Court Opinion

ID: 9679131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:41:37.55781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:10.517058
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(concurring in result).
It does not seem to me, respectfully, that the majority opinion is on sound ground when it holds Jefferson waived the defects in the juvenile court proceedings by the failure of his lawyers in circuit court at arraignment or before entry of the guilty plea to object to these defects or to move for a remand to juvenile court for conduct of a proper hearing with counsel present and the entry of an order complying with constitutional standards.1 I do not see how the juvenile or his lawyers can be said to have waived rights they did not know existed. I say this because back in 1957, when all this took place, few Missouri circuit judges and lawyers, if any, would have considered the defendant had any rights in juvenile court to insist upon the protections and proceedings which the majority opinion holds were “waived”. I think the general attitude of the bar at that time was that where the juvenile judge, was considering a transfer, there was nothing a lawyer could do until the transfer question was decided and then, if transferred for trial as an adult, the lawyer would enter the case. Lawyers considered transfer as a summary decision by the juvenile judge which was not open to challenge if the child was over the minimum age and there was evidence of a felony.
As is well known, Missouri enacted a new juvenile code, which became effective later in 1957. There was a good deal written around that time by Missouri juvenile judges and others about the old juvenile code (under which Jefferson was transferred) and the proposed new juvenile code. Additional articles have been written from time to time as to how the new code has been working.2 There is a complete ab*14sence in these discussions and articles about there being any such rights in the juvenile under the old code as the court holds were waived. This is easily understandable, because this court had several times held that the constitutional guarantees respecting defendants in criminal cases did not apply to juvenile proceedings, State ex rel. Matacia v. Buckner (banc) 300 Mo. 359, 254 S.W. 179; Ex parte Naccarat (banc) 328 Mo. 722, 41 S.W.2d 176; State ex rel. Shartel v. Trimble, 333 Mo. 888, 63 S.W.2d 37. The fact is that not until Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541, 86 S.Ct. 1045, 16 L.Ed.2d 84, in 1966, and In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527, in 1967, were these rights which the court holds were waived, firmly established. It would have taken an extraordinary degree of prescience for Jefferson’s counsel in 1957 to have foreseen the Kent and Gault decisions, to say nothing of a 15-year-old juvenile with a fourth grade education.
To be a-valid waiver in any field of the law there must be a voluntary, intentional relinquishment of a known existing right. Neither counsel nor defendant made any such waiver, because defendant’s rights here involved had not yet been announced and were not known when this waiver in 1957 is supposed to have occurred. The point can be seen another way by asking whether defendant could sucessfully maintain that because his lawyers failed to file motions in the criminal case attacking the lack of a hearing and counsel in juvenile court, they were incompetent because they failed to raise these important questions and therefore he was denied effective assistance of counsel. The answer would be no, for the reason stated that it was not known to lawyers in Missouri in 1957 that defendant had any grounds for complaint in these respects about the juvenile court proceedings, either in juvenile court or in the general criminal division.
However, I see no way to remedy the situation. What Jefferson lost by his failure to have a hearing and representation by counsel in juvenile court was the chance to have relevant facts placed before the juvenile court by counsel at a hearing, to the end that the juvenile court might be persuaded that the parens patriae plan of procedure, with the wide range of possibilities open to the juvenile court, was the proper procedure in his case rather than a transfer to the general criminal court for trial as an adult.3 There is no way to undo this damage now. Jefferson is 27 years of age and the juvenile court would no longer have jurisdiction. This leaves only the question of whether the confession and guilty plea were voluntary and as the majority opinion says, we cannot on the record before us say the trial court’s findings in this regard are clearly erroneous. Therefore, I concur in the result reached.

. As I understand it, these defects “waived” were failure to hold a hearing, failure to provide counsel, failure to notify his parents or guardian, failure to make any findings, and, apparently, failure even to have the defendant present in court.

. See, Weinstein, Juvenile Courts, 1957 Wash.U.L.Q. 17; Rappeport, Determination of Delinquency, 1958 Wash.U.L.Q. 123; Role of the Lawyer in Juvenile Courts, McMullan, 18 J. of Mo. Bar 512; Representing Juvenile Defendant in Waiver Proceedings, Merz, 12 St. Louis U.L.J. 424; Weinstein, Juvenile Court Survey, 1957-59, 1959 Wash.U.L.Q. 372.

. The many options open to the juvenile court were set forth in Sec. 211.390, RSMo 1949.