In re O.M.

• Decision Date: 04 October 1989
• Docket Number: No. 89-320.,89-320.
• Citation: 565 A.2d 573
• Parties: In re O.M., Appellant.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

565 A.2d 573

In re O.M., Appellant.

No. 89-320.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued May 26, 1989.

Decided October 4, 1989.

As amended October 27, 1989.

Gerald I. Fisher, appointed by the court, with whom Charlotta Norby, Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellant.

Edward E. Schwab, Asst. Corp. Counsel, with whom Frederick D. Cooke, Jr., Corp. Counsel at the time the brief was filed, and Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C. were on the brief, for appellee. Paul E. Alper, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C. also entered an appearance for appellee.

James Klein, with whom Kim A. Taylor, Rosemary Herbert, Gretchen Franklin, Mary Kennedy, Blaise Supler, and John Mott, Washington, D.C. were on the brief, for amicus curiae, the Public Defender Service,

Before TERRY, STEADMAN and SCHWELB, Associate Judges.

TERRY, Associate Judge:

Appellant, a seventeen-year-old juvenile,¹ brings this appeal from an order of the Superior Court directing his rendition to Alabama pursuant to the Interstate Compact on Juveniles to face delinquency charges of arson and murder. Appellant, with the strong support of the Public Defender Service as amicus, asserts five grounds in support of his contention that he cannot be returned to Alabama under the Compact. First, he contends that the Juvenile Compact, as codified in D.C.Code §§ 32-1101 through 32-1106 (1988), is only enabling legislation which authorized the District of Columbia to join the Compact, and that the District of Columbia did not prove, in the trial court, that in fact it became a signatory of the Compact. Second he asserts that even if the District became a member of the Compact at one time, when former Mayor Walter E. Washington executed ratification documents to that effect, those executing documents were never published in accordance with the District of Columbia Documents Act, D.C.Code §§ 1-1531 through 1-1538 (1987), and therefore they no longer have any legal effect; consequently, he maintains, the District is no longer a participant in the Compact. Third, appellant contends that recently enacted emergency legislation, the "District of Columbia Interstate Compact on Juveniles Amendment Emergency Act of 1989,"² bars his rendition unless Alabama authorities certify that they will not seek the death penalty against him, which thus far they have refused to do. Fourth, appellant argues that the repeal of the death penalty in the District of Columbia³ prohibits his rendition to Alabama unless Alabama authorities agree not to seek the death penalty against him. Finally, appellant maintains that his present detention and prospective rendition to Alabama violate his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We reject all of these arguments and affirm the rendition order.

I

Court documents filed in Alabama alleged that appellant and members of his family participated in the fire-bombing of an apartment in Gadsden, Alabama, on May 12, 1988. Everyone in the apartment escaped except for an infant, who was burned to death. Appellant was detained by Gadsden police officers the next day, and after giving a statement, he was released. Appellant fled sometime later to the District of Columbia.

On May 23 Judge Robert E. Lewis of the Juvenile Court of Etowah County, Alabama, issued a "juvenile pick-up order" (the equivalent of a warrant) authorizing the arrest of appellant on suspicion of arson and murder. On June 2 petitions charging appellant with arson and murder were filed in the Etowah Juvenile Court.

On December 2, 1988, appellant was arrested in the District of Columbia by Metropolitan Police officers acting on information from Gadsden police that he could be found at the home of relatives here. District of Columbia officials immediately filed in the Superior Court, on behalf of the State of Alabama, an application for his rendition to Alabama under the Juvenile Compact. Initially he agreed to return, but later he withdrew his consent and decided to contest his rendition. Since that time appellant has been detained in the District of Columbia Receiving Home pending disposition of this case.

In light of appellant's challenge to the requisition from Alabama, the trial court held a hearing to determine whether he should be surrendered to Alabama authorities. Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Wright of the Gadsden Police Department testified that appellant admitted, during an interview conducted the day after the fire-bombing, that he and members of his family had been involved in a fight with another family in Gadsden, and that after the fight he went with two uncles to the opposing family's home. When they arrived, appellant pointed out their apartment to one of his uncles and then went back to his own home. Soon thereafter, however, he returned to the apartment with his uncles, intending to "get even" with the other family. One of the uncles produced a Molotov cocktail and threw it into the apartment through an open window while appellant watched. Appellant and his uncles then fled. The Molotov cocktail exploded and started a fire, but all of the occupants managed to get out of the apartment except an eighteen-month-old boy, who was fatally burned.

Lieutenant Wright said he had spoken with a witness who "put [appellant] and two of his uncles on the scene and saw them throw the fire bomb." Wright identified appellant in court as the person charged with arson and murder in Alabama, and authenticated the requisition papers which Alabama had submitted in accordance with the Juvenile Compact.

Appellant did not testify at the hearing, but in an affidavit he said that his statements to Lieutenant Wright were coerced during an unduly long detention in the course of which he was threatened with death. The only witness for appellant was his grandmother, who testified that the civil rights of black persons⁴ are routinely and egregiously violated in Gadsden, and that because of her active participation in the civil rights movement her family in particular has been singled out for persecution. She said that her son-in-law (appellant's father) had been killed by police officers who shot him seventeen times in the course of a traffic stop, even though he was unarmed, and that she had been incarcerated for eighty-three days on a contempt citation when the police were unable to locate appellant's brother for questioning in the fire-bombing case. Finally, she, testified that she feared for appellant's safety if he were returned to the custody of Gadsden police officers.

After the hearing, the parties filed briefs with the court on the issue of whether appellant should be returned to Alabama. The court heard oral argument on this issue, and a few days later it entered an order directing that appellant be turned over to the Alabama authorities in accordance with the Juvenile Compact. In re O.M., 117 Daily Wash.L.Rptr. 1253 (D.C.Super.Ct. March 30, 1989). The trial court, and later this court, stayed the order pending the outcome of this appeal.

II

In 1970, in Title IV of the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act, Congress "authorized" the Mayor⁵ of the District of Columbia "to enter into and execute on behalf of the District of Columbia a compact with any State or States legally joining therein in the form substantially as follows. . . ." Pub.L. No. 91-358, § 402, 84 Stat. 473, 658 (1970), codified at D.C.Code § 32-1102 (1988). The "form" of the compact, set forth in the statute (and the Code) immediately after this language, is the full text of the Interstate Compact on Juveniles, which by 1970 had been adopted by forty-seven of the fifty states, including Alabama. On its face this section of the Court Reform Act is enabling legislation; Congress did not itself enter into the Compact on behalf of the District of Columbia, although it could have done so if it wished.⁶ In one of its filings below, the District submitted to the court copies of documents signed by former Mayor Washington which made the District a member of the Compact. Appellant contends that these documents failed to establish that the District ever joined the Juvenile Compact, and that without such proof the trial court was bereft of jurisdiction to order his rendition pursuant to the Compact. He asserts, more specifically, that the originals of these documents could not be found in the office of any District of Columbia agency, including the Office of Documents, and that the copies submitted to the trial court were not properly authenticated, nor were they self-authenticating. We reject these arguments.

First, we observe that there is no authority for the proposition that the District was required to prove the Mayor's execution of the Compact before the court could order appellant returned to Alabama. Assuming that there is such a requirement only because appellant has argued that we should so hold and because the District offers no argument against it,⁷ we uphold the trial court's determination that the District's participation in the Compact was sufficiently established in this case. "While it is true that documentary evidence must be authenticated before it will be admitted, such authentication need not be by direct proof — circumstantial evidence will suffice under proper conditions." Namerdy v. Generalcar, 217 A.2d 109, 111 (D.C. 1966); accord, Anderson v. Peoples Security Bank, 503 A.2d 670, 677-678 (D.C. 1986).

In this case, in addition to copies of the executing documents themselves bearing what purported to be Mayor Washington's signature (and appellant has never alleged that the signature was not genuine), the trial court had before it copies of two letters from the Secretariat of the Association of Juvenile Compact Administrators, both dated October 14, 1970. These letters stated that the District joined the Compact, including the optional Rendition Amendment, Article XVII, which applies to juveniles charged with delinquency....