Court Opinion

ID: 9546887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:37:08.372515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:59.259009
License: Public Domain

Schroeder, J.,
concurring: The opinion written for the court meets with my approval on the law of this state under present *219legislative enactments, but I feel obligated to sound an alarm on behalf of the citizens of this state who are being shortchanged in the administration of justice.
Theoretically, the judiciary of the state is responsible for the administration of justice with reasonable dispatch. It has often been said that justice delayed is justice denied.
The concern expressed in my dissenting opinion in State, ex rel., v. Owens, 197 Kan. 212, 416 P. 2d 259, beginning at page 231 of the official report, is presently being illustrated in the form of tangible results from juvenile cases that have just begun to appear at the appellate level.
The impact of Kent v. United States, 383 U. S. 541, 16 L. Ed. 2d 84, 86 S. Ct. 1045 (decided by the United States Supreme Court on the question of the juvenile court’s waiver of its original exclusive jurisdiction) on the juvenile code of Kansas (K. S. A. 38-801, et seq.) as amended by L. 1965, ch. 278 extending the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to sixteen and seventeen year old offenders of the law, is abundantly apparent on the facts presented by the instant case. The application of principles announced in Kent has molded our law with respect to waiver proceedings conducted in the juvenile court, where the sixteen or seventeen year old male offender commits an offense punishable as a felony under the general law. This is clearly indicated by our recent decision in the case of In re Templeton, 202 Kan. 89, 447 P. 2d 158. Without reiterating what was there held and said, and without repeating what was said in my dissenting opinion in Owens, further remarks herein are premised upon a full understanding of the matters stated and considered in tírese opinions.
The misconceived act of the legislature (L. 1965, ch. 278) has placed a tremendous stumbling block in the path of our judiciary to administer justice expeditiously. Apparently it was an effort to rehabilitate the arrant individual male youth offenders who were sixteen and seventeen years old by assisting them to the full extent of advances made in sociology and psychiatric treatment that prompted the legislature to amend the juvenile code in 1965. But this requires more than wishful thinking. The juvenile court must be given staff personnel to accomplish these goals, and it must also be provided with facilities for the care, treatment and training program available through such staff personnel of the juvenile court in order that it can administer the increased case load in the juvenile *220court. It must be observed that more than half of the criminal offenses in this state are committed by juveniles under the age of eighteen years. The lack of facilities in the juvenile court was abundantly evident to the legislature as indicated by the observations made in my dissenting opinion in Owens.
Where the juvenile offender is sixteen years of age or older, but under eighteen years of age, at the time the alleged commission of an offense punishable as a felony under the general law is committed, the juvenile court is required to make only one other finding to form the jurisdictional basis for the waiver of its exclusive original jurisdiction over such child, thereby authorizing his prosecution as an adult under applicable criminal statutes. This finding is that the child would not be amenable to the care, treatment and training program available through the facilities of the juvenile court. (In re Templeton, supra, Syl. ¶ 3.) Now, if facilities are not made available to the juvenile court to handle such cases, the waiver proceeding becomes standard operating procedure for the juvenile courts in the disposition of such cases. What does this mean?
Turning to the facts in the instant case, the offense committed by the juvenile appellant herein was first brought to the attention of the juvenile court by proceedings initiated by the county attorney on the 1st day of July, 1966. To date the appellant has had one proceeding in the juvenile court, one proceeding in the district court, and a hearing on appeal in the Supreme Court, all relative to the matter of a waiver of the original exclusive jurisdiction of the juvenile court to hear the matter. The decision of this court on appeal discloses that the appellant is entitled to receive another hearing on the matter of waiver in the district court, and he will be entitled to appeal such decisions to this court, both of which will still be on the question as to whether the juvenile court has properly waived its original exclusive jurisdiction.
At the present time the appellant has been in court for two and one-half years, and if this is any criterion, chances are he may be in court five years before the county attorney, if he is persistent, is permitted to prosecute him as an adult for the offense he is alleged to have committed.
Once criminal proceedings get under way the appellant will be entitled as a matter of right to a preliminary hearing, a trial to a jury in the district court, and an appeal to the Supreme Court. Thus, it could conceivably be six or seven years before justice could be *221brought to bear, if the appellant is tried as an adult and found guilty of the criminal offense he is alleged to have committed.
The record in the instant case does not disclose the appellant to be an indigent; presumably, expenses are being paid by his parents. But where a juvenile offender subject to waiver proceedings is an indigent and his parents are unable to pay for an attorney, the state will be required to furnish counsel throughout these drawn out proceedings in court after court. If fee allowances to counsel for indigent defendants in past criminal cases is any criteria, the taxpayers will be required to pay the bill of approximately $100 for each appearance of an attorney in the juvenile court and each appearance of an attorney in the district court, and approximately $300 for each appearance in the Supreme Court. Assuming facts similar to those in the instant case involve an indigent appellant, who in the ordinary course of events will exhaust every legal remedy, the cost to the taxpayers of the state would be $1,400 for attorneys’ fees alone on the basis of figures heretofore indicated. At this point the offender would still have his post. conviction remedies available in which he is also entitled to the appointment of counsel to represent him at the taxpayers’ expense.
It is only fair to observe under circumstances presently foisted upon the judiciary of this state by L. 1965, ch. 278, without adequate legislative enactments to make the juvenile offender amenable to the care, treatment and training program available through the facilities of the juvenile court, that justice is not only hamstrung and delayed beyond all reason, but the taxpayers of the state are relegated to the position of forgotten citizens.