Court Opinion

ID: 9715965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:21:39.412253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:45.104090
License: Public Domain

Wachenfeld, J.
(dissenting). Over the many years our present procedure in reference to these matters has worked out quite satisfactorily. No hue or cry of great injustice has *69been heard, nor is there a single ease the disposition of which has offended the public’s sense of essential fairness.
The method of disposing of these cases has now been changed, not by legislative enactment, where the power admittedly resides, but by a new judicial interpretation. In re Mei, 122 N. J. Eq. 125 (E. & A. 1937), which has stood for II years, is overruled and is no longer the law.
Up until now, all who committed murder, whether old or young, were held strictly accountable to the law. If the offender appreciated the difference between right and wrong, he was answerable in a court of law for the highest crime known, the taking of another’s life.
Today’s youth is more precocious than yesterday’s. His aggressiveness has not been diminished, and the record unfortunately shows his propensity for going out of bounds has not decreased. The child who flouts authority is becoming too prevalent, and the seriousness of these infractions is becoming increasingly grim. Juvenile delinquency is still one of our foremost problems, and its solution is being vainly sought by educator, legislator and many public agencies.
How, then, will this change in the law affect the dilemma confronting us? Will it help or hinder? Those of tender age who are likely to commit the crime involved will certainly not be additionally deterred by the knowledge that the punishment for it has practically been abolished and the worst that can befall them for committing a felony murder under the new rule is confinement in a reformatory or correctional institution for the term fixed by the trustees, not to exceed in any case a few years.
Erring youth indeed offers a fertile field for remedial effort, but I doubt if in this instance we are making much of a contribution.
The police now cannot keep track of those they have apprehended and referred to the Juvenile Court. The disposition there is confidential and secret and makes better law enforcement by those responsible for it more difficult. To the classification of the offenses so processed we now add the crime of murder. I have grave fears of its consequences.
*70I cannot embrace many oí the expressions in Justice Oliphant’s dissent, but I feel obligated to state briefly the reasons why I would adhere to the decision in In re Mei, supra, and therefore affirm the judgment below.
I-Teher, J., concurring in result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Oliphant and Wacheneeld — 3.
For reversal — Justices Heher, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan- — 4.