Court Reverses E.J.J. Certification by De Facto De Novo Review

In the Matter of the Welfare of P.C.T., Minn.Ct.App., 12/3/2012.  As P.C.T. was standing next to his cousin, someone killed  him.  P.C.T. perhaps knew who did the deed – the Opinion is coy about that – and he may have put together  a posse to go after the killer.  In any event he and his posse allegedly went on a drive-by shooting spree, which accomplished nothing except to get himself charged with six counts of aiding and abetting attempted second degree murder for the benefit of a gang.  

At the time, P.C.T. was on juvenile probation.  He’d been going to school, working the program although not consistently.  He’d never been in a residential treatment program.  The state wanted to certify P.C.T. as an adult but the juvenile court decided to keep P.C.T. under juvenile jurisdiction E.J.J. status.  Neither the state nor the court of appeals liked that decision.  The state appealed and the court of appeals reversed the juvenile court in a snarky, rather hostile opinion.

Retaining a juvenile in juvenile court must serve public safety.  The legislature says that the juvenile court has to consider six factors:

(1) the seriousness of the alleged offense; (2) the culpability of the child in committing the alleged offense; (3) the child’s prior record of delinquency; (4) the child’s programming history; (5) the adequacy of punishment or programming available in the juvenile system; and (6) the dispositional options available for the child.

Some factors – (1) and (3) - are more equal than others.  The juvenile court found that these two factors – as well as the third one -  weighed in favor of certification, while the remaining factors weighed in favor of retaining jurisdiction.  The court of appeals went off on the fourth factor, disagreeing with the juvenile court:

Having failed to achieve a reliable and consistently positive outcome in any of the programming respondent has tried so far, we are not inclined to agree with the district court that the public safety will be served by placing respondent in yet another juvenile delinquency program.

And this:

It is telling that respondent has hardly darkened the doorstep of a school or participated in online schooling in more than a year, except for his schooling at the juvenile detention center while being held for these charges.

The court of appeals also disagreed that the fifth factor supported retaining jurisdiction:

While [the probation officer who did the certification study] conceded that sending respondent to the adult correctional system would ensure public safety, her testimony did not offer an equivalently promising assessment of the public safety benefits of residential placement in the juvenile system.   Bach’s conclusion that EJJ provides a better public safety outcome is speculative at best, especially since respondent has never been placed in residential treatment.

The court of appeals substituted its view of the case for that of the juvenile court judge.  Instead of reviewing for abuse of discretion the court engaged in a de novo review:

By making public safety the predominant concern, the statute assures the public that an offender as dangerous as the respondent will not be shooting up another neighborhood anytime soon. He should be certified to stand trial as an adult.