Miscellaneous

Kansan Juveniles Have Right to Jury

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Hundreds of retried cases, scads of summonses, umpteen questions for prospective jurors, and a higher caseload for courts -- these are just a few of the scenarios courts have to look forward to after this week's Kansas Supreme Court decision giving juveniles the right to a jury trial.

The Kansas high court interpreted the phrase "all prosecutions" as it appears in sec. 10 of the state's bill of rights to include prosecutions in juvenile cases.

Is the juvenile system different? Certainly, when it was invented over 100 years ago in Chicago, that was the idea. Juveniles were "offenders," not "defendants." The goal was rehabilitation (or possibly "habilitation").

"Tough-on-crime" policies of more recent decades led to massive transfer of juveniles to "adult" court. We were warned about super-predators. The age of majority gets younger all the time.

Chief Justice McFarland based her dissent on these differences, noting that "[t]he majority contends that the current juvenile system has changed to be more in line with the adult criminal system" in terms of policy goals, language in the juvenile code, determinative sentencing, and elimination of protective confidentiality.

Nevertheless, Chief Justice McFarland still believes in the juvenile system: "[t]he experiment has not failed. The majority has overlooked the most significant features of the juvenile system that distinguish it from the adult system–features that promote protection of the public while not only preserving, but furthering, the individualized, protective, rehabilitative character unique to the juvenile system."

True, but the differences between juveniles and adults and the melding of the two systems are precisely why juveniles must be afforded constitutional protections. As the NCJJ puts it: "[a]s juveniles increasingly face the risk of adult criminal sentencing or confinement in adult correctional facilities, one should expect to see increasing protections, such as jury trials, in juvenile courts." "Juvenile Delinquents' Right to a Jury Trial," Linda Szymanski, NCJJ Snapshot (September 2002), downloadable from the National Juvenile Defender Center's Comparative State Data collection.

The case is In the Matter of L. M., No. 96.197. Some very interesting discussion of juvenile sentencing.

See Court: Juveniles Have Right to Jury Trial, Mike Belt, Lawrence Journal-World (June 21, 2008).

See also the National Center for Juvenile Justice.

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on June 21, 2008 (boomark / email).