holding that the United States and Maine constitutions compel the conclusion that “an indigent parent or parents against whom a custody petition is instituted ... is entitled to have counsel appointed at the State’s expense unless the right to counsel is knowingly waived”
How later courts described this case
- holding that the United States and Maine constitutions compel the conclusion that “an indigent parent or parents against whom a custody petition is instituted ... is entitled to have counsel appointed at the State’s expense unless the right to counsel is knowingly waived”
- ruling on appointed counsel issue before Eldridge created presumption against it
- discussing the natural and fundamental rights of parents to the custody of their children
- attorney assigned to indigent parents in civil neglect proceeding because full panoply of traditional weapons of state are marshalled against defendant parents
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Overruled implicitly by Lassiter v. Department of Social Servs. of Durham Cty., 452 U.S. 18 (1981)
While many state courts have concluded that due process requires counsel for a natural parent who risks losing custody of his or her child, see, e.g., Danforth v. State Department of Health & Welfare, 303 A.2d 794 (Me. 1973), implicitly overruled by Lassiter, 452 U.S. at 27 (federal constitutional grounds overruled in part by Lassiter), the United States Supreme Court has held that not even a natural parent has a due…
The opinion
DUFRESNE, Chief Justice
(separately concurring).
I agree with Mr. Justice Pomeroy’s opinion in reasoning and result. However, since the case of S**** S**** v. State, 1973, Me., 299 A.2d 560 , has been cited for the proposition that “due process does not require that a finding of delinquency necessarily requires that the juvenile be found to have committed acts which, if committed by an adult would be criminal”, I must renew the message conveyed by my dissent in that case. I do agree that certain juvenile conduct under 15 M.R.S.A., § 2552, such as “habitual truancy” and “repeatedly deserting one’s home without just cause”, conduct not criminal in terms of adult behavior, may be the basis of a juvenile offense without any infringement of constitutional due process. The reason for this is that habitual truancy is specifically defined in the statute (see, 15 M.R.S.A. § 2502(2) and the statutory provision — repeatedly deserting one’s home without just cause — is a concept of sufficient clarity that it provides adequate information to juveniles as to the statutorily prohibited conduct and affords a reasonable degree of guidance to the enforcement authorities and the courts to permit equal dispensation of justice to the poor as well as to the rich, to the less fortunate as to the well oriented, to the troublesome as to the most docile juveniles. However, I still maintain that constitutional due process requires, to support a finding of delinquency for juvenile conduct which in adults would not be criminal, except as mentioned above, that the statute prohibiting the juvenile conduct must define the juvenile offense in terms of sufficient specificity as to furnish necessary intelligible standards to guide the child, his parents, the police and the courts. Statutory vagueness in legislation regulating juvenile conduct under penalty of State wardship, removal from parental control and loss of home, is equally abhorrent to the juvenile under considerations of fair play, if not more so, as the failure of the State to provide counsel for indigents in neglect proceedings may be to the parents of the juvenile.
I equate the natural right of a parent to have custody of his children as against the State to the natural right of a child not to be removed from his parents for juvenile misconduct, and consider both to be of *802 constitution dimension, neither of which should be abridged except within the strictures of procedural due process.
With this explanation, I concur in the Court’s opinion.