Court Opinion

ID: 9679625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:00:34.340809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:17.043688
License: Public Domain

*40McDONALD, Judge
(dissenting).
I am very pleased to have the privilege and opportunity of dissenting in this case. This is a case of first impression wherein this Court is faced squarely with the issue of double jeopardy. I had thought that Hultin v. State, 351 S.W.2d 248, was a case identical to this case, and I worked long and diligently on the opinion I wrote in the Hultin case. This Court has too long engaged in “legal fiction” in disposing of cases of this kind. It did so in Hultin when my colleagues desired to incorporate in my opinion syllabi 8 and 9 on page 256 (351 S.W.2d) which in effect held that the appellant injected the murder allegation into the juvenile hearing when he could not do so. This effectively removed the identical-offense feature from Hultin and actually caused no new pronouncements especially to be written. I unwittingly agreed to the incorporation of this suggestion, which I now regret. I am now convinced that counsel for appellant in Hultin could have properly injected into the hearing the murder allegation. He could have even filed the petition himself under the terms of Article 2338-1, Section 7, V.A.C.S. The injection of this one paragraph in Hultin caused this Court to once more follow “legal fiction” and evade the issue which was before us and also caused a concurring opinion based upon this one single paragraph. In retrospect, I regret my acquies-cense to the opinion in this respect. Had we then faced the issue as we are now compelled to do, the result in Martinez v. State, 350 S.W.2d 929, in which some further “legal fiction” was engaged in, might have been different.
We have for many years held that a juvenile declared a delinquent, who was incarcerated on one charge under the Juvenile Delinquency Act and then later tried on a different charge as an adult .in the district court, was not entitled to plead jeopardy in bar. Actually, in most of these determinations, had it not been for the grave felony offense committed, for which he was later tried in the district court, many of these juveniles would never have been sent to the Youth Council at all.
Able counsel for appellant has set forth in his brief the distinction he makes between the case at bar and Hultin, supra, and Martinez, supra. I agree with his conclusions reached in making this distinction.
I made an exhaustive survey of all of the pertinent cases decided in this State by our various Courts of Civil Appeals, the Supreme Court, and this Court, so far as an interpretation of the Juvenile Delinquency Act is concerned, in my opinion in Hultin, supra. In the interest of brevity, I now adopt these citations by reference to Hultin.
In the case at bar we are dealing with an appellant who was 16 years, 6 months and 9 days old when he committed the offense of murder. In less than six months this appellant would have attained his 17th birthday and would have been amenable to the criminal laws of this state. He was declared a delinquent child for the offense of murder, then later indicted and tried for the offense of murder in the criminal district court. The question then is: Can a juvenile after attaining adulthood be prosecuted under an indictment for the identical offense relied upon in the juvenile court to establish that the juvenile was a delinquent child? We have never said until now that he could or could not. The majority opinion says that he cannot be so prosecuted, holding, in effect, that a juvenile is a special creature under our jurisprudence and the- State and Federal Constitutions. We have by statute clothed the juvenile with immunity from prosecution for criminal offenses until he attains the age of 17 years. The majority opinion may well be construed and interpreted as a further grant of immunity. Many juveniles frequently tell law enforcement officers: “You can’t put me in jail without the consent of the judge,” or: “I can’t be sent to the penitentiary because I am a child.” The appellant in this case is in a fortunate position. He had no prior background of delinquency. He had committed no prior offenses such as theft or associating with *41immoral persons, prior to the commission of this murder, so that the state might have alleged one of these violations as an allegation for delinquency. The state could only reply on the murder allegation, which it did; so this appellant now goes “Scot-free” and yet a boy his same age who has previously stolen some minor item might have to remain at the Gatesville State School for Boys or go back there if he does more stealing, but a minor thing like murder is not on a parallel basis!
Appellant has cited many cases in his brief. Among them he cites and relies upon Trimble v. Stone, 187 F.Supp. 483, a case involving the right of a juvenile to bail in a case pending in the juvenile court, decided by the United States District Court, Washington, D.C.
In re Poff, 135 F.Supp. 224, a case decided also by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is also cited. This case was based upon a writ of habeas corpus petition in that court wherein the petitioner said that the sentence imposed by the juvenile court was unconstitutional inasmuch as he was not advised of his right to counsel, a right guaranteed him under the Sixth Amendment. The court released the petitioner.
United States v. Dickerson, 168 F.Supp. 899, another case from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is also cited. In this case the defendant moved to dismiss an indictment on the ground of former jeopardy. The court held that jeopardy applied to juvenile proceedings and that the jurisdiction of the juvenile court attached and respondent could not thereafter be prosecuted on the same charge. BUT, this case was appealed by the Government, and the case was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, cited as United States v. Dickerson, 106 U.S.App. D.C. 221, 271 F.2d 487. The court said in its opinion:
“Without deciding whether jeopardy can ever attach to a disposition made by a juvenile court, either because the Constitution is directly applicable or because subsequent proceedings would be ‘fundamentally unfair,’ we hold that in the circumstances of this case no jeopardy attached as a result of proceedings in the Juvenile Court.”
In effect, then, appellant only cites us three cases decided by a federal district court (not an appellate court, nor a court of last resort, but the inferior tribunal in the Federal System), which in their scheme of things, reports the decisions of these district trial courts, and yet the only appellate decision cited by him overrules the one case that he relies upon for his jeopardy theory.
While it is true that the jeopardy provisions of our state and federal constitutions are self-executing, yet it still remains the task of our courts to construe these provisions in the light of the facts in each case and not assume that because some district court in Washington, D. C., decides that a juvenile is entitled to counsel or ⅛ bail that he may, by analogy, be entitled to effectively plead double jeopardy because two district courts say that “when he is entitled to some of the benefits he is as a general rule entitled to all of them.” I do not subscribe to this reasoning, or to this premise. One of the prime considerations of jeopardy is jurisdiction. Did the first forum have jurisdiction of the person and the offense? I don’t think the juvenile court had jurisdiction of the offense of murder. It had jurisdiction of the person, a juvenile delinquent. The majority are in effect saying that jeopardy lies regardless of whether or not it attached in a forum having jurisdiction of the offense, whether or not an indictment was preferred, whether or not the court trying the case had any jurisdiction at all in criminal matters. To me, it would be about as sensible for a defendant to come into the district court where he was to be tried for murder by automobile and set up a plea of jeopardy in bar of the prosecution for the reason that he had previously been sued for damages for the death of the person he killed, *42in a civil court, and had received a favorable verdict at the hands of the jury. This is about as far as the double jeopardy doctrine is being stretched by the majority opinion. They are saying that although the Juvenile Act is a civil statute, appeals are taken to the Court of Civil Appeals, the proceedings in delinquency are civil and not criminal, yet in this case it is different and jeopardy lies.
In Texas, the juvenile court has no statutory authority to waive jurisdiction to the district court in any case, regardless of the gravity of the offense, but in most of our states this may be done. Our juvenile court is unlike that of most jurisdictions in this respect. The juvenile court judge in the District of Columbia may waive jurisdiction and thus transfer a murder or rape case from his docket to that of the district court. By being vested with this authority, he does have the discretionary right to make an initial determination of a felony offense and decide to retain the case as a juvenile court case or transfer it to the district court for prosecution as a felony case. This distinction in the jurisdiction of juvenile courts might give the semblance of felony jurisdiction to the juvenile courts of the District of Columbia, but I attach little credence to it and merely make mention of it.
When a juvenile can shield himself from prosecution by virtue of his juvenility and the fact that the juvenile court has jurisdiction over him, how, then, can it be fair to allow him to later come forth and claim immunity and double jeopardy because of the action of a civil court into whose custody he was protectively given, was not tried as a felon or an adult, and yet make the claim that he was so tried, when his actual felony trial is had?
Had he insisted upon being tried originally in the district court instead of the juvenile court, he could not have been unless he lied about his age. These fundamental rights brought forth by appellants frequently inure to the individual, not to society. By the same token, the Juvenile Delinquency Act was written by our Legislature, not especially for society, but for the children of this State. Society and the public at large have a stake in both the Bill of Rights and all of the other safeguards of individual liberty contained in both our State and Federal Constitutions and also in our Juvenile Delinquency Act.
My concept of the preservation of individual liberty is not so keen as some. I think that this Court and every Court should zealously guard the rights of individuals, but these Courts should also guard the rights of society and the public at large. I am not yet ready to make an elastic interpretation in this case, as has been done by the majority, and apply the doctrine of double jeopardy to a case of this kind and turn loose on society a murderous felon who has been duly convicted in a fair and impartial trial by a learned trial judge and who then obtains his freedom by this Court on a spurious claim of jeopardy. I obviously dissent and would affirm this conviction were it in my power to do so.