Moore v. Miley, 40

• Decision Date: 07 January 2003
• Docket Number: No. 40,40
• Citation: 372 Md. 663,814 A.2d 557
• Parties: Tyrone MOORE v. Clara MILEY, Superintendent.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

814 A.2d 557

372 Md. 663

Tyrone MOORE v. Clara MILEY, Superintendent.

No. 40, Sept. Term, 2002.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

January 7, 2003.

Mark Colvin, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for appellant.

Mary Ann Ince, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., on brief), Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued Before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL and BATTAGLIA, JJ.

HARRELL, Judge.

When we took this case from the Court of Special Appeals before that court could consider it,¹ we had the best of intentions. The statute in question, Maryland Code (1998 Repl.Vol., 2001 Supp.), Cts. & Jud. Proc. Article, § 3-8A-07 (Retention, termination, or waiver of [juvenile] jurisdiction),² suggested interesting legal and policy questions concerning the contours bounding the juvenile justice and the adult criminal justice schemes in Maryland. Unfortunately, although our decision in the instant case may cast some light on the application of the pertinent statute in limited circumstances, more questions remain than are answered here. The unexplored areas seem worthy of timely legislative clarification.

Section 3-8A-07 provides, in relevant part:

§ 3-8A-07. Retention, termination, or waiver of jurisdiction.

(a) Duration.—If the court obtains jurisdiction over a child under this subtitle, that jurisdiction continues until that person reaches 21 years of age unless terminated sooner.

(b) Offenses committed after age of 18.—This section does not affect the jurisdiction of other courts over a person who commits an offense after the person reaches the age of 18.

(c) Termination.—Unless otherwise ordered by the court, the court's jurisdiction is terminated over a person who has reached 18 when he is convicted of a crime ....

(emphasis added).³ How this statute applies to the facts of the present case will be explained. We encourage the Legislature to consider at its earliest opportunity how it should apply to other foreseeable scenarios.

I.

Tyrone Moore,⁴ Appellant, first entered Maryland's juvenile justice system on 23 July 1998 when the State's Attorney for Montgomery County filed a delinquency petition charging Moore, then fifteen years old,⁵ with misconduct amounting to first degree rape and related delinquent acts alleged to have occurred on 20 March 1998. The District Court of Maryland, sitting in Montgomery County as a juvenile court at the time, found Moore to be a delinquent child and committed him to the Department of Juvenile Justice ("DJJ") for placement at the Charles Hickey School.

The juvenile court placed Moore on probation on 14 September 1999. On 18 January 2001, the juvenile court committed Moore to the DJJ for placement at the Family Advocacy Service Program and ordered his participation in the Electronic Home Monitoring Program.

Moore's eighteenth birthday occurred on 12 March 2001. The DJJ petitioned the juvenile court on 19 July 2001 to revoke Moore's probation alleging that "Tyrone went AWOL from the Family Advocacy Program on July 17, 2001, and has not been seen since." At an emergency hearing on 17 August 2001, the juvenile court issued a juvenile warrant for a writ of attachment of Moore. The court received from the DJJ another petition for revocation of probation on 19 September 2001 reiterating the allegations made in the earlier petition and adding that "Tyrone has not contacted his Juvenile counselor since July 20, 2001."

The writ of attachment was served on Appellant on 17 September 2001. As a result of his misconduct during the execution of the juvenile court's writ, Moore was charged as an adult in the District Court with resisting arrest. He pled guilty to the charge on 2 November 2001, and was sentenced to eighteen months incarceration and a $500.00 fine, both suspended,⁶ and placed on supervised probation for one year.

The juvenile court then held an emergency hearing on 5 November 2001 regarding the status of Moore's probation in the juvenile case. At that hearing, Moore's counsel moved to dismiss the petition for revocation of probation, arguing that the juvenile court's jurisdiction had been terminated on 2 November 2001 by operation of law as a result of Moore's conviction, as an adult, for resisting arrest. The court denied the motion to dismiss⁷ and ordered that Moore be detained at the Alfred D. Noyes Children's Center pending a violation of probation hearing.

Moore filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on the basis that the juvenile court's jurisdiction had been terminated by Moore's conviction as an adult. The petition was denied without a hearing on 19 November 2001, and Moore took an appeal to the Court of Special Appeals on 26 November 2001.

On 20 December 2001, a violation of probation hearing was held in the juvenile court where, once again, Moore's counsel moved to dismiss the petition for revocation of probation on the basis that the juvenile court's jurisdiction had terminated. The juvenile court judge denied the motion to dismiss, found that Moore was in violation of his probation, and ordered that his detention at the Noyes Center be continued pending his return to the Hickey School.

Moore filed with the Court of Special Appeals a notice of appeal on 26 December 2001 from the juvenile court's order of 20 December 2001. Subsequently, on 28 December 2001, Moore also filed an application for leave to appeal from that order. The Court of Special Appeals consolidated the appeal and application for leave to appeal as a single application for leave to appeal. The newly consolidated application for leave to appeal was granted and the case was transferred to the court's regular docket. We granted certiorari on our own initiative.

II.

Appellant contended in his brief that the juvenile court's jurisdiction terminated by operation of law, under § 3-8A-07, when Appellant, who had attained previously his eighteenth birthday, was convicted in the District Court of the crime of resisting arrest. Appellant maintained that the language of the statute clearly states that when two conditions are satisfied—(1) the person turns eighteen, and (2) the person, after turning eighteen, is convicted of a crime—the juvenile court's jurisdiction is terminated by operation of law "unless otherwise ordered" by the juvenile court. Any actions taken by that court subsequent to the 2 November 2001 conviction, he claimed, were extra-judicial acts exceeding the juvenile court's authority. Accordingly, the court did not have jurisdiction to revoke Appellant's probation or re-commit him to the DJJ for placement in the Hickey School.

At oral argument, Appellant urged that the language of subsection (c) of the statute, providing the "[u]nless otherwise ordered by the [juvenile] court" exception, could be satisfied only by an order entered prior to the criminal conviction. This must be so, he continued, because once juvenile jurisdiction is terminated by the entry of a criminal conviction it can not be restored by an order of the divested juvenile court. Moreover, such an order, he stated, must contain an express determination by the juvenile court of its intent to continue its jurisdiction notwithstanding the possibility of conviction of the adult criminal charge. Appellant also contended that, even if the juvenile court does not know of the criminal proceeding, the juvenile court's jurisdiction nonetheless automatically terminates upon entry of the conviction. Thus, despite the absence from the statute of a mechanism for providing notice to the juvenile court of a pending criminal charge prior to conviction, the juvenile court must issue the saving order prior to conviction. To permit otherwise, Appellant argued, would render subsection (c) meaningless. Appellant suggested various ways and means that a juvenile court could be made aware in timely fashion of a pending adult charge in order that discretion could be exercised intelligently under the statute.⁸

In the present case, Appellant asserts that the Office of the State's Attorney for Montgomery County, which was responsible for prosecuting Appellant for resisting arrest, had the opportunity, which it failed to take, to contact the DJJ to determine its wishes and, if appropriate, seek a collateral and timely order from the juvenile court asking it to retain jurisdiction over Appellant before Appellant's plea was accepted and the criminal conviction entered. Appellant denies that the "unless otherwise ordered" provision of § 3-8A-07(c) was satisfied by the juvenile warrant/writ of attachment issued by the juvenile court⁹ prior to Appellant's arrest on the criminal charge. Appellant minimizes the significance of the juvenile court's writ here, noting that, for purposes of the Juvenile Causes Act, "[i]t is clear that jurisdiction and custody are separate and distinct." In re Johanna F., 284 Md. 643, 651, 399 A.2d 245, 249 (1979). The language of the writ, contends Appellant, merely orders that Appellant be taken into custody and detained pending a hearing, and that the writ be lodged as a detainer for his continued detention if he is detained or committed for another offense. There was no indication in the language of the writ as to whether the juvenile court contemplated retaining jurisdiction in the event of a possible conviction on the particular criminal charge involved in this case. Appellant argues, therefore, that there is no "order" contained in the writ reserving jurisdiction as contemplated by § 3-8A-07(c).

The State ("Appellees")¹⁰ contends that the juvenile court retained its jurisdiction over Appellant by its 17 August 2001 writ and related actions. Appellees assert that the juvenile court was not divested of its jurisdiction over Appellant and, therefore, the Circuit Court in the habeas action and the juvenile court properly rejected Appellant's claims.

Appellees link the language of subsection (c)...