Holmes, In re

• Decision Date: 23 November 1954
• Citation: 379 Pa. 599,109 A.2d 523
• Parties: In re Joseph HOLMES, an Alleged Dellnguent, Appellant. Appeal of Joseph HOLMES, a minor.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 523

109 A.2d 523

379 Pa. 599

In re Joseph HOLMES, an Alleged Dellnguent, Appellant Appeal of Joseph HOLMES, a minor.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Nov. 23, 1954.

William J. Woolston, Philadelphia, for appellant.

John Rogers Carroll, Thomas A. Masterson, Philadelphia, for the American Civil Liverties Union, amicus curiae.

Harry F. Stambaugh, Sp. Counsel, Harrisburg, Frank P.Lawley, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., Frank F. Truscott, Atty. Gen., for the Commonwealth under rule 46.

Armand Della Porta, Samuel Dash, Asst. Dist. Attys., Michael von Moschzisker, first Asst. Dist. Atty., Richardson Dilworth, Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before STERN, C. J., and STEARNE, JONES, CHIDSEY, MUSMANNO and ARNOLD, JJ.

HORACE STERN, Chief Justice.

We allowed an appeal in this case from the order of the Superior Court, 175 Pa.Super. 137, 103 A.2d 454, because appellant's petition asserted that questions of his constitutional rights were involved.

Appellant, Joseph Holmes, had been in trouble with the authorities several times before the proceedings which gave rise to the present appeal. In 1949, when he was 13 years of age, he was adjudged delinquent by the Juvenile Division of the Municipal Court of Philadelphia on a petition alleging that he was involved in a highway robbery, and he was then placed on probation. He was later accused of participation in a burglary, but that offense was not proved; however, he failed to attend school for long periods of time and in 1951 his probation was continued. He continued to be a peristent truant from school, and, in August, 1952, being charged with participation in a highway robbery and assault and battery, he was committed to Pennypack House and remained there until November of that year when he was again placed on probation.

This brings us to the hearing before the Juvenile Court on January 7, 1953, the delinquency petition alleging larceny of an automobile, operating an automobile without the owner's consent, and operating an automobile without a driver's license. There was definite evidence that the automobile had been stolen and appellant admitted driving it without a license but he denied guilty knowledge of the theft of the car. The Juvenile Court adjudged him delinquent on the charge of operating a motor vehicle without a license. Five days later a delinquency petition was filed alleging his participation in the armed robbery of a church. At a hearing on that charge held on January 23, 1953, the court revoked his probation and committed him to the Pennsylvania Industrial School at White Hill, basing this action on his prior record, his present activities, the failure of his parents to control him, and the desirability of his receiving the training provided in such an institution. Counsel for appellant thereupon intervened and requested a rehearing, which was held on March 6, 1953, and at which additional testimony was taken. ¹ The court repeated its adjudication of delinquency and ordered Holmes remanded to White Hill. On appeal to the Superior Court this order was affirmed.

Appellant's able counsel have urged upon us as upon the Superior Court, many claims of illegality and deprivation of constitutional rights in connection with the proceedings before the Municipal Court. Such claims, however, entirely overlook, in our opinion, the basic concept of a Juvenile Court. The proceedings in such a court are not in the nature of a criminal trial but constitute merely a civil inquiry or action looking to the treatment, reformation and rehabilitation of the minor child. Their purpose is not penal but protective,--aimed to check juvenile delinquency and to throw around a child, just starting, perhaps, on an evil course and deprived of proper parental care, the strong arm of the State acting as parens patriae. The State is not seeking to punish an offender but to salvage a boy who may be in danger of becoming one, and to safeguard his adolescent life. Even though the child's delinquency may result from the commission of a criminal act the State extends to such a child the same care and training as to one merely neglected, destitute or physically handicapped. No suggestion or taint of criminality attaches to any finding of delinquency by a Juvenile Court.

The conception that children are regarded as wards of the State is not one of recent origin; indeed from the very earliest times children in England were regarded as the wards of Chancery, and the Chancellor exercised the prerogatives of the Crown in acting for the care, treatment and protection of unfortunate minors and placing them under proper guardianship. ² The first Juvenile Court was established in 1899. In our own Commonwealth the Juvenile Court Act of June 2, 1933, P.L. 1433, section 8, 11 P.S. § 250, gave to the judges of the Municipal Court in Philadelphia the duty, after an inquiry of the facts at a hearing, to determine whether the best interests and welfare of a child and the State required the care, guidance and control of such child, and to make an order accordingly; by the amendatory Act of June 15, 1939, P.L. 394, the word 'child,' as used in the Act, is defined to mean a minor under the age of 18 years.

One of the principal contentions made by appellant is that he was improperly compelled to answer a question, the answer to which involved self-incrimination, namely, whether he had a license to drive an automobile, to which he answered 'No.' Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, P.S., provides that 'In all criminal prosecutions the accused * * * cannot be commpelled to give evidence against himself'. But since, as pointed out, Juvenile Courts are not criminal courts, the constitutional rights granted to persons accused of crime are not applicable to children brought before them, as was definitely held in the elaborate opinion of Mr. Justice Brown in Commonwealth v. Fisher, 213 Pa. 48, 62 A. 198, which held the Act of April 23, 1903, P.L. 274, 11 P.S. § 71 et seq., the forerunner of the present Juvenile Court Act, constitutional. It may be added that appellant was not 'compelled' to testify; he was questioned in the same manner and in the same spirit as a parent might have acted, for whom, under the theory of juvenile court legislation, the State was substuting. It is true that section 18 of the Juvenile Court Act provides that if the child had been held by a magistrate or justice of the peace for any offense, other than murder, punishable by imprisonment in a State penitentiary, the judge of the Juvenile Court might, if in his opinion the interests of the State required a prosecution of such case on an indictment, certify the same to the district attorney of the county, who should thereupon proceed with the case in the same manner as though the the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court had never attached. But such a certification could not be made after the Juvenile Court had made an adjudication of delinquency nor, perhaps, after any self-incriminatory examination of the child. That question is not here involved, but it may be noted that section 19 of the Act provides that 'The disposition of a child or any evidence given in a juvenile court shall not be admissible as evidence against the child in any case or proceeding in any other court.'

Appellant complains that the court received certain hearsay testimony in regard to the charge that he was implicated in the armed robbery of the church. It seems that one of the two men who were convicted of that crime had confessed to having committed it, and a detective testified at appellant's hearing as to the substance of that confession and that it implicated appellant. It is true that subsequently the man who had made the confession repudiated it and now stated that appellant did not participate in the robbery, but of course the judge was not obliged to believe his retraction. He admitted that he had made the confession and the fact that the testimony of the detective was technically 'hearsay' was therefore wholly unimportant. Moreover, from the very nature of the hearings in the Juvenile Court it cannot be required that strict rules of evidence should be applied as they properly would be in the trial of cases in the criminal court. Although, of course, a finding of delinquency must be based on sufficient competent evidence, the hearing in the Juvenile Court may, in order to accomplish the purposes for which juvenile court legislation is designed, avoid many of the legalistic features of the rules of evidence customarily applicable to other judicial hearings. Even from a purely technical standpoint hearsay evidence, if it is admitted without objection and in relevant and material to the issue, is to be given its natural probative effect and may be received as direct evidence: Harrah v. Montour R. Co., 321 Pa. 526, 184 A. 666; Sledzianowski Unemployment Compensation Case, 168 Pa.Super. 37, 76 A.2d 666. Moreover, there is nothing in the record to indicate that the judge who presided in the Juvenile Court acted in the final disposition of appellant's case on the basis of any conclusion that appellant had in fact participated in the armed robbery of the church.

Counsel for appellant demanded of the court the right to inspect the records of the proceedings in connection with appellant's case, claiming to be entitled thereto by virtue of the provision of section 3 of the Juvenile Court Act, 11 P.S. § 245, which provided that such records should be kept in a docket and should be open to inspection by the parent or other representative of the person concerned. The court granted this request as far as the notes of testimony were concerned but refused it as to the reports of probation officers. As the Superior Court properly held, the records referred to in the statute are obviously the ordinary petitions, docket entries, notes of testimony and court orders; the reports received by the court from probation officers are not entered in the docket as...