Court Opinion

ID: 9794194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:01:10.02326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:12:43.479060
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
Nevada’s juvenile court act was enacted in 1911. At that time the juvenile court was empowered “in its discretion, in any case of a delinquent child [to] permit such child to be proceeded against in accordance with the [criminal] laws. . . .” 1911 Nev. Stats., ch. 197 § 10, at 388 (our emphasis). In 1949 this provision was amended so as no longer to allow “any” child to be tried as an adult, but, rather, to limit the process to more mature children who commit serious crimes after they have become “16 years of age or older.”
For fifty years now our juvenile courts have from time to time in their “discretion” removed from the grace of the juvenile court certain juveniles who commit crimes at ages sixteen and seventeen. No child who has committed a crime under the age of sixteen has since the enactment of this statute in 1949 been subject to transfer proceedings to the adult court. The reason for this is that everyone concerned has understood that the purpose of the statute is to take a few of the more serious or incorrigible older offenders, sixteen and seventeen, out of the juvenile court and hold them accountable as adults. Perhaps in today’s world the legislature should consider lowering the statutory age of adult transfer to fifteen or even lower, but the law as it stands and as it has stood for the past fifty years sets “16 years of age or older” *649as the determinative time. The result of the majority opinion is to revert to the law as it was in 1911. It is most difficult for me to believe that when the statute was amended in 1949 to set the sixteen year age limitation, the legislature intended to keep the same “any case,” any age application of the statute that had been in effect since 1911.
Understandably outraged by the seriousness of the charge in this case, the Douglas County prosecutor seeks to change the law by urging a rather tortured interpretation of the law that would allow the juvenile court to transfer a child for adult prosecution no matter at what age the child committed the offense. That a prosecutor would press this point to the court is understandable. That this court would reverse the trial court’s correct holding and adopt this position is not understandable to me.
The majority opinion interprets the juvenile certification statute, which allows for transfer to the adult court of certain juveniles who commit crimes after they have passed their sixteenth birthday, in a manner that does violence to the meaning and intent of the juvenile court act.
Now adult criminal prosecutions may be brought against juveniles no matter at what age they happen to violate the criminal law. The juvenile court act does not provide this and does not mean this.
My dissent is based on these grounds:
1. The Issue Has Already Been Decided. In In re Three Minors, 100 Nev. 414, 417, 684 P.2d 1121, 1123 (1984), we characterized the “triggering event” for the institution of transfer proceedings as the “commission of a felonious offense by a juvenile 16 years of age or older.” This language belies the “waiting game” espoused by the majority opinion, which allows adult criminal prosecution to be levied against children who commit crimes at tender years.1
2. Any Ambiguity In the Statute Should Be Resolved in Favor of the Juvenile. “[A]n ambiguous statute must be construed liberally in favor of the accused.” Sheriff v. Lang, 104 Nev. 539, 541, 763 P.2d 56, 58 (1988). If this statute were to be construed in favor of the juvenile, he would be treated as fifteen-year-old offenders have been treated for fifty years and would not be subject to adult prosecution. The only question, then, is whether the statute is ambiguous. The majority says that “the language of the statute is clear.” I do not think so. The majority sternly
*650proclaims that the words “charged with an offense” can have only one possible meaning and that is the meaning consistent with its view that adult transfer proceedings can be “charged” at any time after a juvenile’s sixteenth birthday no matter when the delinquency was committed. With due respect to my colleagues I see many possible interpretations of the words “charged with an offense.” I am somewhat puzzled by the ease with which the majority resolves this issue, seeing no shades of meaning in the phrase and admitting to no doubt about what the majority asserts to be clear and unequivocal legislative intent. All we have to do is look at a legal dictionary to see that the word charged is not employed in its usual sense. As noted below, the word charged has a number of possible meanings, most of which are inconsistent with the majority view.2 The most reasonable interpretation of the language in question and the only interpretation consistent with juvenile court jurisprudence is the interpretation heretofore made in Three Minors, which refers to, the “charged commission of a felonious offense by a juvenile 16 years of age or older.” (Emphasis added.) This means to me that transfer proceedings can be effected by charging that a felonious offense has been committed by whom? — by “a juvenile 16 years of age or older.” That only offenses committed by juveniles sixteen years or older are subject to prosecution in the adult court is as clear to me as it is unclear to my colleagues. I hope that such diversity of opinion can at least be taken to show that the language is in some degree ambiguous. To me it is rather obvious that there is absent in this case the necessary “commission of a felonious offense by a juvenile 16 years of age or older.” What we have here, rather, is “commission of a felonious offense by” a fifteen year old and not by one sixteen years or older. If I were to go so far as to say, as has the majority, that the “language of the statute is clear,” I would simply say, as we did in Three Minors, that “charged with an offense” refers to the charging event mentioned in Three Minors, namely, the “charged commission” of a felonious offense “by a juvenile 16 years of age or older.” I do not, however, make such a claim of absolute clarity and say only that *651because it is not entirely clear what “charged with an offense” means in the context of the juvenile court act, and because it might even mean that the prosecutor can wait until a younger juvenile reaches sixteen before initiating proceedings directed toward adult prosecution, the ambiguity must be resolved in favor of the juvenile; and the juvenile must, therefore, be retained in the juvenile court, as properly held by the district judge.
3. Consistency with Juvenile Court Jurisprudence. Unlike my colleagues in the majority, I will, as said, admit to the possibility of my reading wrongly the ambiguous language in question, but I believe I am safe in saying that my view (namely, as in Three Minors, that the “triggering event” for transfer is the “commission of a felonious offense by a juvenile 16 years of age or older”) is more in harmony with the intent and purpose of the juvenile court act than is the view that it does not matter at what age the crime was committed. For example, in the Comments to Section 4.10 of the Model Penal Code (Tent. Draft No. 7, 1957),
[a]s to offenders under 16 at the time of the offense it is implicit in the treatment of the exclusive jurisdiction of the juvenile court as a substitute for the old rule of incapacity that the age at the time of the offense should be determinative. It would obviously conflict with the ameliorative purpose of the 16 year criterion to permit passage of the time between the offense and prosecution to sustain a criminal proceedings; time worked no such effect in cases of non-age at common law.
(Emphasis added.)
I am afraid that the decision filed today does “obviously conflict with the ameliorative purpose of the 16 year criterion.” The purpose of placing a limitation on the juvenile courts as to who can be sent to adult court is to restrict adult transfer to those who commit serious crimes when they are older, more mature and hence properly accountable as adult persons. It is the age, maturity and state of mind at the time the crime is committed that is being addressed by the age limitation not the age, maturity and state of mind at the time the prosecution decides to bring “charges.” The idea that a child of twelve or thirteen who commits a crime can be later prosecuted as an adult when he grows up a bit is about as repugnant an idea as can be conceived of insofar as the ideals of the juvenile court are concerned. Of course, the majority may be right, nothing so untoward or unjust as this would ever occur in the prosecution of those who commit crimes.
I have no quarrel with the majority’s recitation of statistics relating to juvenile crime, and perhaps the legislature should *652reduce the age at which a transferable juvenile must commit a felonious act; but this court should not be making this kind of change in the law.

 I am very much aware of the majority’s prediction that this probably will not happen, but I am very reluctant to believe that the legislature would have enacted a law that would allow it to happen.

 The word charged is necessarily anomalous and out of place in the juvenile court act. The legal meaning of charge is the “accusation of a crime by a formal complaint, information or indictment.” Black’s Law Dictionary 211 (5th ed. 1979). Juvenile proceedings are noncriminal in nature, NRS 62.193, and no charge can be brought against a juvenile until after transfer. Some meaning other than that assigned by the dictionary must be given to the word charged in this context, and I am afraid I do not know that meaning. A charge could mean the filing of the juvenile court petition under NRS 62.130 or it could mean the institution of the transfer or certification proceedings under NRS 62.080; or it could have some amorphous meaning like “suspected of” or “accused.” The one thing that the word charged is not is clear.