Court Opinion

ID: 9661835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:52:14.08329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:34.214374
License: Public Domain

FONES, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion that finds an intent on the part of the Legislature to use “birthday” instead of “years of age” throughout T.C.A. § 37-234.
The majority opinion clearly delineates the difference in legal effect between “years of age” and “birthday.” The majority opinion correctly points out that the common law rule is that one reaches any given age on the first moment of the day preceding the anniversary of the date of his birth and that whether articulated by this Court or not it has been the law of Tennessee since statehood.
The majority opinion also makes the point that the “average person” has a fixed belief that the expressions mean the same thing. Perhaps so, but our Legislature is charged with knowing the state of the law at the time it enacts legislation. Equitable Life Assurance Co. v. Odle, 547 S.W.2d 939, 941 (1977), and cases cited therein. The Courts are required to give effect to the natural and ordinary meaning of the language used in statutes. In my opinion, the Courts are prohibited from indulging, in this instance, the assumption that the Legislature thought the two different expressions of age mean the same thing.
We are governed by the following principles of statutory construction quoted with approval by this Court in Heiskell v. Lowe, 126 Tenn. 475, 499-500, 153 S.W. 284, 290 (1912):
“ ‘In Dwarris on Statutes, 702, 703, it is said: “Where the Legislature has used words of plain and definite import, it would be very dangerous to put upon them a construction which would amount to holding that the Legislature did not mean what it had expressed.” In a recent American work on Statutory Law, it is said that the intention of the Legislature is to be learned from the words it has used; * * * and, if that intention is expressed in a manner devoid of contradiction and ambiguity, there is no room for interpretation or construction, and the judges are not at liberty, on consideration of policy or hardship, to depart from the words of the statute; that they have no right to make exceptions or insert qualifications, however abstract *384justice or the justice of the particular case may seem to require it. Sedgw. on Stat. & Const.Law, 295.’
‘It is obvious that to do so would be to transcend the boundary separating judicial construction from judicial legislation. It is a recognized principle of exposition, too, that it is not allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation.’ Kirk v. State [41 Tenn. 344], 1 Cold. [344], 346-348.
In another case, this court said:
‘If the words are free from ambiguity and doubt, and express plainly, clearly, and distinctly the sense of the framers of the instrument, there is no occasion to resort to other means of interpretation. It is not allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation.’ State ex rel. v. Manson, 105 Tenn. [232], 237, 238, 58 S.W. 319, 320.”
I find no conflict and no ambiguity arising from the Legislature’s use in T.C.A. § 37-234 of “years of age” in subsections (a) and (d) and its use of “birthday” in subsection (g).
Subsection (a) provides, insofar as relevant here, that a child charged with a statutory crime may be transferred to the criminal court and tried as an adult if the child was, “sixteen (16) years or more of age at the time of the alleged conduct,” or if the offense included murder, manslaughter, rape, or robbery with a deadly weapon, or kidnapping, and the child was “fifteen (15) or more years of age” at the time of the offense.
Consistency is maintained in subsection (1), the crucial dates are the day before a child’s fifteenth birthday and the day before his sixteenth birthday.
Subsection (d) provides as follows:
“(d) No child, either before or after reaching eighteen (18) years of age, shall be prosecuted for an offense previously committed unless the cause has been transferred as provided in subsection (a) of this section.”
The terms of that section apply both before and after eighteen years of age and clearly it is irrelevant to its meaning whether the Legislature used “years of age” or “birthday.”
The only portion of the lengthy section wherein the Legislature used “birthday” is subsection (g). In that subsection the Legislature permits a child tried as an adult and sentenced to an adult institution to be transferred to a juvenile institution, upon court approval, and to be held in a juvenile institution “until his eighteenth birthday.” The subsection further provides what happens if the sentence is fully served before defendant’s “eighteenth birthday” or if the sentence extends beyond defendant’s “eighteenth birthday.” Necessarily the Legislature was consistent in that subsection in its use of “birthday” as the critical date.
Under the principles of statutory construction by which the courts are bound it is my opinion , that it is neither appropriate nor permissible for us to indulge the assumption that the Legislature construed these expressions to have the same meaning and that they really intended to use “birthday” throughout the statute. I construe it to be our obligation to apply the two different meanings to the different purposes served by subsection (a) and subsection (g).
The offense in this case was committed on the day defendant became fifteen years of age and pursuant to T.C.A. § 37-234 the juvenile court had jurisdiction to hold the transfer hearing and make an adjudication to transfer defendant to the criminal court to be tried as an adult.
I would affirm the Court of Criminal Appeals.