S**** S**** v. State

• Decision Date: 22 January 1973
• Citation: 299 A.2d 560
• Parties: Page 560 299 A.2d 560 S**** S**** and L**** B**** v. STATE of Maine and Dorothy Hanauer. Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 560

299 A.2d 560

S**** S**** and L**** B**** v. STATE of Maine and Dorothy Hanauer.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Jan. 22, 1973.

Peter Avery Anderson, Bangor, George S. Johnson, Skowhegan, for plaintiffs.

Courtland D. Perry, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, for the State.

Marvin H. Glazier, Bangor, for amicus curiae.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEBBER, WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD, JJ.

POMEROY, Justice.

These consolidated cases are before us on report pursuant to Rule 72(b), Maine Rules of Civil Procedure.

The Agreed Statement describes the issues presented as follows:

'1. Whether the offense for which S**** S**** and L**** B**** were adjudged juvenile offenders is unconstitutionally vague, and thus, their commitments are in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, § 6-A of the Maine Constitution.

'2. Whether S**** S**** and L**** B**** were adjudged juvenile offenders in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1, § 6-A of the Maine Constitution, insofar as the conduct upon which the judgment of the Juvenile Court rested would not have been a criminal offense of committed by an adult.

'3. Whether S**** S**** and L**** b**** were adjudged juvenile offenders in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, § 6-A of the Maine Constitution insofar as the conduct upon which the judgment of the Juvenile Court rested would not have been a criminal offense if committed by an adult.'

This Court is charged by the rule with rendering such decision as the rights of the party require.

Both cases originated by the filing of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus (postconviction).

We note from the pleadings that both petitioners were adjudged juvenile offenders in the Juvenile Court on the basis of a petition which alleged in each case the petitioners were juveniles within the meaning of 15 M.R.S.A. 2502-(4).

The petition alleged in each case the juvenile was 'living in circumstances of manifest danger of falling into habits of vice or immorality.' No other material circumstances of the cases are presented in the record before us. We are not informed by the record exactly what conduct of the juveniles was alleged in the petitions as supporting the conclusory allegation. Suffice it to say the cases as presented to this Court raise no issue as to the legal sufficiency of the petitions.

We are confronted then with a facial attack on the constitutionality of 15 M.R.S.A. 2552 insofar as it purports to give jurisdiction to juvenile courts to treat as a juvenile offender, a juvenile whose conduct is described therein as 'living in circumstances of manifest danger of falling into habits of vice or immorality.'

The petitioners argue the reference section of the statute is unconstitutionally vague. The briefs filed on behalf of the petitioners equate the reference language to that found unconstitutionally vague in Knowlton v. State, Me., 257 A.2d 409 (1969) and in State v. Aucoin, Me., 278 A.2d 395 (1971).

The arguments advanced prompt us to reexamine our juvenile law system.

The social problem created by the conduct of the deviant child, i. e., a child whose conduct is antisocial, is not a problem which has come into being this year or this decade or even this century. It has existed in this country since our beginning days and has occupied the attention of jurists and sociologists perhaps more than any other single problem.

Most textwriters agree the opening of the New York House of Refuge in 1825 was the first great event in child welfare appearing before the Civil War. Schneider, The History of Public Welfare in New York State 1609-1866 at 317 (1938).

In 1839 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had before it a habeas corpus petition directed to the keeper and managers of the 'House of Refuge' brought on behalf of one Mary Ann Crouse, a juvenile, alleging that she was unlawfully detained in that institution. The Crouse girl had been committed to the 'House of Refuge' by a Justice of the Peace Court on the basis of a complaint signed by the child's mother that,

'The said infant by reason of vicious conduct has rendered her control beyond the power of the said complainant and made it manifestly requisite that from regard to the moral and future welfare of the said infant she should be placed under the guardianship of the House of Refuge.'

The constitutionality of the statute authorizing the Court's action was attacked. The Per Curiam opinion of the Court Ex parte Crouse, 4 Wharton 9 (Pa.1839) held the statute constitutional. The rationale for such conclusion was as follows:

'The House of Refuge is not a prison, but a school. Where reformation, and not punishment, is the end, it may indeed be used as a prison for juvenile convicts who would else be committed to a common gaol; and in respect to these, the constitutionality of the act which incorporated it, stands clear of controversy. It is only in respect of the application of its discipline to subjects admitted on the order of the court, a magistrate or the manager of the Almshouse, that a doubt is entertained. The object of the charity is reformation, by training its inmates to industry; by imbuing their minds with principles of morality and religion; by furnishing them with means to earn a living; and, above all, by separating them from the corrupting influence of improper associates. To this end may not the natural parents, when unequal to the task of education, of unworthy of it, be superseded by the parens patriae, or common guardian of the community?'

The Court's opinion concluded with this statement:

'The infant has been snatched from a course which must have ended in confirmed depravity; and, not only is the restraint of her person lawful, but it would be an act of extreme cruelty to release her from it.'

Thus, the parens patriae concept became imbedded in the law as justification for the use of State power to remove children from the environment in which they were found and place them in an environment chosen by the State.

In 1899 the first Juvenile Court was established in the State of Illinois by the Act of April 21, 1899. 1899 Ill.Laws 131. Other juvenile courts followed.

The Pennsylvania statute of 1903 (1903 P.L. 274), was examined as to its constitutionality by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Fisher, 213 Pa. 48, 62 A. 198 (1905). That statute which followed generally the pattern established by the Illinois Act, was attacked because:

(a) under its provision the defendant was not taken into court by due process of law,

(b) he was denied his right of trial before a jury on a charge of the felony on which he had been arrested, and

(c) the act provides different punishments for the same offense by the classification of individuals according to age.

Other reasons for the claimed unconstitutionality were advanced but these are not of concern here.

That Court treated with the objections raised as follows:

'The objection that 'the act offends against a constitutional provision in creating, by its terms, different punishments for the same offense by a classification of individuals,' overlooks the fact, hereafter to be noticed, that it is not for the punishment of offenders but for the salvation of children, and points out the way by which the state undertakes to save, not particular children of a special class, but all children under a certain age, whose salvation may become the duty of the state, in the absence of proper parental care or disregard of it by wayward children. No child under the age of 16 years is excluded from its beneficent provisions. Its protecting arm is for all who have not attained that age and who may need its protection. It is for all children of the same class. That minors may be classified for their best interests and the public welfare has never been questioned in the legislation relating to them. Under the act of 1887, the classification of females under 16 years of age means felonious rape, with its severe penalties for what may be done one day, though on the next it remains simple fornication, to be expiated by a mere fine. Other acts forbid the employment of minors under 12 years of age in mills; of any boy under 14, or any female, in anthracite coal mines; of minors under 14 in and about elevators; of a boy under 12, or any female, in bituminous coal mines. Others make it a misdemeanor to furnish intoxicating drinks, by sale, gift, or otherwise, to one under 21, and forbid the admission of any minor into certain places of amusement. Such classification is not prohibited by the Constitution, and what has not been therein prohibited the Legislature may enact.'

As to the due process claim, the Court said:

'In pressing the objection that the appellant was not taken into custody by due process of law, the assumption, running through the entire argument of the appellant, is continued that the proceedings of the act of 1903 are of a criminal nature for the punishment of offenders for crimes committed, and that the appellant was so punished. But he was not, and he could not have been without due process of law; for the constitutional guaranty is that no one charged with a criminal offense shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. To save a child from becoming a criminal, or from continuing in a career of crime, to end in maturer years in public punishment and disgrace, the Legislature surely may provide for the salvation of such a chila, if its parents or guardian be unable or unwilling to do so, by bringing it into one of the courts of the state without any process at all, for the purpose of subjecting it to the state's guardianship and protection. The natural parent needs no process to temporarily deprive his child of its liberty by confining...