Court Opinion

ID: 9670834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:26:57.460217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:06.776506
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result. I do find a sufficient record, not overwhelming, but sufficient, to affirm the discretionary decision of a trial court judge to certify a juvenile for adult prosecution. The problem is that for all practical purposes, certification is virtually predestined, regardless of the facts, for most juveniles the closer they come to their 18th birthday for any crime involving any element of danger or anti-social behavior. The artificially short jurisdiction given to the juvenile court drives the certification process from behind the scene. If a juvenile is not certified to the adult system, on midnight of the day he turns 19, it is over, he is sprung free, that is it folks, no more control. In the knowledgeable trial judge’s mind, that fact is ever present.
From experience we know that between the initial crime and the last of the appellate process, it may take several months to over a year to decide certification. Between the crime and the hearing on the motion to certify, there may be several days to several weeks needed for adequate preparation. If there is an appeal to this court, even with our expedited process, it routinely takes at least 60 to 90 days for the parties to complete research and submit briefs. Once the case is presented to this court, it will likely be another 50 to 90 days (about the fastest track of any intermediate court of appeals in the country) before our decision is released. Then both parties have up to 30 days to decide whether to petition the Minnesota Supreme Court for review of our decision. If a party petitions for further review, the supreme accept review, then preparation, briefing, argument, deliberation, and opinion writing will take more time. Thus, by the time a decision not to certify is finally in place, the amount of “control time” the juvenile court has left over the individual may be less than a year, may be down to several weeks, and in some instances may be just days or may have become moot (the case of a juvenile approaching his 19th birthday by the time his fight to avoid certification is complete). This is always a factor weighing against the juvenile fighting certification.
Where an offense is committed around the time of a juvenile’s 16th birthday, the time needed for the prosecution and the defense to adequately prepare for certification, and the time needed to exhaust all appellate avenues, may leave less than two years, often even less than one year for the juvenile who *924successfully resisted certification. Even when the juvenile offender is admittedly amenable to treatment in the juvenile system, there are competent experts who agree that amenability is conditioned on reasonable treatment, and that a matter of several months may be too short for reasonable treatment. This time compression produces the no-win situation we see so often. The juvenile who successfully fights off certification is left without enough time for adequate treatment. The juvenile who loses the fight against certification, partly because the trial judge knows of the too-short time limits, now faces up to thirty years (depending on the crime) hard time in an adult prison. This is true even if lengthy juvenile treatment would have been the answer, both for the juvenile and for the safety of society.
Even with thoughtful, compassionate trial judges attempting to follow the letter and the spirit of the law on certification, the practical knowledge that treatment in the juvenile system ends within a matter of a few months to a few years at best, has to impermissibly weigh on the side of certification even [where, as here,] amenability to treatment [in a juvenile setting] ⅜ * * is supported by the record.
See In re Welfare of J.D.P., 439 N.W.2d 725, 730 (Minn.App.1989) (Randall, J., dissenting), pet. for rev. denied (Minn. June 21, 1989).
I suggest the answer lies in some reasonable extension of the time that the juvenile court can exercise control over youthful offenders. This could accomplish the twin goals of satisfying the public that juvenile offenders are handled appropriately, and handling them appropriately.