansas juvenile code is considered by many states as a model code for dealing with juvenile offenders.
The 1966 juvenile code here considered amended eleven sections of the 1957 juvenile code: K. S. A. 38-802; 806; 808; 815; 816; 819; 821; 824; 826; 828 and 836, and among other things, extended the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to include sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys. As quoted in the court’s opinion, 38-826 (a) (5) provides that a child adjudged to be a delinquent or a miscreant child, if such child is a boy sixteen years of age or over, may be ordered committed to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory by the judge of the juvenile court, and such commitment “shall be subject to the same conditions and rights as would be the case if such commitment were made by a district court . . .”
I am in accord with the court’s opinion the juvenile court of Sedgwick County had exclusive original jurisdiction of the sixteen-year-old alleged wayward child and it erred in discharging him and it also erred in refusing to assume jurisdiction of the person of a child sixteen or seventeen years of age who was alleged to be delinquent, miscreant or wayward as defined in 38-802. It is clearly within the power of the legislature to classify persons by age for the purpose of dealing with them as delinquents, miscreants or as wayward children. The fact that the legislature deemed it proper to increase the jurisdiction of the juvenile court over male youths from sixteen years of age to those under eighteen years cannot be questioned by a juvenile court, nor afford a judge of that court valid reasons to deny jurisdiction of youthful offenders falling within that age classification.
Our Bill of Rights, including Section 2, which has been held to be the equivalent of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (Tri-State Hotel Co. v. Londerholm, 195 Kan. 748, 408 P. 2d 877, Syl. ¶ 1, and cases cited), is designed, among other things, to secure to our citizens certain “rights” which at times had formerly been denied them, and it does not follow that the state is not concerned with them, yet such rights are personal *236in nature and must be asserted by the individual who claims their violation. This is so fundamental in our judicial process as to require no citation of authority.
Rasically, my objection to the court’s sweeping decision striking down portions of 38-806 (a) (5) is twofold. First, as applied to the 1966 amendments, the precise nature of the “rights” of juvenile male offenders allegedly involved in this case are not clear. In fact, they do not exist. There is no delinquent or miscreant child’s personal or constitutional rights before this court for adjudication. The only youthful offender to which the act might have been applied was discharged by the judge of the juvenile court of Sedgwick County. That court has not assumed jurisdiction of any alleged juvenile offenders, and no delinquent or miscreant child has been committed to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory. In speculating upon the alleged wayward child’s case when he discharged him, the judge of the juvenile court said:
“. . . If this case were to proceed to hearing and after hearing the evidence the Court found this boy to actually have committed this act of glue sniffing and were to adjudicate him wayward, it would be this boy’s third wayward adjudication, and he would in all probability be adjudicated a miscreant child, and could be committed to the State Industrial Reformatory . . .” (Emphasis supplied.)
The record indicates that the judge of the juvenile court voted against use of the so-called “reformatory section” of the 1966 amendments at the Kansas Probate Judge’s Association, and he testified in this case he would not use that section to commit juvenile offenders to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory when rendering judgment in a juvenile court case. Nonetheless, based upon this conjecture, the court has stated the wayward youth “. . . would have been adjudged a miscreant and thereby made eligible for commitment to the state industrial reformatory at Hutchinson, a penal institution.” Acting purely upon this assumption the court declared that portion of 38-826 (a) (5) indicated in the opinion, to be unconstitutional. In the recent case of Kent v. United States, 383 U. S. 541, 16 L. Ed. 2d 84, 86 S. Ct. 1045, the Supreme Court of the United States said “[M]eaningful review requires that the reviewing court . . . should not be remitted to assumptions . . .” I concur in that view. It is a long-standing rule of constitutional law that courts will not refuse to pass on the constitutionality of statutes in any proceeding in which such determination is necessarily involved, but unnecessary considerations of attacks on then-validity will be avoided and courts will not pass upon constitutional *237questions not duly raised and insisted upon since they are not properly before it. (State, ex rel., v. Fadely, 180 Kan. 652, 308 P. 2d 537, and cases cited.) No substantial claims of constitutional violation is properly raised or presented, and it is clear to me the judge of the juvenile court may not advance constitutional claims for an alleged wayward child based solely upon conjecture of what his findings or judgment might have been had he not discharged the child from his court’s jurisdiction.
We can rightly expect the juvenile code will be applied under many and varied conditions, but until it is actually applied this court is purely “guessing” on what questions will arise and under what facts and circumstances they will be presented. To illustrate, had the judge of the juvenile court assumed jurisdiction of the alleged wayward child and found from the evidence and records of the court he was a miscreant child and ordered him committed to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory, the miscreant child could allege that, in a habeas corpus proceeding, his civil right of personal liberty was infringed and present specific questions by which tihis court could measure his constitutional rights under Section 2 of our Bill of Rights. It goes without saying this court should not “assume” in some fanciful case, that constitutional rights have been or will be violated by the judge of a juvenile court in dealing with juvenile offenders. Assuming that, as the court holds, the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory is a penal institution, a commitment of a delinquent or miscreant child to that reformatory might, under circumstances not here presented, be held to be unconstitutional, and under other circumstances be held to be lawful and proper, as hereafter detailed. However, based upon the assumptions heretofore noted, the court’s opinion gives us no chance to pass upon the validity of the commitment of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old delinquent youth whose case has been referred to the district court where he is charged with a felony and given all the essential constitutional rights of an adult charged with crime, and when found guilty by a jury as being a delinquent child as defined in 38-802, he is remanded back to the juvenile court for judgment and sentence as provided in the act.
Second, the court proceeds to strike down 38-826 {a) (5) upon the ground a sixteen or seventeen-year-old delinquent or miscreant child may not be confined in the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory without a trial by a jury in the criminal sense wherein the youthful offender is tried as an adult with all the accompanying essential *238constitutional safeguards. In the words of the court “confinement in a penal institution will convert the proceedings from juvenile to criminal and require the observance of constitutional safeguards,” (p. 223) and that “the provision of Section 6 (a) (5) of Chapter 278, Laws of 1965, [K. S. A. 38-826 (a) (5)] which authorizes the juvenile court to commit a boy 16 years of age or over to the state industrial reformatory, is unconstitutional, and the portion thereof which provides ‘and if any boy sixteen (16) years of age or over is committed to the state industrial reformatory such commitment shall be subject to the same conditions and rights as would be the case if such commitment were made by a district court’ is also unconstitutional.” (p. 224.)
In my opinion, the court does not have this question before it. When current criminal statistics of the state are brought into proper focus, the impact of the court’s sweeping decision becomes readily apparent. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is the only statewide agency which compiles a record of crimes committed in the state and the age of the persons committing them. The police departments of the cities, the sheriffs’ offices of the counties, and the State Highway Patrol make monthly reports of this information to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. These records indicate that in 1965 there were 11,592 crimes committed by persons under eighteen years of age and that 3,982 of those youthful offenders were referred to juvenile courts or to probation departments. Most important is the astounding fact that these records show more crimes are being committed, with respect to burglary, larceny, auto thep and arson, and perhaps other crimes, by offenders under eighteen years of age than by all persons over eighteen years of age. The same trend is established for the first three months of 1966. This is impressive evidence. The record indicates that the present facilities of the boys industrial school are wholly inadequate to rehabilitate youthful offenders of this number, and the legislature clearly intended that the facilities of the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory should be used to reform persistent offenders of this age group.
The jurisdiction to determine the preliminary question, which the court holds to be “critically important” as detailed in the opinion, whether an alleged delinquent child shall be proceeded against as a criminal or as a delinquent, pursuant to 38-808, resides exclusively in the juvenile court and this court should not assume those provisions will be ignored by the judges of the juvenile courts, *239or in view of the foregoing criminal statistics, that they will not be consistently applied. Hence, I ask, what is the status of a delinquent offender less than eighteen years of age who violates a criminal statute, which if done by a person eighteen years of age or over, would make him liable to be arrested and prosecuted for the commission of a felony, and is referred by a proper order to the district court pursuant to 38-808, and charged, tried and convicted of committing a felony, with all the essential constitutional safeguards afforded an adult offender, and the jury’s verdict is that the child is a delinquent child as defined in 38-802, and he is remanded to the juvenile court for judgment and sentence? Can it be contended the provisions of 38-826 (a) (5) are unconstitutional because the juvenile court, not the district court, orders him committed to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory? The court’s decision holds the commitment of such delinquent youth is unconstitutional. I do not agree.
Prior to the enactment of the 1966 amendments, a male offender sixteen or seventeen years of age, under the same facts and circumstances, that is, charged, tried and convicted of a felony with all essential constitutional safeguards in the district court, could be lawfully committed by that court to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory pursuant to K. S. A. 76-2306 which reads:
“Any male person between the ages of sixteen (16) and twenty-five (25) who shall be convicted for the first time of any offense punishable by confinement in the state penitentiary may, in the discretion of the trial judge, be sentenced either to the state penitentiary or to the Kansas state industrial reformatory.”
In the recent case of State v. Crow, 196 Kan. 663, 414 P. 2d 54, this court construed and applied the statute and no one has ever entertained the thought that the confinement of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old youth- in the reformatory under such circumstances was unconstitutional.
Under the 1966 amendments to the juvenile code, the jurisdiction of sixteen and seventeen-year-old male juvenile offenders committing felonies has been removed from the district courts and the juvenile courts now have exclusive original jurisdiction. Rut the court’s opinion makes it impossible for a juvenile court to confine them in the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory under circumstances where they have been properly referred to the district court pursuant to 38-808, tried by a jury with all accompanying constitutional safeguards, found to be delinquent as defined in the act, and remanded to the juvenile court for sentence.
*240As indicated, the court has passed upon constitutional questions in this case which are not presented, but are only assumed to exist. In no event, however, should it strike down the provisions of 38-826 (a) (5) with respect to confinement in the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory in toto. It is a well-established rule in this jurisdiction that it is the court’s duty to uphold legislation rather than defeat it, and if there is any reasonable way to construe legislation as constitutionally valid, that should be done. (Marks v. Frantz, 179 Kan. 638, 298 P. 2d 316.) The court starts at the threshold of the inquiry of validity of a statute with the presumption the legislature intended to enact a valid law and to enact it for the accomplishment of a needful purpose. (State, ex rel., v. Board of Education, 137 Kan. 451, 453, 21 P. 2d 295.) Since the court persists in considering the constitutional validity of 38-826 (a) (5), the section could well be construed to apply only to cases of male offenders over sixteen years of age where they have been referred to the district court pursuant to 38-808 and are tried and convicted by a jury of the commission of a felony, with all the accompanying constitutional safeguards, and remanded to the juvenile court for judgment and sentence. Such a construction would be consistent with the language of the section that a commitment “. . . shall be subject to the same conditions and rights as would be the case if such commitment were made by a district court . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) It would seem logical to suggest the legislature’s use of the words “conditions,” “rights” and “made by a district court” were intended to refer to proceedings in the district court where a delinquent offender was afforded all constitutional safeguards and his guilt was determined by a jury.
Again, I reiterate all of the questions decided by the court in this case are not before it for decision, except that the judge of the juvenile court of Sedgwick County has exclusive original jurisdiction over sixteen and seventeen-year-old male offenders who are alleged to be delinquent, miscreant or wayward as defined in the act and to dispose of their cases in accordance with the juvenile code. When the court decided that question it should have concluded its opinion. I would enter judgment sustaining the 1966 amendments to the juvenile code in conformity with the views herein expressed.