Court Opinion

ID: 9660303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:09:45.297038+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:17.513860
License: Public Domain

KEITH, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
After recognizing silence in the automatic certification statute and constitutional concerns with allowing adult-court sentencing, the court nevertheless concludes that Donn Behl was properly sentenced in district court. Because this interpretation of statutory silence conflicts with the overall statutory scheme and simple but fundamental notions of fairness, I dissent.
Unless express statutory language is free from ambiguity, our task is to determine the legislature’s intent. Minn.Stat. § 645.16 (1996). In so doing, we may consider the legislative purpose and the consequences of a particular interpretation. Id. § 645.16(4), (6). This court has long held that statutes are to be given a sensible construction that avoids unreasonable, unjust, or absurd results. Thoresen v. Schmahl, 222 Minn. 304, 311, 24 N.W.2d 273, 277 (1946); see also Minn.Stat. § 645.17(1).
In this case, the question is the intended reach of the automatic certification statute. The relevant portions of the statute explain when a delinquent child — who would ordinarily proceed through the juvenile justice system, Minn.Stat. § 260.111, subd. 1 — is subject to adult-court jurisdiction. The statute states that juvenile courts “lack[ ] jurisdiction over proceedings concerning” children “alleged to have committed murder in the first degree after becoming 16 years of age.” Id. §§ 260.111, subd. la, 260.015, subd. 5(b). When an allegation of first-degree murder is made by the state, the district courts assume “original and exclusive jurisdiction.” Id. § 260.111, subd. la.
The key term to be interpreted is “alleged.” In my view, the best reading of the statute, in light of its underlying purposes, is that a juvenile offender is no longer “alleged” to have committed first-degree murder once he or she is actually acquitted by a jury in a district court. This is the situation in which Behl found himself once the jury concluded that he was not guilty of the charge that served as the one and only basis for adult-court jurisdiction. There is no question that the state’s allegation was sufficient to trigger adult-court jurisdiction. But after the jury rejected the state’s allegation of first-degree murder, the statutory basis and rationale for adult-court jurisdiction was eliminated. Reading the statute as a whole, it is reasonable to conclude that the legislature intended that certain first-degree murder charges be removed from juvenile court based on the seriousness of the allegation, but that adult-court jurisdiction terminates when the allegation is not accepted by the jury. This interpretation preserves the integrity of the legislature’s provision for juvenile-court dispositions.
The majority concludes that the statute is “silent” on the issue of whether adult-court jurisdiction ends when a child is acquitted of a first-degree murder charge, but convicted of other charges. Ante at 564-565. The court then proceeds to search for legislative intent. According to the majority, the sole reasons for sentencing Behl in an adult court are that Oregon law explicitly provides for a different — and fairer — result; and that an independent section of the Juvenile Code regarding “extended jurisdiction juvenile prosecutions” permits a court to impose a juvenile disposition when the child is convicted of an offense other than an enumerated criminal offense, Minn.Stat. § 260.126, subd. 4(b).
The majority’s reasoning is unpersuasive. First of all, comparing Minnesota statutes to Oregon statutes gives little insight into the intent of the Minnesota legislature. Even more puzzling is the court’s reference to extended jurisdiction juvenile (E JJ) prosecutions. The EJJ provisions simply do not create an avenue for “return to juvenile court” for sentencing, as the majority contends. Ante at 566. The court misunderstands the meaning of the EJJ provisions.
*571In essence, EJJ prosecutions are part of the juvenile court’s extended jurisdiction; they are a hybrid alternative to adult certification that allows the juvenile court to retain the proceedings, with the possibility of imposing an adult criminal sentence.1 EJJ provisions are no indication that silence in the automatic certification statute implies that Behl should receive an adult-court sentence. In fact, by the majority’s own logic, the fact that the EJJ provisions actually allow a juvenile court to impose both a juvenile disposition and an adult sentence could be taken as a sign that the legislature knew how to express its preference for adult sentencing. In the case of juveniles acquitted after automatic certification, the legislature made no such expression. At best, the EJJ provisions — which do not discuss or relate to district court sentencing jurisdiction in automatic certification cases, Minn.Stat. § 260.126, subd. 6 — provide no support for the majority’s conclusion.
The weakness of the majority’s rationale would not be so troubling if the results seemed fair to juveniles like Behl.2 But the unavoidable consequence of the court’s reasoning is that a child who is indicted but acquitted of the enumerated offense (first-degree murder) faces the harsher sentencing regime that the legislature crafted for adult perpetrators, while a child who was fortunate enough not to be indicted for first-degree murder in the first place is sentenced according to the juvenile court rules. This is not a result that the legislature envisioned. In my opinion, the automatic certification statute establishes a simple and legitimate policy: anyone over the age of 16 who commits first-degree murder will receive a life sentence. The statute does not say that certain juveniles should be treated “much more harshly,” ante at 569, simply because they have been indicted, and despite exoneration by a jury. To do so, it seems, is to punish the juvenile for a crime he or she did not commit. Rather than enter a constitutional thicket, and absent clear direction from the legislature, I would interpret the controlling statutory language to avoid this result.
If, as the majority concludes, the statute is silent and we must identify the legislature’s intent, then I see no reason to prefer the more punitive result over a juvenile disposition. In fact, Behl’s argument is only strengthened insofar as our general rules of statutory construction apply. This court has made clear that the ambit of an ambiguous criminal law should be construed narrowly according to the rule of lenity, State v. Orsello, 554 N.W.2d 70, 74 (Minn.1996); State v. Niska, 514 N.W.2d 260, 265 (Minn.1994), and we have applied this rule of construction to ambiguous minimum and extended adult sentencing provisions, State v. Lubitz, 472 N.W.2d 131, 133 (Minn.1991); State v. Simmons, 258 N.W.2d 908, 910 (Minn.1977). Faced with some uncertainty as to the proper scope of the automatic certification statute, I would apply this sensible and established rule and conclude that the district court lacked jurisdiction to sentence Behl.3 Thus, if there is to be a presumption about *572the legislature’s intent regarding juvenile sentencing jurisdiction, the past interpretive practices of this court indicate that juvenile-court jurisdiction and its well-tailored dispositions should prevail. Cf. State v. Moseng, 254 Minn. 263, 269, 95 N.W.2d 6,11 (1959) (in the absence of a clear statement from the legislature, a statute’s penal features should be strictly construed and its remedial features liberally construed); State v. Shevlin-Carpenter Co., 99 Minn. 158, 162, 108 N.W. 935, 936 (1906) (same).4
An exception in our Juvenile Code defines certain children out of the juvenile justice system. When Donn Behl was acquitted of first-degree murder, the statutory exception no longer applied to him. He was entitled, therefore, to be sentenced for second-degree manslaughter according to the rules that the legislature intended to be used for juveniles. Any gap or ambiguity in the automatic certification provision should be interpreted in a way that makes sense in view of the entire juvenile justice system, avoids any constitutional infirmity, keeps faith with established rules of statutory construction, and comports with basic fairness in sentencing. See Minn. R. Juv. P. 1.02. The court fails to provide any convincing reason why we should conclude otherwise.
I dissent.
GARDEBRING, Justice
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of the Chief Justice.
STRINGER, Justice
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of the Chief Justice.

. See, e.g., Minn.Stat. § 260.125, subds. 2(6)(ii), 5 (referring to retention of juvenile-court jurisdiction); id. § 260.126, subds. 4-5; In re K.M., 544 N.W.2d 781, 785 (Minn.App.1996); Barry C. Feld, Violent Youth and Public Policy: A Case Study of Juvenile Justice Law Reform, 79 Minn. L.Rev. 965, 1038-51 (1995) (quoting Minnesota Supreme Court Advisory Task Force on the Juvenile Justice System, Final Report 32-33 (1994) (the purpose behind EJJ is to give the juvenile “one last chance at success in the juvenile system, with the threat of adult sanctions as an incentive not to re-offend”)).

. Instead of receiving a juvenile disposition for his second-degree manslaughter conviction, Behl was sentenced to 72 months in prison. No adult has received a longer sentence for this offense in recent reported cases.

.When there is ambiguity in a federal sentencing statute, the United States Supreme Court disagrees over the priority of the rule of lenity among various rules of construction. See United States v. R.L.C., 503 U.S. 291, 305-06 & n. 6, 112 S.Ct. 1329, 1338 & n. 6, 117 L.Ed.2d 559 (1992) (Souter, J.) (plurality opinion) (adopting the more lenient interpretation of a sentencing provision in the federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, but concluding that the rule of lenity was unnecessary because it should only be invoked after considering the statutory language, structure, legislative history, and underlying policies); id. at 307-08, 112 S.Ct. at 1339-40 (Scalia, J, joined by Kennedy & Thomas, JJ., concurring) (agreeing with the result, but arguing that the rule of lenity should be the first and only rule of construction). But the Court agrees that the rule of lenity is relevant. The majority in this case fails to confront this basic rule of construction.

. It is always preferable for the legislature to deal directly with statutory issues such as this. But when a statute is not clear, this court should employ settled rules of interpretation as a guide to the legislature's intent; otherwise, we jeopardize clarity and predictability in our own decision-*573making process. If a different result is preferred by our legislators, it is for them to examine the issue and make their intent clear,