Court Opinion

ID: 9781819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:32:38.096938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:13:56.573941
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring):
121 I concur in the court's opinion, but must note that I find the statute to be, if not ambiguous, at least perplexing. I believe the main issue presents a much closer question than the lead opinion recognizes.
11 22 My puszlement concerns subsection 10 of the Serious Youth Offender Act, which states:
The juvenile court under Section 78-8a-104 and the Division of Youth Corrections regain jurisdiction and any authority previously exercised over the juvenile when there is an acquittal, a finding of not guilty, or dismissal of the charges in the district court.
Utah Code Ann. § 78-3a-602(10) (1999). The subsection is capable of two interpretations, neither of which is very satisfying. One view-that offered by the State-is that subsection 10 merely recognizes that if a *594juvenile defendant is cleared of any and all charges in a proceeding that originated under the Serious Youth Offender Act, the juvenile justice system may go ahead and deal with unrelated matters involving the juvenile. The glaring difficulty with this interpretation is that this would be exactly the result if subsection 10 did not exist. In other words, under this interpretation subsection 10 merely states the obvious and is completely unnecessary. Courts are understandably relue-tant to conclude that legislatures would enact into law provisions that do nothing at all.
123 The other view-the one offered by appellant and embraced in the lead opinion-is that the balance of a proceeding will revert to the juvenile justice system onee the core charge-and perhaps any other charge that passes muster under subsection 7-has been resolved, even if the juvenile defendant stands convicted in district court. Thus, a defendant could be properly tried in district court on a Serious Youth Offender Act crime. He could be acquitted of that charge but convicted of a lesser included offense not before the district court pursuant to subsection 7. If he were acquitted of the core charge, the district court in which he was convicted of the lesser offense would, at the same instant, lose jurisdiction, and the case would revert to the juvenile court.
¶ 24 I am not aware of any explicit mechanism by which the juvenile court can take over a district court case that has resulted in a conviction, whether by jury or bench trial or by plea bargain. If the Legislature really meant to require such, I cannot imagine why it would not have provided some time frames, specified which court would entertain motions for new trial,1 and made explicit the idea that the juvenile court would impose sentence.2 In short, I have a hard time believing the Legislature had in mind that part of a district court case-indeed, a district court conviction-would revert to the juvenile court for further action without saying a little bit more about how such an aberrational approach to criminal jurisprudence would work in practice.
1 25 Basically, then, we must decide whether the Legislature, in adopting subsection 10, meant to say nothing at all and was just wasting space in the Utah Code, or whether it meant to say something but did not say it very clearly or completely. Obviously, neither outcome is ideal. On balance, however, I believe the second option is more defensible, and on that basis I concur in the court's opinion. In doing so, I recognize there is about a fifty percent chance we are wrong. If we are, with the problem having been highlighted by this case, I am confident the Legislature will speedily rectify our mistake.

. As the district court loses jurisdiction with the acquittal or dismissal of the core charge, I guess the juvenile court would necessarily entertain any motion for new trial concerning conviction on a lesser included offense. Such a scenario is problematic. The juvenile court would have to decide whether, for instance, newly discovered evidence would possibly change the outcome in a case it did not try.

. The sentencing implications are perhaps most troubling. The view we adopt leaves a judge who did not preside over the case imposing sentence.