Court Opinion

ID: 9603362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:05:21.727365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:11.005868
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTIN
concurring in result.
Although I concur in the result reached by the majority, I dissent from the holding that N.C.G.S. 7A-595(a)(3) (1981) is applicable to defendant Fincher. This statute applies only to juvenile delinquency proceedings. I find no case in which this statute has been applied to criminal proceedings. In re Horne, 50 N.C. App. 97, 272 S.E. 2d 905 (1980), discussed the waiver of a juvenile’s rights under the statute in a juvenile proceeding.
In effect, the majority seeks to engraft an additional requirement upon officers before interrogating persons under the age of eighteen by requiring that they be advised that they have a right to have a parent or guardian present during questioning. This result is reached by reasoning that the statute defines a juvenile as one who has not reached his eighteenth birthday; defendant is only seventeen years old, so he is entitled to the benefit of the statute.
While it is true that the statute defines a juvenile as one who has not reached his eighteenth birthday, the same subsection defines a juvenile for the purposes of being a juvenile delinquent as being one who has not reached his sixteenth birthday. N.C.G.S. 7A-595(a)(3) only applies to persons who are juveniles subject to a juvenile delinquency proceeding. N.C.G.S. 7A-517, the definitional section of the North Carolina Juvenile Code, states that the defined terms have the listed meanings “[ujnless the context clearly requires otherwise”; the word “juvenile” in N.C.G.S. 7A-595 clear*24ly means delinquent juvenile, as N.C.G.S. 7A-595 falls under Article 48, Law-Enforcement Procedures in Delinquency Proceedings. A person cannot be the subject of a juvenile delinquency proceeding if the act complained of occurred after the person reached his sixteenth birthday. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-524 (1981). Where a person has been adjudged a juvenile delinquent and commits a criminal offense after reaching the age of sixteen, he must be prosecuted as an adult on that offense, even though he is still under the jurisdiction of the district court. Id. Likewise, if any other person over the age of sixteen and under the age of eighteen commits a criminal offense, he must be tried as an adult for that offense.
In short, this defendant, being over the age of sixteen, could not be subjected to a juvenile delinquency proceeding. N.C.G.S. 7A-595, a part of Article 48, “Law-Enforcement Procedures in Delinquency Proceedings,” is applicable only to juvenile delinquency proceedings, not criminal prosecutions. A delinquency proceeding is not a criminal prosecution. In re Burrus, 275 N.C. 517, 169 S.E. 2d 879 (1969), aff’d, 403 U.S. 528, 29 L.Ed. 2d 647 (1971). The case at bar is a criminal prosecution.
It may seem that if a person is entitled to have a parent present in a delinquency proceeding, he should be so entitled in the more serious situation of a criminal prosecution. But there are cogent reasons to have a parent present in a delinquency proceeding: the family is involved, the juvenile may be taken from the home, the principal interest to be served is to rehabilitate the juvenile and save him from a life of crime. The court must consider the welfare of the juvenile as well as the best interests of the state. In re Hardy, 39 N.C. App. 610, 251 S.E. 2d 643 (1979). The state has a greater duty to protect the rights of a respondent in a juvenile proceeding than in a criminal prosecution. In re Meyers, 25 N.C. App. 555, 214 S.E. 2d 268 (1975). For this reason, the right to have a parent present is appropriate.
To the contrary, however, in criminal prosecutions a person over the age of sixteen and under the age of eighteen is treated as an adult. Family considerations are not so relevant or important, the interests of the victim and society in general must be considered. Here, all defendants are to be accorded the same rights. If the legislature had intended that persons under the *25age of eighteen should be given additional rights in criminal prosecutions, it would have expressed that intent in Chapter 15A of the General Statutes. This the legislature can still do.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from what I perceive to be an unwarranted extension of the juvenile delinquency statute to criminal prosecutions. I concur in the well-reasoned remainder of the majority opinion.