In re McDonald

• Decision Date: 06 August 1959
• Docket Number: No. 2255.,2255.
• Citation: 153 A.2d 651
• Parties: Matter of Robert McDONALD, Darnell Cooper and Ronald Enrico Dobbins.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

153 A.2d 651

Matter of Robert McDONALD, Darnell Cooper and Ronald Enrico Dobbins.

No. 2255.

Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Argued January 26, 1959.

Decided August 6, 1959.

William W. Pavis and Richard W. Barton, Asst. Corporation Counsel, Washington, D. C. with whom Chester H. Gray, Corporation Counsel, Milton D. Korman, Principal Asst. Corporation Counsel, and Hubert B. Pair, Asst. Corporation Counsel, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellant. Albert S. Povich, Asst. Corporation Counsel, also entered an appearance for appellant.

Julius W. Robertson, Washington, D. C., with whom Dovey J. Roundtree and Bruce R. Harrison, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee McDonald.

Richard W. Tompkins, Washington, D. C., with whom Everett L. Edmond, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellees Cooper and Dobbins.

With leave of court William Dean Embree and Sol Rubin, New York City, filed a brief as amici curiae for the National Probation and Parole Ass'n.

Before ROVER, Chief Judge, and HOOD and QUINN, Associate Judges.

ROVER, Chief Judge.

Pursuant to Code 1951, § 11-908, a petition was filed in the Juvenile Court alleging that the appellees unlawfully entered a public elementary school and set fires there causing damages in the amount of approximately $20,000. Midway through the hearing and before the Government had completed the presentation of its evidence, the court sua sponte dismissed the case when the Government refused to disclose the identity of its informants. The District of Columbia brought this appeal and immediately thereafter appellees filed a motion in this court to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. We reserved our ruling on the jurisdictional question until after oral argument on this issue and on the merits. For reasons hereafter shown that motion is denied.

When the court dismissed the case, only three witnesses had testified for the Government. We are primarily concerned for purposes of this appeal with the rulings made during the testimony of the last two, the first of whom was a fire investigator. On direct examination, the witness testified as to statements made by the appellees, who are all minors between the ages of 9 and 10. Counsel objected on the ground that the statements or confessions were involuntary and moved to suppress the evidence. After a brief hearing in which only one of the appellees (McDonald) testified, the motion was denied.¹ Continuing his testimony and basing it substantially on the statements of all of the minors and their re-enactment of the offenses, the fire investigator related in detail how the youths had obtained kerosene from the locked pumps at a gas station, broken into the school, and ignited about thirty fires throughout the first floor of the building.

This witness was followed by a police officer who testified that while investigating a bicycle theft two small children had informed him that a boy named Darnell knew about the school fire. Darnell Cooper, one of the appellees, was brought to the station for questioning and as a result the police learned of the others. On cross-examination, the witness was asked to name the informants. He refused to disclose their identity to counsel, but offered the information to the court. The court then directed the witness to reveal the names or risk a dismissal of the Government's case. After a recess and conference in chambers with the judge, the Government persisted in its refusal and an order dismissing the case was entered. In granting the order, the court stated that the identity of the informants was necessary to the case for two reasons: (1) to determine whether there was probable cause for the arrest of Darnell Cooper; and (2) to determine whether the appellees were unlawfully detained.

Several significant issues are raised by the parties in this appeal: (1) the right of the Government to appeal a ruling of the Juvenile Court; (2) the application of double jeopardy to proceedings in that court; (3) the correctness of the court's order of dismissal; and (4) the applicable rules of evidence governing the admissibility of confessions in the Juvenile Court. But if the issues are multiple, the division of argument is singular. On each of the questions presented, the Government advocates that the rights and procedures applicable to the Juvenile Court are those associated with civil proceedings. Appellees, on the other hand, urge the adoption of rights and procedures which conform to criminal actions. The problem is nest approached by a brief re-examination of the Juvenile Court Act and the decisions construing it.

I.

After two unsuccessful efforts, Congress in 1938 enacted for the District of Columbia a new law for the care and protection of delinquent children.² The legislation was patterned after the Standard Juvenile Court Act³ which, at the time of its adoption in the District, had been embodied in its entirety in the law of 20 states and had been substantially incorporated in the statutes of 19 others. The legislation is laudable for it recognizes that the well-being of the state coincides with the welfare of the individual⁴ and attempts to set up a judicial body which will inquire into the needs of a wayward minor and provide him with the training, care, and rehabilitation necessary to divert his first steps from what might well be a long path of crime.

The difficulty, as can be expected, comes in making a theoretical concept of individualized justice a workable one. To achieve this and the worthy objectives of the legislation, the Act divorced a proceeding in the Juvenile Court from all of its procedural criminal law characteristics and transformed the hearing into a chancery or civil proceeding.⁵ The wisdom and legal aspects of this transformation have received the careful study of the courts on several occasions and in each instance the appellate courts of this jurisdiction have with complete approbation upheld the underlying philosophy of the Act and adhered to the rule that the proceeding is not

a criminal action. The most recent statement of the courts is perhaps the most lucid:

"* * * In the event a child commits an offense against the law, the state assumes a position as parens patriae and cares for the child. Such a one is not accused of a crime, not tried for a crime, not convicted of a crime, not deemed to be a criminal, not punished as a criminal, and no public record is made of his alleged offense. In effect he is exempt from the criminal law."⁶

And see Shioutakon v. District of Columbia, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 371, 236 F.2d 666, 60 A.L.R.2d 686; In re Lambert, D.C.Mun. App., 86 A.2d 411, affirmed, 92 U.S.App. D.C. 104, 203 F.2d 607; Thomas v. United States, 74 App.D.C. 167, 121 F.2d 905; In re Stuart, 72 App.D.C. 389, 114 F.2d 825; In re Sippy, D.C.Mun.App., 97 A.2d 455; In re Kroll, D.C.Mun.App., 43 A.2d 706.

If the procedural nature of the Juvenile Court has received the close scrutiny of the appellate courts, so too has there been an equal concern for the rights of a minor before that court. With the same precision the courts have said that the rights of a minor in the Juvenile Court stem from three sources: (1) those expressly accorded the individual by the statute itself;⁷ (2) those which are so fundamental as to be implied from the Act;⁸ and (3) those rights within the meaning of due process insofar as that provision is applicable to civil actions.⁹ Specifically, the constitutional safeguards peculiar to criminal proceedings do not apply. Pee v. United States, supra.

Thus, the 1938 Juvenile Court Act did not simply provide for the same kind of a trial as its criminal predecessor did under a new label. It provided for a new informal proceeding with the rights and procedures of civil actions governing. Innocence or guilt are not in issue, but an adjudication of the child's status is. Retribution and punishment are not its purposes, but protection and rehabilitation of the child are. And if the detriments and stigma of a criminal trial do not attach to the juvenile before this court, then it follows that neither does he have the right to be tried as a criminal. With this as a backdrop, we may better examine the specific issues raised here.

II.

The District of Columbia contends that there is no legal impediment to its right of appeal because the matter is civil in nature. Citing as its authority for judicial review, Code 1951, § 11-772(a), which reads in part:

"Any party aggrieved by any final order or judgment * * * of the Juvenile Court of the Disrtict of Columbia, may appeal therefrom as of right to The Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. * * *",

it urges that the state is a party to a proceeding in the Juvenile Court involving a minor. Opposing this view, appellees point out that the Government's right to appeal is restricted as in a criminal action and that whether the court's rulings were right or wrong, any attempt to again bring appellees to trial will be met by a plea of double jeopardy. Accordingly, they argue that the case is moot and that this court in reversing would be rendering an advisory opinion.¹⁰

Considering these contentions inversely, we have prefaced this decision with the general statement that the Juvenile Court Act is not penal in nature and that the constitutional rights granted to persons accused of crime are not available to minors in a juvenile proceeding. Double jeopardy as used both in the Constitution and in its technical sense at common law is applied only to criminal prosecutions.¹¹ As stated by the Supreme Court, "* * * Unless [the] sanction was intended as punishment, so that the proceeding is essentially criminal, the double jeopardy clause provided for in criminal prosecutions is not applicable." Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391, 398-399, 58 S.Ct. 630, 633, 82 L.Ed. 917. The courts of six jurisdictions have been confronted with the question of the...