Court Opinion

ID: 9724303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:52:22.317802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:59.121677
License: Public Domain

SABERS, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I dissent on isstie three concerning admissibility of hearsay testimony against Father at the dispositional hearing.
SDCL 19-16-38 sets forth'a mandatory procedure before certain hearsay testimony can be admitted “in any proceeding under chapter 26-8” (emphasis added). The dis-positional hearing which terminated Father’s parental rights was a “proceeding under chapter 26-8.” See SDCL 26-8-22.-10, 22.11, 26-8-35 to 26-8-36. Therefore, the circuit court should have required compliance with SDCL 19-16-38 before admitting this hearsay testimony against Father.
The majority opinion attempts to save the erroneously admitted hearsay by citing SDCL 19-9-14(7), which generally provides that evidentiary rules in chapters 19-9 to 19-18 are inapplicable to “[disposition hearings in juvenile court.” Since SDCL 19-9-14(7) appears to conflict with SDCL 19-16-38, the majority opinion permits the former statute to prevail over the latter.
It should be the other way around for three reasons:
(1) SDCL 19-9-14(7) exempting “disposition hearings” from the rules of evidence was enacted in 1978. However, the affirmative application of the evidentiary rule at 19-16-38 to “any proceeding under chapter 26-8” was a 1987 amendment to that statute. As amended, SDCL 19-16-38 expresses a more recent legislative intent than SDCL 19-9-14(7). In fact, since the category “disposition hearings in juvenile court” is one item in a list of evidentiary rule exclusions within SDCL 19-9-14, a simple explanation for the discrepancy may be that subsection (7) of SDCL 19-9-14 was inadvertently overlooked when SDCL 19-16-38 was amended.
(2) Even more important, SDCL 19-16-38 is the more specific statute of the two. Whereas SDCL 19-9-14(7) generally exempts “disposition hearings” from all the rules of evidence except those concerning privilege, SDCL 19-16-38 applies one specific rule of evidence — the hearsay admission procedure — to one specific circumstance in proceedings under chapter 26-8— when a “statement made by a child under the age of ten describes] any act of sexual contact.” The applicable rule of construction in cases of statutory conflict is that the specific trumps the general. “Where there is a specific enactment, that provision prevails over the terms of the general enactment.” Hartpence v. Youth Forestry Camp, 325 N.W.2d 292, 295 (S.D.1982). See also Meyerink v. N.W. Public Service Co., 391 N.W.2d 180, 184 (S.D.1986).
(3)Generally, during the adjudicatory phase, the well-being of the child is directly at risk but parental rights are not yet in jeopardy. By the time of the dispositional phase, the state has already intervened to protect the child from immediate harm and parental rights are on the line. See SDCL 26-8-22.13 to 26-8-23.1, 26-8-36. It defies logic for the majority opinion to conclude that the legislature intended stricter hearsay admission standards in the adjudicatory phase than in the dispositional phase, since by that time the child is at least provisionally protected and the parent stands to lose everything. “[I]n construing statutes together, it is presumed that the legislature did not intend an absurd or unreasonable result.” Appeal of AT & T Information Systems, 405 N.W.2d 24, 27-28 (S.D.1987) (citing Applications of Black Hills Power & Light Co., 298 N.W.2d 799, 803 (S.D.1980)).
The common sense way to construe SDCL 19-16-38 together with SDCL 19-9-14(7) is that while the rules of evidence generally are not applicable to dispositional proceedings under chapter 26-8, the hearsay admission rule at 19-16-38 is applicable to those dispositional proceedings in which the declarant is a child under ten describing an act of sexual contact. Therefore, SDCL 19-16-38 is the controlling statute in this instance and the hearsay testimony was improperly admitted under this statute. Because, as the majority opinion observes, “[t]his hearsay testimony was critical to the trial court’s decision to termi*273nate Father’s parental rights,” the error was prejudicial and warrants reversal. We should remand for new proceedings as to both Mother and Father.