Court Opinion

ID: 9753002
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:49:50.561009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:50.764288
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
The question before us is whether hearsay evidence is admissible at a disposition hearing in juvenile proceedings. *438The case at hand centers the issue. A disposition hearing is a hearing that follows adjudicatory proceedings wherein the court, finding delinquency, assumes jurisdiction of the juvenile and then considers appropriate remedies addressed to the best interest of the minor. A further disposition hearing may be necessary, as here, to test the effectiveness of probationary terms imposed following the initial adjudication.
The premise and authority for a dispositional hearing can only follow from a legally posited adjudication. In an adjudicatory hearing, the juvenile is entitled, with the exception of trial by jury, to the full panoply of constitutional rights guaranteed an adult defendant, whose liberty may stand forfeit.1 That is that no juvenile, or adult, may lose his or her freedom except by competent, relevant, legally posited evidence. No consideration of one’s “best interest” can substitute for such evidence. No matter what the will to save may be, no matter what salutary purpose is envisioned, without legally posited evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt, neither child nor adult can lose their freedom to be themselves.
Once, however, a juvenile is found delinquent and subject to the jurisdiction of a court, distinctions of purpose prevail. Distinctions founded on the nature of a juvenile and the duties of the state toward one not yet master of their life. Our law does not consider delinquency a crime, we conceive it rather a call and occasion for help. Delinquency is a term that eases and changes the focus of consequences. What *439for adults would be specific offenses sanctioned by specific penalty, is in delinquency proceedings converted into considerations dedicated to the best interests of the juvenile. Because we accept that youth has its excuses and its promise, we seek to teach, direct, help and save the young whose troubles bring them to the courts. To do so, we neither hold them or our courts at a disposition hearing to the strictness of law that would prevent or hinder that saving purpose. We take guidance from the Supreme Court of the United States. In Schall v. Martin, 467 U.S. 253, 104 S.Ct. 2403, 81 L.Ed.2d 207 (1984):
The juvenile’s ... interest in freedom from institutional restraints ... is undoubtedly substantial ... But that interest must be qualified by the recognition that juvenile’s, unlike adults, are always in some form of custody. Children, by definition, are not assumed to have the capacity to take care of themselves. They are assumed to be subject to the control of their parents, and if parental control falters, the State must play its part as parens patriae. In this respect, the juvenile’s liberty interest may, in appropriate circumstances, be subordinated to the State’s parens patriae interest in preserving and promoting the welfare of the child.
467 U.S. at 265, 104 S.Ct. at 2410. So likewise the state legislature touching this sensitive issue has also provided that once a juvenile is adjudicated a delinquent, the court must then hear evidence, in the dispositional phase, “as to whether the child is in need of treatment, supervision, or rehabilitation.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 6341(b). In this disposition hearing,
“[A]ll evidence helpful in determining the questions presented, including oral and written reports, may be received by the court and relied upon to the extent of its probative value even though not otherwise competent in the hearing on the petition.”
42 Pa.C.S. § 6341(d).
In the case at hand the appellee, previously adjudged delinquent, and on probation was called before the court on *440a complaint by his father to a probation officer that the appellee had threatened his life with a knife.2 The father did not appear and the complaint was transmitted to the court by the probation officer. A disposition hearing that revokes probation or imposes new restrictions on liberty because probation has allegedly been violated must at a minimum provide due process on the question of whether probation has in fact been violated. Gault and Winship, supra. The question is therefore whether the use of hearsay evidence at such a proceeding is a violation of the due process required. In Gault the United States Supreme Court in an apt tribute to the hundreds of juvenile judges whose daily concern is troubled youth, would not shield a child from that concern and care by imposing strict due process requirements.
While due process requirements will, in some instances, introduce a degree of order and regularity to juvenile court proceedings to determine delinquency, and in contested cases will introduce some of the elements of the adversary system, nothing will require that the conception of the kindly juvenile judge be replaced by its opposite, nor do we here rule upon the question whether ordinary due process requirements must be observed with respect to hearings to determine the disposition of the delinquent child.
387 U.S. at 27, 87 S.Ct. at 1443. The concept of the “kindly judge” is best suited for the interest of the child. Their skill, experience and purpose to aid is best relied upon in determining the uses of hearsay evidence in such circumstances. That is not to say that one offering hearsay evidence should be left unchallenged. They should be strictly examined to determine the validity of its source and its probable truth. The judge in the exercise of his or her knowledge of the case, the background of the original charge, the reports on, and personal observation of the juvenile and all the surrounding circumstances is in the best *441position to determine the uses of such hearsay evidence. We must presume that such skilled and devoted judicial officers, guided by law to help where help can be given, will do what is best for all concerned. There is not only no constitutional impairment for such uses in mandates of the United States Supreme Court, indeed, to the contrary, there is encouragement. The Pennsylvania Legislature likewise provided for the possible uses of hearsay evidence, as the occasion and circumstances may prove necessary and proper for the welfare and future of the juvenile.3
In derogation of the holding of the United States Supreme Court and the specific statutory authority of the Pennsylvania Legislature, the majority has interposed itself in the more than one thousand dispositional hearings per year in Philadelphia alone.
Before Magna Carta was, juveniles have been favored and protected at law and in Pennsylvania since the inception of the Juvenile Court in 1893. One would suppose the United States Supreme Court has supplanted the Runnemede Barons in defining due process. One can now only guess at what this preterite majority will do with the forty exceptions grafted on the hearsay rule since the late King John.4 Doubtless they tremble now to know that juveniles in Juvenile Court are not entitled to trial by jury. McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 91 S.Ct. 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 647 (1971).
I vigorously dissent that the majority, with the scratch of a goose quill pen, will reduce juvenile proceedings to an adversarial contest in dispositional hearings, where help and not guilt is at issue. They evince an unworthy distrust of the dedicated juvenile judges of Pennsylvania which the majority’s experience in such matters cannot justify.
The briefest reading of the history of juvenile proceedings in Pennsylvania and the United States should have stifled this atavistic reach beyond the Pennsylvania Legisla*442ture and the holding of the Supreme Court of the United States.
I join in the dissent of NIX, C.J.

. See Application of Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967) (in adjudication stage of juvenile proceeding, juvenile is entitled to confront his accuser, cross-examine witnesses, to receive notice of the charges, to be represented by counsel and to be free of the constraints of self-incrimination. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970) (at adjudication stage of juvenile proceeding, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is necessary to find the juvenile delinquent). McKiever v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 91 S.Ct. 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 647 (1971) affirming 438 Pa. 339, 265 A.2d 350 (1970) (the constitution does not guarantee the right to trial by jury in juvenile proceedings).

. The appellee had not been arrested nor accused of any crime nor was he accused of violating any term of his probation.

. 42 Pa.C.S. § 6341(d).

. For an excellent precis of the hearsay exceptions, see D. Bender, The Hearsay Handbook (1983), chapter 2.