State Ex Rel. Bresnahan v. District Court

263 P.2d 968, 127 Mont. 310, 1953 Mont. LEXIS 87

• Court: Montana Supreme Court
• Decided: December 2, 1953
• Docket: 9349
• Status: Published

Opinions

MR. JUSTICE ANDERSON:

This is an original application seeking a writ of prohibition against the respondents, the district court of Cascade County and the Hon. C.' F. Holt, a district judge thereof, challenging the jurisdiction of the respondent district court to try the relator on an information therein filed charging the relator with having committed a criminal offense to-wit, an attempt to commit rape. Relator seeks an order commanding the respondents to vacate a certain order overruling relator’s motion to quash the information against him and-setting a day for defendant’s trial in said district court on such information. An alternative writ issued and on the return day the cause was argued and submitted. It is admitted that Daniel Bresnahan was over 18 years of age at the time the alleged act is charged to have been committed.

Petitioner sought the order to quash and set aside the information on the theory that he was under the age of 21 years and therefore the juvenile court, as distinguished from the district court, has exclusive jurisdiction concerning the offense or any offense committed by a person under 21 years of age. Chapter 6, sees. 10-601 to 10-633, R. C. M. 1947, being the law having to do with juvenile courts and juvenile delinquents, is the authority given for the position taken by petitioner and particularly those provisions fixing and determining the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts.

R. C. M. 1947, see. 10-603, reads in part as follows:

“Jurisdiction. The district courts of the several counties of this state shall have jurisdiction in all cases coining within the terms and provisions of this act. It is provided that the district court shall be called the juvenile court when acting under the juvenile courts laws.

“The juvenile court shall have exclusive original jurisdiction in proceedings: (a) concerning any child who is delinquent;

“(b) concerning any person under twenty-one (21) years of age charged with having violated any law of the state, other than those laws relating to the commission of or attempt to commit the criminal offenses mentioned in subdivision (2) (a) of section 10-602, or [see below] any person charged with having violated any ordinance of any city or town, prior to having lecome eighteen years of age * * Emphasis supplied.

Petitioner contends that the use of the disjunctive conjunction “or” in section 10-603, subdivision (b), supra, separates and denotes an alternative, and that which appears in the clause following cannot modify that which precedes the disjunctive conjunction “or”.

Petitioner cites State ex rel. Peck v. Anderson, 92 Mont. 298, 13 Pac. (2d) 231, as authority for this point. However, it is our view that this case is clearly authority for the opposite view when considered in the light of the entire juvenile statutes as we now find them.

“The rule of grammatical construction is merely an aid in interpretation, and if the text of the statute indicates a legislative intention contrary to that which would follow from the application of the rules of grammar, then the rule of grammatical construction must give way * * State v. Centennial Brewing Co., 55 Mont. 500, 179 Pac. 296, 298.

The early criminal law did not differentiate between the adult and the minor who had reached the age of criminal responsibility. The fundamental thought in our early criminal jurisprudence was not reformation of the criminals, but punishment; and this applied to children as well as to adults. Today, however, the child is taken in hand by the state, not as an enemy, but as a protector, as the ultimate guardian, because either the unwillingness or the inability of the natural parents to guide him toward good citizenship has compelled the intervention of the public authorities.

R. C. M. 1947, sec. 10-602, provides among other things: ‘ The word ‘child’ means a person less than eighteen years of age. The word ‘adult’ means a person eighteen years of age or older.”

It is the child to which the Act above referred to is primarily applicable and the one with whom the juvenile courts and authorities are ordinarily concerned. When such person arrives at the age of eighteen he is an adult and under the criminal laws of this state is subject to the same rules of society as is any other adult no matter what his age may be. Exceptions found in the Act are those regarding the person between eighteen and twenty-one and such exceptions have to do with detention of such person and trial of such person if the offense for which he or she is charged occurred prior to the time he or she reached the age of eighteen.

Wisely the legislature provided that if any person between the age of eighteen and twenty-one is charged with a crime allegedly committed before he was eighteen, then the juvenile court shall have jurisdiction of such a cause, but it would be folly to supply the intent to the legislation to conform with the theory propounded by the petitioner.

Section 10-603, supra, found its origin in sec. 3, Chapter 227, Laws of 1943, where it is provided that juvenile courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction: “Concerning* any person under twenty-one years of age within the county charged with having violated any law of the state or any ordinance of any city or town, prior to having become eighteen years of age”. It cannot be denied that the language, here used, referred to persons under twenty-one charged with a crime committed by said person prior to the time he or she became eighteen.

The history of the Act, the Act itself, and the rules of construction, as laid down by our predecessors, leave us but one thing* to do. The writ is denied and the proceeding is dismissed.

MB. CHIEF JUSTICE ADAIB, and MB. JUSTICE ANGST-MAN, concur. MB. JUSTICE BOTTOMLY, (dissents.)