Court Opinion

ID: 9523839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:47:30.332639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:15.310684
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
This dissenting opinion is based upon the assumptions that at the 1974 plea proceeding in the criminal court, (1) appellant was a child not yet eighteen years old, (2) his conduct had not involved a violation of any criminal statute automatically excluded from juvenile court jurisdiction, and (8) there had been no waiver of juvenile jurisdiction by the juvenile court. Each of these assumptions satisfies an applicable statutory element of juvenile jurisdiction: age, type of offense, and waiver of jurisdiction by the juvenile court at the time of the plea. Each of these elements was initially erected by the juvenile statute for the purpose of creating and delineating juvenile jurisdiction and conferring it solely and exclusively upon juvenile courts in Marion County and Lake County, and conferring it in concurrent form upon the Circuit and Superior Courts in the remaining counties of the State. State ex rel. Gannon v. Lake Circuit Court et al., (1945) 228 Ind. 375, 61 N.E.2d 168. It is abundantly clear that the Marion Criminal Court at the 1974 plea proceeding had no jurisdiction at all to hear and determine appellant's guilt of assault and battery with intent to commit a felony.
This is the same situation which this Court faced in Cummings v. State, (1969) 252 Ind. 701, 251 N.E.2d 663. There, the defendant, a sixteen year old was convicted in the cireuit court of inflicting an injury in the course of a robbery. It was not discovered until after the judgment was rendered that the criteria for juvenile court jurisdiction were present. We held that she had not been within the jurisdiction of the circuit court and that the judgment of the circuit court could not stand. In this case the apparent lack of jurisdiction has appeared further on down the road at a post-conviction proceeding. In State ex rel. Atkins v. Juvenile Court of Marion County, (1969) 252 Ind. 287, 247 N.E.2d 53, another case involving the relationship between criminal and juvenile jurisdiction, this Court would not even recognize jurisdiction in the criminal court to transfer an indict ment to the juvenile court, where the indictment showed on its face that the defendants were juveniles and subject only to initiation of proceedings in the juvenile court. These cases highlight an important point. The Legislature in enacting the juvenile statute identified a social problem involving the delinquency of children, and the lack of parental effort and support, and created a new and special court to deal with it. The entire concept of crime received a narrowed redefinition. This Court should, where the Legislature requires it, keep the business of such specialized courts as the juvenile court and the criminal court separate, so that each may effectively enforce the laws assigned to it to the end that the social problems targeted be dealt with.
The Gannon case reveals the legal concepts of court jurisdiction which were at play at the time of the creation of the Marion Criminal Court and Marion Juvenile Court. Both followed the cireuit court. There the Court said:
"[When the first Constitution of Indiana was adopted all 'judiciary power was vested in 'one Supreme Court, in Circuit Courts, and in such inferior courts as the General Assembly may from time to time direct and establish.! Art. 5, § 1, Constitution 1816. Exelusive probate and criminal jurisdiction therefore existed in circuit courts until others were established. Likewise when the Constitution of 1851 took effect such jurisdiction under Art. 7, § 1, had to be in the circuit courts until others were created. If the word 'exclusive' has any significance whatever, there can be no question that the acts last referred to [including the one creating the Marion Criminal Court which convicted and sentenced appellant in 1974] removed jurisdiction from the circuit courts and conferred it upon the new *714courts in all counties affected by the acts.
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If the present act [the act creating the Marion Juvenile Court] is unconstitutional on this ground [that the Circuit Court is rendered inferior to the Juvenile Court] then likewise are the acts creating the criminal courts and probate courts above mentioned. In view of their long existence and judicial as well as legislative acceptance of the validity of the acts by which they were created we would not now be justified in casting doubt upon their right to exercise the exclusive jurisdiction given them by the respective statutes." 223 Ind. at 389-90, 61 N.E.2d 168.
As a conceptual matter the use of the language in the statute first creating the Marion Criminal Court that "such criminal court shall have original exclusive jurisdiction ... of all crimes and misdemeanors" is considered to have removed that part of the total cireuit court jurisdiction which was criminal jurisdiction, which was itself original and exclusive, and then conferred that part upon the newly created criminal court. In like fashion therefore it seems quite logical and proper to give commensurate force to the employment of the same language in the statute creating the Marion Juvenile Court. It states that:
"The juvenile courts ... shall have original exclusive jurisdiction, except after jurisdiction of the child is waived in all cases in which a child is alleged to be delinquent, dependent or neglected, including the alleged delinquency, dependency or neglect of a child of divorced parents."
The language must be considered to have removed that part of the total criminal court jurisdiction by which it determined the guilt of a certain class of crimes committed by infants and conferred the jurisdiction to deal with them upon the newly created juvenile court. And the divestiture of eriminal jurisdiction from the criminal court is accomplished without a specific amendment of the statute granting the criminal court the "original exclusive jurisdiction ... of all crimes and misdemeanors." I see no way to seriously consider that this case is one but involving a question of mere "over the person" jurisdiction.
The criminal court and the juvenile court were at the time of this plea, two separate courts, each conducting its own business within confines set by statute. The one exercising criminal jurisdiction and the other juvenile jurisdiction. When the eriminal court convicted and sentenced appellant the criminal court was addressing a matter which should have been before the juvenile court, but which was not, and as a legal consequence its judgment was void. The reason that the law will not permit fraud or consent of a party to lift such a judgment at any time to legitimacy and enforceability is the great importance of the public poli-cles which move the Legislature to create specialized courts and relegate "original and exclusive" jurisdiction to them.
The findings and conclusions of law rendered below are not clear to me. I would therefore reverse and remand for a new hearing to determine whether the three criteria for juvenile court jurisdiction were satisfied at the time of the plea, and if they were, to grant post-conviction relief.