United States v. Bland

• Decision Date: 06 September 1972
• Docket Number: No. 71-1761.,71-1761.
• Citation: 472 F.2d 1329
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Jerome T. BLAND.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

472 F.2d 1329 (1973)

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Jerome T. BLAND.

No. 71-1761.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued April 12, 1972.

Decided September 6, 1972.

Rehearing Denied December 20, 1972.

As Amended June 18, 19, 1973.

Miss Mary C. Lawton, Deputy Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Messrs. Thomas A. Flannery, U. S. Atty. at the time the brief was filed, John A. Terry, James E. Sharp, and Gregory C. Brady, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellant. Mr. Harold H. Titus, Jr., present U. S. Atty., also entered an appearance for appellant.

Mr. Peter R. Kolker, Washington, D. C. (appointed by this court), for appellee.

Before WRIGHT and WILKEY, Circuit Judges, and RONALD N. DAVIES,^* U. S. Senior District Judge for the District of North Dakota.

WILKEY, Circuit Judge:

The United States as statutory appellant seeks review of a memorandum opinion and order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, holding 16 D.C.Code § 2301(3)(A) unconstitutional as (1) an arbitrary legislative classification and (2) a negation of the presumption of innocence.¹ Section 2301(3)(A) provides:

The term "child" means an individual who is under 18 years of age, except that the term "child" does not include an individual who is sixteen years of age or older and —

(A) charged by the United States Attorney with (i) murder, forcible rape, burglary in the first degree, robbery while armed, or assault with intent to commit any such offense, or (ii) an offense listed in clause (i) and any other offense properly joinable with such an offense. . . .²

The appellee, born 30 July 1954, had been indicted pursuant to Section 2301(3)(A) as an adult (he was sixteen at the time of his arrest and indictment) on charges of armed robbery of a post office and related offenses on 8 February 1971. Appellee moved below to dismiss the indictment for lack of jurisdiction, asserting that the statutory basis for prosecuting him as an adult was constitutionally deficient in that it failed to provide him with procedural due process. The District Court dismissed the indictment.³

I. The Legislative Background

Congress, pursuant to its constitutional authority to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia,⁴ created the Family Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.⁵ In defining the jurisdiction of the Family Division, Congress conferred on it exclusive jurisdiction of "proceedings in which a child, as defined in section 16-2301, is alleged to be delinquent, neglected, or in need of supervision."⁶ Thus, the Family Division's jurisdiction extends over a person — a child — alleged to have committed delinquent acts, a child being classified as a person not having yet reached the chronological age of 18 and not charged by the United States Attorney with certain specified crimes listed in 16 D.C.Code § 2301. As to any other individual, either one who has reached 18 or who has reached the age of 16 and has been charged by the United States Attorney with one or more of the enumerated felonies,⁷ he is not a child and is to be prosecuted in the regular adult court system, whether it be the D.C. Superior Court or the United States District Court.⁸

The legislative history accompanying 16 D.C.Code § 2301 reveals Congress' intent in enacting this legislation: To improve the operation of the juvenile justice system in the District of Columbia by removing from its jurisdiction certain individuals between the ages of 16 and 18 whom Congress concluded (1) were beyond rehabilitation in the juvenile justice system, and (2) whose presence in that system served as a negative influence on other juveniles. This represents a policy judgment of Congress, after gathering extensive appropriate evidence, as to how persons should be classified as "adult" and "child" for the purposes of rehabilitation following the commission of a criminal offense. We note that the policy judgment was both negative and positive: some previously classified as juveniles were beyond rehabilitation; others of the same chronological age were susceptible to special juvenile treatment, and for any chance of success these latter should be protected against the hard-core repeat offenders of the same chronological age.

While Congress easily could have established 16 as the age cutoff date (it is not clear what constitutional infirmities our dissenting colleague would have found in that less sympathetic approach), it concluded that some within the 16-18 age bracket were susceptible of rehabilitation, and determined that those age 16 and 17 whose offenses charged were minor were to be included within the juvenile system. As the Department of Justice made clear in its Memorandum to the Senate Committee:

The jurisdictional age for all juveniles was not lowered to 16 because there are still first offenders charged with minor offenses who may benefit from juvenile treatment up to the age of 18, and treating them as adults may be harsh and unnecessary. At the same time, experience has shown that in certain crime categories, juvenile treatment is unworkable. Accordingly, the jurisdictional age has been lowered with respect to these crimes.⁹

Under the initial Senate version of Section 2301, the jurisdiction of the Family Division

extends, in general, to persons under the age of 18. Excluded from the latter class, however, is any person 16 years of age or older in any case (1) where such person is formerally sic charged with the commission of one or more of certain enumerated grave offenses, and (2) where such persons has sic previously had the benefit of special juvenile disposition after being charged with serious misconduct committed after attaining the age of 15.¹⁰

The Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, in revealing its rationale for excluding such persons from the jurisdiction of the Family Division, stated:

The Committee has concluded that a juvenile can reliably be considered too well formed or sophisticated for, and beyond the reach of, mere juvenile therapy if the particular juvenile has already been exposed, in years of relative discretion, to the juvenile system and treated to the extent that his case required (as suggested by a prior finding of delinquency), and has nevertheless returned to serious misconduct (as suggested by a serious felony charge).¹¹

The initial House version of Section 2301 provided that "a person, 16 years of age or older, who is charged by the United States attorney with an enumerated violent crime a more extensive list than contained in the initial Senate version is automatically subject to the jurisdiction of the adult court."¹² The House Committee on the District of Columbia, referring to the same statistics on serious offenses committed by juveniles and to the growing recidivist rate among this group cited by the Senate Committee,¹³ gave the following as the basis for its exclusion of those 16 years of age or older charged with a certain serious crime from the Family Division's jurisdiction:

Because of the great increase in the number of serious felonies committed by juveniles and because of the substantial difficulties in transferring juvenile offenders charged with serious felonies to the jurisdiction of the adult court under present law, provisions are made in this subchapter for a better mechanism for separation of the violent youthful offender and recidivist from the rest of the juvenile community.¹⁴

As finally enacted, Section 2301 reflects a compromise between the initial Senate and House versions. It provides that the Family Division shall have jurisdiction over "persons under 18 except those 16 and older charged by the United States attorney with murder, forcible rape, robbery while armed, burglary in the first degree, or assault with intent to commit one of these offenses, or any such offense and a properly joinable offense."¹⁵ As such, it eliminates the previous finding of delinquency required under the initial Senate version and shortens the list of serious crimes contained in the initial House version.

II. The Due Process and Equal Protection of the Law Issue

The District Court found Section 2301(3) (A) invalid as violative of due process of law:

The determination that a child should be tried as an adult cannot be made without the safeguard of basic due process. Without a provision in the new statute that would require some determination, reached after a fair hearing, that an individual is beyond the help of the Family Division, that statute must fall as violative of due process.¹⁶

To the Government's objection below that the statute specifically classifies those individuals who are at least 16 years of age and charged with certain enumerated crimes by the United States Attorney as exempt from the Family Division's jurisdiction, the District Court found no standards in the statute to guide the United States Attorney in making this determination, hence it held that the statute denies due process to those individuals so charged.

A.

In relation to this holding of the District Court, we note in the first place that legislative classifications are entitled to a strong presumption of validity and may be "set aside only if no grounds can be conceived to justify them."¹⁷ As the Supreme Court has long held:

It is a salutary principle of judicial decision, long emphasized and followed by this Court, that the burden of establishing the unconstitutionality of a statute rests on him who assails it, and that courts may not declare a legislative discrimination invalid unless, viewed in the light of facts made known or generally assumed, it is of such a character as to preclude the assumption that the classification rests upon some rational basis within the knowledge and experience of the legislators.¹⁸

As the discussion on the legislative background of Section 2301(3) (A), supra, indicates, Congress was well acquainted with the problems confronting the...