State v. Ann Marie C

• Decision Date: 29 October 1979
• Citation: 407 A.2d 715
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. ANN MARIE C.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 715

407 A.2d 715

STATE of Maine v. ANN MARIE C.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Oct. 29, 1979.

Michael D. Seitzinger (orally), Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, John R. Atwood, Dist. Atty., Barbara Raimondi, Law Student, Rockland, for plaintiff.

Sulides & Fletcher by Steven C. Fletcher (orally), Rockland, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD, GODFREY, NICHOLS and GLASSMAN, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

Following a juvenile adjudicatory hearing on November 16, 1978, the District Court in Rockland, sitting as the juvenile court, found defendant guilty of five bomb threats to the local high school. Pursuant to 15 M.R.S.A. § 3402 (Supp.1965-78), defendant took a timely appeal to the Superior Court (Knox County). The Superior Court justice sustained her appeal and remanded the cases for a new hearing in the juvenile court, on the ground that two confessions were improperly admitted into evidence. The State has appealed the Superior Court decision to this court.

I Law Court Jurisdiction over the State's Appeal

At oral argument this court on its own initiative raised the question whether under the Juvenile Code ¹ the State had any right to appeal the Superior Court's order sustaining defendant's appeal from the juvenile court. Upon our reading of the controlling appeal provisions of the Juvenile Code, 15 M.R.S.A. §§ 3401-07 (Supp.1965-78), ² we hold that the Law Court has jurisdiction to hear this appeal by the State.

Appeals in juvenile matters are radically different in nature from appeals in adult criminal cases first tried in the District Court. The juvenile court (the name that the Juvenile Code ³ gives to the District Court) is the one and only trial court in the juvenile justice system. Appeals to the Superior Court are not for trial De novo ; the review is only for errors of law or abuse of discretion. ⁴ In juvenile matters, as in civil cases first tried in the District Court, Cf. D.C.Civ.R. 73(a), the Superior Court is merely an intermediate appellate court. The Juvenile Code expressly provides that the "District Court Civil rules shall apply to appeals to the Superior Court under this chapter, except where inconsistent with the provisions of this chapter." (Emphasis added) 15 M.R.S.A. § 3401(4).

Against that background we read chapter 509 of the Juvenile Code, entitled "Appeals", to say that either party who loses in the Superior Court on questions of law has a right of appeal to the Law Court. Section 3401 in subsection (1) declares without limitation that:

A. Judgments of the juvenile court in juvenile matters shall be reviewable by the Superior Court.

B. Judgments of the Superior Court in juvenile matters shall be reviewable by the Law Court.

As if to reinforce the comprehensiveness of the declaration in subsection (1) of reviewability of Any Superior Court judgment in a juvenile matter, subsection (2) of the same section 3401 articulates specifically "the goals of the juvenile appellate structure" to be:

A. To correct errors in the application and interpretation of law;

B. To insure substantial uniformity of treatment of persons in like situations;

C. To provide for review of juvenile court decisions so that the legislatively defined purposes of the juvenile justice system as a whole are realized.

If on appeal a single Superior Court justice errs in applying or interpreting the law, and as a consequence reverses an adjudication of the juvenile court, that error can be corrected (to achieve the first goal) and substantial uniformity of treatment in like situations can be insured (to achieve the second goal) only by Law Court review at the instance of the State.

Section 3402, the second section of chapter 509, relates to appeals from the juvenile court to the Superior Court. Here the legislature showed that it recognized the breadth of its grant of appellate jurisdiction to the Superior Court in section 3401(1)(A) and also showed that it knew how to limit that broad grant of reviewability when it wanted to do so. By legislative direction only final orders are reviewable by the Superior Court, 15 M.R.S.A. § 3402(1), and the State is permitted to appeal from the juvenile court (I. e., the trial court) only on certain specified types of juvenile court orders, 15 M.R.S.A. § 3402(3). ⁵

Turning now to appeals to the Law Court, we find nowhere in the other five sections of chapter 509 any comparable limitation on the broad declaration in section 3401(1)(B) that any "(j)udgments of the Superior Court in juvenile matters shall be reviewable by the Law Court." For several reasons, we do not believe the legislature intended that a restriction on the State's right to invoke Law Court review in juvenile matters should be divined from the purely procedural provisions of section 3407, reading:

Appeals, for the purpose only of raising questions of law, from decisions of the Superior Court rendered in juvenile cases before the Superior Court on appeal from orders of juvenile courts, may be taken to the Law Court in the same manner and form as appeals in adult criminal actions.

First, the phrase "in the same manner and form as appeals in adult criminal actions" would ordinarily be read simply to refer to Rules 37 through 39E of the Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure, regulating the form, and the time and place of filing, of the notice of appeal, the requirements of the record on appeal, and other procedural matters. If the legislature had intended to restrict its earlier broad grant of reviewability of Superior Court judgments in juvenile matters, it would have used language such as "only to the same extent and in the same manner as in adult criminal actions." ⁶ Note that section 3407 does not expressly address the question who may appeal, any more than does the broad grant of reviewability contained in section 3401(1)(B).

Second, earlier in the appeals chapter of the Juvenile Code the legislature used the identical phrase, "in the same manner and form as in appeals from the Superior Court in criminal cases." 15 M.R.S.A. § 3402(6). The context of that earlier use of the same phrase shows beyond any doubt that it has reference only to procedural matters, I. e., the manner and form of delivering the record on appeal as prescribed by Rule 39 of the Maine Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Third, to read the language "in the same manner and form as appeals in adult criminal actions" to put a Substantive limitation on the State's right to appeal to the Law Court from a decision of the intermediate appellate court, proves too much. Such a reading means that the Law Court could Never, on the State's appeal, review a Superior Court decision in a juvenile matter. In adult criminal actions the State has only very limited rights of independent appeal from certain prescribed pretrial orders of the Superior Court and even then may appeal only "before the defendant has been placed in jeopardy under established rules of law." 15 M.R.S.A. § 2115-A (Supp.1965-78), repealed and replaced by P.L.1979, ch. 343, § 2. So far as appeals from the Superior Court in criminal cases are concerned, section 2115-A permits the State to appeal only pretrial orders such as one "suppressing evidence prior to trial." Id. The Superior Court's judgment on appeal in a juvenile matter, even if it were an affirmance of one of the juvenile court's orders that the State may appeal under section 3402(3), is hardly a Superior Court order "suppressing evidence prior to trial." Section 2115-A contemplates that District Court suppression orders will be appealable directly to the Law Court, and only to the Law Court. In "adult criminal actions" the State has no right of appeal At all after trial except in reaction to and in connection with an appeal by the defendant from the Superior Court to the Law Court. 15 M.R.S.A. § 2115-A(2).

It appears most improbable that the legislature meant the procedural language "in the same manner and form" to restrict the otherwise unrestricted grant of power to the Law Court by the first section of chapter 509: "Judgments of the Superior Court in juvenile matters shall be reviewable by the Law Court." To impose such a heavy task upon those few words, "in the same manner and form," would be to legislate by obscure indirection in the midst of an elaborate and detailed code. We do not find such an interpretation of the appeals chapter consistent with the legislature's evident attempt to elucidate the applicable juvenile law in detail and its instruction to us that the Juvenile Code should be liberally construed to carry out its purposes.

Our decisions in State v. Kelly, Me., 376 A.2d 840 (1977), and State v. Fernald, Me., 381 A.2d 282 (1978), do not require us to read the Juvenile Code's appeal provisions in any way different from that to which we are led by a careful reading. Both cases involved adult criminal appeals taken by the State from the Superior Court prior to trial; not appeals from an intermediate appellate court's decision in a civil-type appeal from the District Court sitting as the juvenile court. Kelly refused to find a State's right of appeal in the catch-all catalogue of 4 M.R.S.A. § 57 listing the branches of the Law Court's jurisdiction, including "cases on appeal" and "questions of law arising on reports of cases." However, the Kelly court did find jurisdiction to hear the State's appeal in a specifically applicable statute, and we find the Juvenile Code's appeal provisions serve precisely the same function. While statutes granting the State the right to appeal in an adult criminal action are to be closely scrutinized because a State appeal from the trial court is "so serious and far-reaching an innovation in the criminal jurisprudence of the United States," quoted in Kelly, 376 A.2d at 843, a Juvenile Code provision for a State appeal to a higher appellate court, after the juvenile defendant's successful appeal to the intermediate appellate court, does not deserve the...