State ex rel. Juvenile Department v. Fitch

84 P.3d 190, 192 Or. App. 56, 2004 Ore. App. LEXIS 101
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedFebruary 4, 2004
DocketJ00-0070; A111657
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 84 P.3d 190 (State ex rel. Juvenile Department v. Fitch) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. Juvenile Department v. Fitch, 84 P.3d 190, 192 Or. App. 56, 2004 Ore. App. LEXIS 101 (Or. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinions

LINDER, J.

Youth was taken into custody for hindering prosecution after he interfered with police efforts to apprehend a 15-year-old friend who was wanted for escape in the second degree. Youth was then searched and found to be in possession of drugs. Youth argues that, because the friend that he aided was a juvenile, not an adult, he could not be taken into custody for or found within the juvenile court’s jurisdiction on the allegation of hindering prosecution, which requires proof that the person whose prosecution was hindered committed a “crime” punishable as a felony. See ORS 162.325. Youth reasons that juveniles commit delinquent acts, not crimes, because they are not subject to criminal prosecution or punishment. Contrary to youth’s position, however, the juvenile code decriminalizes responsibility for the commission of a crime; it does not decriminalize the juvenile’s conduct. The focus of the hindering prosecution statute is on assisting a person who has engaged in unlawful conduct, not one who has been held criminally responsible for that conduct. Thus, a juvenile who engages in conduct that is classified as a felony offense commits a “crime” for purposes of the hindering prosecution statute regardless of whether the juvenile offender is subject to criminal prosecution, conviction, or punishment. We therefore affirm.

For purposes of resolving the issue presented, the facts can be briefly summarized. A 15-year-old friend of youth’s, Fowler, escaped from police custody. The next day, Sergeant Arnold investigated a report of a “suspicious vehicle” that had been associated with Fowler. The four occupants of the vehicle were getting out or had gotten out of it as Arnold parked his patrol car and approached. Arnold first conversed with youth, who was standing about 25 feet from the other occupants and whom Arnold recognized as having been with Fowler when Fowler escaped from custody the night before. Arnold asked youth if he had seen Fowler, talked to him on the phone, or otherwise heard from him; youth said that he had not. Arnold warned youth of the prohibition against hindering prosecution. Youth told Arnold that the officer who had tried to arrest Fowler the night [59]*59before had already warned him about that, and youth repeated that he had not seen or heard from Fowler. As it happened, however, and as police soon learned, Fowler was one of the other occupants of the vehicle and was standing about 25 feet away when youth made those representations to Arnold. When the police discovered that fact, they took youth into .custody for hindering prosecution, searched him, and discovered in his pocket a pipe containing methamphetamine.

Before the hearing on the state’s delinquency petition, youth moved to suppress evidence of his possession of methamphetamine. Youth argued that his custody and the ensuing search were unlawful on the theory that, as a matter of law, a person cannot hinder the prosecution of a juvenile. As already described, youth reasoned that the hindering prosecution statute requires interference with the apprehension or prosecution of someone who has committed a felony crime; that juveniles, as a matter of law, do not commit crimes; and that, therefore, as a matter of law, a person does not violate the hindering prosecution statute by hindering the apprehension of a juvenile. The juvenile court rejected youth’s position and denied the motion to suppress. At the hearing, youth reiterated the same legal theory in arguing to the juvenile court that, as a matter of law, it could not find him to be within the court’s jurisdiction on the hindering prosecution allegation. The juvenile court again rejected youth’s argument.

On appeal, youth challenges the ruling on his motion to suppress and the juvenile court’s finding of jurisdiction on the hindering prosecution allegation, renewing the argument that he made to the juvenile court. In particular, youth argues that juveniles do not commit crimes but instead, as a matter of law, they commit “acts which, if done by an adult, would constitute a crime.” Youth also argues that juvenile court adjudications are not criminal convictions; that juvenile delinquency proceedings are not criminal proceedings of any kind; and that juvenile dispositions are not sentences. Necessarily, then, as youth’s argument goes, because Fowler [60]*60was a juvenile, he was legally incapable of committing a felony crime and therefore youth did not hinder the apprehension of one who had “committed a crime” punishable as a felony within the meaning of the hindering prosecution statute (ORS 162.325).

Whether juveniles commit crimes ultimately involves questions of statutory interpretation, which we review as questions of law. See State v. Lawler, 144 Or App 456, 461, 927 P2d 99 (1996), rev den, 326 Or 390 (1998). But before turning to the specific statutes that bear on the issue, we begin by describing Oregon’s juvenile and criminal justice systems, as they existed historically and as they exist today, because the interplay between them is significant to our analysis.

Before the last years of the nineteenth century, “delinquency” was unknown to the common law and no separate system of juvenile justice existed, either in Oregon or in most other jurisdictions. See State ex rel Juv. Dept. v. Reynolds, 317 Or 560, 566, 857 P2d 842 (1993); Margaret May, Innocence and Experience: The Evolution of the Concept of Juvenile Delinquency in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 3 Crime and Justice in American History: Delinquency and Disorderly Behavior 46, 47-48 (Eric H. Monkkonen ed., 1991). Instead, the common law and the early statutory schemes of most states classified people into two categories: (1) those capable of forming criminal intent, who were subject to the full force of the criminal system, and (2) those incapable of forming such intent, who were outside the reach of the law altogether. Id. at 47-48. With respect to age, the common law drew a bright line at the “age of reason.” Juveniles under the age of seven were held legally incapable of forming criminal intent, while those over the age of 14 were held fully responsible for their actions.1 Id. Juveniles between the ages of seven and 14 were presumed incapable of forming criminal intent, but the state was permitted to rebut that presumption. Id.; Reynolds, 317 Or at 566.

[61]*61In the late 1800s, the legislature enacted Oregon’s first statutes giving trial courts limited discretion to treat juveniles differently from adults. Reynolds, 317 Or at 567. For the most part, those laws altered the trial court’s dispositional authority for juveniles who had been convicted of or charged with crimes. Id. But it took until 1907 for Oregon to create its first juvenile court system that permitted juvenile offenders to be handled through a justice system separate from the criminal system used for adults. Id. at 567-68. Importantly, however, juvenile court jurisdiction was not made exclusive. As a result, juveniles remained fully subject to criminal prosecution as adults, depending on whether the local district attorney opted to charge them as adults or to adjudicate their cases through the juvenile court. Id. at 568-69. That dual-jurisdiction system remained in place until 1959, when the juvenile justice system much as we know it today came into existence.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

STATE EX REL. JUV. DEPT. v. Fitch
84 P.3d 190 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 2004)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
84 P.3d 190, 192 Or. App. 56, 2004 Ore. App. LEXIS 101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-juvenile-department-v-fitch-orctapp-2004.