State v. Reed
| Decision Date | 03 April 1928 |
| Docket Number | 39079 |
| Citation | 218 N.W. 609,207 Iowa 557 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, Appellant, v. ARTHUR REED, Appellee |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
REHEARING DENIED JANUARY 23, 1929.
Appeal from Mahaska District Court.--FRANK BECHLY, Judge.
On a county attorney's information for manslaughter, the district court discharged the defendant because it had no jurisdiction, which it held to be exclusively in the juvenile court.
Reversed.
John Fletcher, Attorney-general, and Blanchard W. Preston, County Attorney, for appellant.
McCoy & McCoy, for appellee.
OPINION
The defendant was charged by county attorney's information with the crime of manslaughter, in that, in the operation of an automobile, he was criminally negligent, and thereby killed a boy. Defendant entered a plea of not guilty, a jury was sworn, and defendant's counsel, in the opening statement to the jury, asserted that the defendant was less than 18 years of age, and there was no jurisdiction in the district court for that reason, jurisdiction being exclusively in the juvenile court. A colloquy then took place between the court and counsel, and it seems to have been settled that the assertion made by defendant's counsel that defendant was less than 18 years of age at the time of the trial, was correct. The court thereupon ruled that the district court was without jurisdiction because he found that the defendant was under 18 years of age, and that no proceedings had been instituted in juvenile court; and therefore discharged the defendant. The State appeals.
A study of the various laws relative to this matter in other states having juvenile court laws seems to be of little aid in the determination of the question before us. As we have reviewed these laws, the question that confronts us here is not debatable under some of those laws, because of the specific provisions of the law itself. In some of those states, the juvenile court is given exclusive jurisdiction. In others, the line of demarcation between criminal courts and juvenile courts is not always made clear, and the courts themselves have not agreed upon such line; although there seems to be a fair uniformity that the procedure in juvenile courts, generally speaking, is not a criminal procedure. Criminal courts determine the guilt or innocence of a person accused of crime, and pronounce a penalty if he is found guilty. Juvenile courts are generally intended as a part of the system for dealing with delinquent, neglected, or dependent children, under the theory that they are wards of the state, and, under proper circumstances, to save them from the stigma of conviction for crime. In other words, the purpose of this court is not to punish, but to protect. This seems to be the general theory of the advocates of the juvenile court system.
In the case at bar, we are only interested so far as the question of jurisdiction is concerned. The question of the extent of the powers to be exercised by juvenile courts is not before us for consideration. Whether such powers so conferred by the statute are powers to which Dean Pound has said "the powers of the court of Star Chamber were a bagatelle in comparison," is not involved in the matter we have before us.
When we turn to our legislation on this proposition, it seems that the legislature is not fully committed to the above distinction between criminal and juvenile courts. The act of the legislature recorded in Chapter 5-B, Title III, Code Supplement, 1913, Section 254-a40, contains the following clause:
"Nothing in this act shall be construed to be in conflict with, or to prevent proceedings under any statute of the state against any person for the commission of any act for which such person may be proceeded against as provided herein, and upon the hearing of any case herein the court in its discretion may order and direct the county attorney to take any and all needful steps to prosecute such person in accordance with the laws of the state concerning the commission of crimes."
A part of this section seems to have been woven into the Code of 1927, Section 3632, which reads as follows:
It is quite obvious from the last section that the intent of the legislature was not to declare that a child under 18 years of age could not be guilty of a crime, but, at most, to leave to the juvenile court the discretion to determine whether or not he should be punished therefor.
Chapter 179, Code of 1927, provides for the establishment of a juvenile court in each county, and Section 3605 provides its jurisdiction, as follows:
"There is hereby established in each county a juvenile court, which, and the judges thereof, shall have and exercise the jurisdiction and powers provided by law."
Chapter 180 deals with the care of neglected, dependent, and delinquent children.
Section 3617 thereof provides:
"This chapter shall not apply to any child who is accused of an offense which is punishable by life imprisonment or death, but shall otherwise apply to all children who are not feebleminded and who are under eighteen years of age and who are not inmates of any state institution or of any institution incorporated under the laws of this state."
Section 3618 defines a "dependent and neglected child," with which subject we are not interested at the present time.
Section 3619 defines a "delinquent child" as any child:
It will be noticed by the above section that the first subdivision thereof recognizes violations of law of this state or any town or city ordinance, and, if a child comes within the definition above, he is designated as a "delinquent child." There is no specific provision in these statutes giving exclusive jurisdiction to juvenile courts of the matters above referred to, although it might be inferred from the above-quoted Sections 3617 and 3632 that this jurisdiction would be...
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