"neither our state Constitution nor our statutes create a separate juvenile court’ with separate subject matter jurisdiction.”
How later courts described this case
- "neither our state Constitution nor our statutes create a separate juvenile court’ with separate subject matter jurisdiction.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
TAMILIA, Judge,
concurring:
I join the majority in its thorough discussion of the issues of transfer, jurisdiction and double jeopardy. I reserve my joinder relating to any implication the majority Opinion might assert that a murder charge filed in the first instance in juvenile court confers jurisdiction in juvenile court or creates a double jeopardy issue following adjudication. Just as in this case, the unlikely may occur if for no other reason than the greatly accelerated rate of homicides by juveniles in our metropolitan areas.
Jurisdiction over murder is exclusively in criminal court and it is only derivative in juvenile court as a result of the legislatively created transfer provisions. Transfer may or may not be interlocutory as detailed by the majority, and double jeopardy becomes an issue dependent upon the stage of the proceeding or the nature of the appeal.
*161 If there is no inherent jurisdiction over murder in juvenile court, and it is derivative of exercise of initial jurisdiction in criminal court which must then relinquish jurisdiction by a transfer proceeding (aside from abuse of discretion by the presiding judge), the trial of a murder case in the first instance in juvenile court is a nullity. I believe this should be made clear because the majority spends time on discussing the nature of the unified judicial system and the co-equal authority of judges in each division, finding that divisions of the courts are administrative units and not jurisdictional dichotomies. In this unique and specific instance, murder jurisdiction is clearly and deliberately assigned in an absolute sense to the adult criminal system as opposed to the specially designed system for children. When it is transferred to juvenile court, a murder case is no longer tried as murder in the qualitative sense, but as a delinquent act subject to the procedural adjudicatory and dispositional alternatives available to children processed as delinquents. There is no parallel between the other divisions of the court in this respect. For example, a family court matter heard in the civil division would still be tried as a family matter with the same result. All of the procedural and evidentiary requirements for the type of case, regardless of which division hears the matters, must be applied, including pretrial, post-trial and appellate proceedings. A hearing on a murder charge in criminal court cannot be equated with a hearing on the identical charge in juvenile court.
I believe footnote 17 appropriately warns of the many obstacles faced by the courts and the legislature in effectively dealing with appeals such as presented here. It is also incumbent upon this Court to establish an accelerated process or emergency hearing procedure so that the issue, if presented again, may be resolved in a matter of days or weeks. This is not unheard of in that we are required to hear certain abortion matters forthwith because the essence of time requires it.