TOC Due Process AC

advertisement
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
The neg must defend the status quo. AC offense points out flaws with the status quo, so
allowing the neg to defend other options explodes his ground since he can just choose an
advocacy to which the AC doesn’t link, nullifying my whole case. And, the neg must defend an
obligation to treat juveniles differently from adults. Otherwise, I have to prove an obligation
while the neg can win by proving it’s either permissible or obligatory to treat juveniles
differently, giving him a 2-1 structural advantage. Reciprocity is key to fairness because it
ensures equal advocacies. Also, this promotes clash because it forces the neg to form an explicit
advocacy in comparison to mine instead of taking non-opposing positions like treating juveniles
as adults plus or minus a small portion of my advocacy. Clash is key to education since it is the
foundation of substantive debate. Prefer reasonable aff interp since I need interpretive leeway to
set grounds and to counterbalance neg time skew and ability to select his advocacy based on the
AC. Presume aff since I had to overcome structural skews.
I value morality. Morality must account for the nature of persons as distinct entities.
Quinn1:
A person is constituted by his body and mind. They are parts or aspects of him. For that very reason,
[so] it is fitting that he have primary say over what may be done to them- not because such an
. In giving him this
arrangement best promotes overall human welfare, but because any arrangement that denied him that say would be a grave indignity
authority, morality recognizes his existence as an individual with ends of his own—
an independent being. Since that is what he is, he deserves this recognition. Were morality to
withhold it, were it to allow us to kill or injure him whenever that would be collectively best, it would picture him not as a being in his own right but as a cell in the collective
whole.
[To be a person necessarily entails a rational will which we aspire to and which must be
respected. Velleman2:
If you want to imagine what it would be like never to attain a continuing point-of-view,
imagine being a cat. A cat feels like going
out and meows to go out; feels like coming in and meows to come in; feels like going out again and meows to go out; and so on, all
day long. The cat cannot think, “I have things to do outside and things to do inside, so how should I organize my day?” But when you, a
person, find yourself to-ing and fro-ing in this manner, you feel an impulse to find a
constant perspective on the question when you should “to” and when you should “fro.”This impulse is unavoidable as
soon as the availability of the more encompassing vantage point appears. As soon as you glimpse
the possibility of attaining a constant perspective from which to reflect on and adjudicate among your shifting preferences, you are drawn toward that perspective, as you would be
1
Quinn, Warren S. Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. The Philosophical
Review, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Jul., 1989). JSTOR. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185021>
2 Velleman, David. Self To Self. Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pg 23.
1
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
drawn toward the top of a hill that commanded a terrain through which you had been wandering
point-of-view that would constitute the identity of a person.
. To attain that standpoint, in this case, would be to attain the single, continuing
To see the possibility of attaining it is therefore to see
the possibility of being a person; and seeing that possibility unavoidably leads you to
aspire toward it.]
Utilitarianism is incoherent since it references collectives, not individuals. Also,
aggregation is nonsensical since combining disparate experiences is impossible. Ten headaches
don’t become one migraine as there is no actor capable of experiencing the collective pain of ten
people. Thus, a complete moral system must recognize individual personhood—that individuals
have voices which must be heard when considering what should be done to them. In the criminal
justice system, this warrants a singular respect for absolute due process rights that allow
individuals to participate in trials and challenge decisions. Allan 13:
In a democratic society which respects certain fundamental rights, where each person is dealt with in accordance with the laws, and where certain other important values are
respected in legal processes, people are treated with dignity and respect.
Treatment in accordance with authoritative legal
standards, in particular, upholds a person's legitimate normative expectations—an element of fair treatment which
cannot be collapsed into other values such as privacy or equality or comprehensibility. This broadly instrumental approach is
persuasively recommended as robustly practical and in tune with common sense: 'Procedures in the air, procedures good in themselves, and procedures edged with mystery are
eliminated'.3 The important part played by
non-outcome values—values independent of the accuracy or
soundness of the substantive decision or verdict—in any complete and convincing analysis is readily acknowledged; but Laurence Tribe's
suggestion4, that
[like] the 'rights to interchange' between citizen and official conferred by a
fair hearing have intrinsic value, is typical of the dignitarian assertions which attract Galligan's scepticism.
According to Tribe,
such
rights ‘express the elementary idea that to be a person, rather than a thing, is at least to be
consulted about what is done with one’.
Further, only due process rights separate the act of punishment from mere violence, or the
imposition of arbitrary limits on freedom, as they ensure that the punishment is deserved by the
defendant according to certain non-arbitrary standards. The criminal justice system exists
independently of the democratic process because criminal culpability is inherently individual, not
social. Thus the standard is adhering to due process protections that best uphold defendants’
voices.
Prefer this standard since such protections are the only consistent features of the criminal
3
Allan, T.R.S. Procedural Fairness and the Duty of Respect. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3
(Autumn, 1998), pp. 497-515. Oxford University Press. Accessed JSTOR. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/764676>.
4
This is not a strawman. In this article, Allan upholds Tribe’s position and responds to Galligan.
2
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
justice system, while outcomes are speculative at best. Allan 25:
The analogy between fair hearings, in legal and administrative proceedings, and participation in political affairs shows why the connection between procedures and outcomes is not
merely instrumental. Just as democratic participation cannot guarantee the enactment of good laws, so
fair hearings cannot always ensure
the accurate application of authoritative legal standards. In each case, however, the process
affords moral grounds for accepting the outcome, even when it is otherwise unjust. It is
not merely that procedures are inherently imperfect, so that the correct outcome can never be guaranteed. More fundamentally,
the right outcome is itself
usually a matter of controversy: divergent views can reasonably be taken both about the justice of (actual or proposed) legal rules and the
appropriateness of their application in the particular case
. These matters are, of course, closely connected because any particular case can raise questions about the meaning and
scope of the general rule and, ultimately, in so far as there is no room left for argument over meaning and scope, questions about whether it should ever be applied at all.
When
procedures allow genuine participation, in the sense that questions of justice can be
raised and answered, and where every rule is ultimately open to challenge and, accordingly, modification, the citizen is treated
with the respect which his dignity deserves.
Moreover, the criminal justice system inherently entails a deontological system because A.
a utilitarian system of punishment is self-defeating since it sacrifices desert in the name of the
greater good, preventing a predictable set of consequences for action, and B. the law presumes a
distinction between action and inaction since people are punished for direct, intentional
violations of rights—manslaughter and premeditated first-degree murder have the same outcome
but are not comparably punishable crimes.
Under the AC standard, the best system has and enforces protections which uphold
defendants’ voices. These safeguards exist to protect individual agency, so whether the
contingencies of certain cases may influence individuals to plea bargain or waive their rights is
irrelevant as long as those individuals had the opportunity to decide by weighing the possible
costs and benefits of their decision.
I contend that the due process protections guaranteed in adult court best uphold
defendants’ voices. First, the paternalistic ideology of the juvenile court suppresses defendants’
voices. Ainsworth6:
To the extent that
the procedural deficiencies of the juvenile court are a product of a
paternalistic parens patriae ideology that continues to affect[s] the behavior of lawyers and judges
in juvenile court
, [so] the abolition of a separate juvenile court delinquency jurisdiction would help to
5
Ibid.
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: The
Juvenile Court. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
6
3
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
eliminate these shortcomings. In particular, lawyers practicing in a unified criminal court system would be less
likely to adopt the nonadversarial guardianship role in representing young clients,
since they would no longer have the supporting rationale that the prosecution was,
after all,
“just” a juvenile court case. Similarly, the right to jury trial in a unified criminal court system would prevent the kind of perfunctory trials
that are all too common in juvenile court. In a jury trial, the accused would be found guilty only when the evidence showed guilt of the offense charged and not because the judge
recognized the accused as a repeat offender or thought that the accused could benefit from the disposition proposed by the state.
This ideology has led juvenile court judges to give indeterminate sentences. Noon7 writes:
Other critics of the juvenile justice system argue that a child has a right to be punished, not a right to be treated. This notion is based on two premises: (1) that treatment does not
work because there is no sure-fire way, short of killing someone, to stop a person from committing a crime; and, (2) the idea that a treatment and rehabilitation orientated justice
system has a great potential for abuse.Robert E. ShepherdJr.bases his argument for a “right to punishment” on the notion that although the justification for a separate juvenile
system is to avoid the harshness of the adult system,
the emphasis on rehabilitation in the juvenile system has
“fostered the imposition of indeterminate sentences.” This has resulted in juveniles
being incarcerated for much longer terms than adults who are sentenced for similar
offenses.
Shepherd also believes that punishment should be emphasized over treatment because the broad discretionary powers of juvenile court overshadow the
availability of its benefits.
This argument, however, does not hold true everywhere. In Florida, overcrowding in both juvenile and adult facilities has resulted in juveniles rarely
spending over a year in any facility, regardless of their crime.
This denies juveniles’ voices because the juvenile is structurally unable to contest the
sentence since it is unclear what the actual punishment is. They have no recourse—juvenile court
judges are completely unchecked. Feld8:
Quite apart from its unsuitability as a social welfare agency, the individualized justice of a rehabilitative
its utility as a court of law as well. Despite statutes and rules, juvenile court
juvenile court fosters lawlessness and thus detracts from
judges make discretionary decisions effectively
unconstrained by the rule of law. If judges intervene to meet each child's "real needs," then every case is unique and decisional rules or
objective criteria cannot constrain clinical intuitions. The idea of
treatment necessarily entails individual differentiation,
indeterminacy, a rejection of proportionality, and a disregard of normative valuations of the
seriousness of behavior. But, if judges possess n[o]either practical scientific bases by which to
classify youths for treatment nor demonstrably effective programs to prescribe for them, then the exercise of "sound
discretion" simply constitutes a euphemism for idiosyncratic judicial subjectivity. Racial, gender,
geographic, and socio-economic disparities constitute almost inevitable corollaries of a treatment ideology that lacks a scientific foundation. At the least,
judges will
sentence youths differently based on extraneous personal characteristics [and] for which
they bear no responsibility. At the worst, judges will
similarly situated offenders
impose haphazard, unequal, and discriminatory punishment on
without effective procedural or appellate checks.
Juveniles can’t appeal judges’ decisions, excluding their voices. Ainsworth9 2:
7
Noon, Cynthia R. Waiving Goodbye to Juvenile Defendants, Getting Smart vs. Getting Tough. 49 U. Miami L.
Rev. 473 (1994-1995).
8
Feld, Barry [Law Professor at the University of Minnesota], “Abolish the Juvenile Court: Youthfulness, Criminal
Responsibility, and Sentencing Policy,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, pg 91, 1997.
4
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
Denial of the right to jury trial disadvantages juveniles even after the fact-finding stage.
In a jury trial, jurors must be explicitly
instructed in the law to be applied in the case by the trial judge through written jury
instructions. Any error of law can be later reviewed by an appellate court. However, when a
judge sits without a jury, she need not expressly articulate her understanding of the law;
therefore, the appellate court has no way of determining whether the juvenile court judge
misunderstood or misapplied the law to the juvenile’s detriment. Thus, depriving juveniles of jury trial puts them at a double
disadvantage compared with adult defendants: they are more likely to be convicted at trial and are less likely to be able to demonstrate an error of law on appeal.
Even
those juveniles who do not go to trial suffer from their inability to request a jury
trial. As many commentators have pointed out, most defendants—adult and juvenile alike—do not go to trial.26 Instead, they plead guilty. In the course of
plea bargaining, the possibility that a defendant will elect to exercise the constitutional right
to a jury trial is a potent bargaining chip, often the only one the accused has.
And, juveniles are equally as rational as adults. Morse10 writes:
Many able scholars have reviewed the literature concerning potential legally relevant difference between adolescents and adults.
I shall make the simplifying assumption that
current
near consensus of their findings represents the most accurate
assessment of those differences.
In brief,
the literature indicates that the formal reasoning
ability and level of cognitive moral development of mid adolescents differs little
from adults.
Further, on narrowly conceived cognitive tasks performed under laboratory conditions that concern decisions about medical treatment, there is little
difference in outcome between mid adolescents and adults.
Deontology makes judgments about the inherent nature of a person. Codified universal
distinctions should be made only on the basis of universal differences; for instance, certain ethnic
groups may be more likely to commit crime, but that does not warrant categorically different
treatment. Even if juveniles are more inclined to commit crime due to immaturity or
criminogenic environments, they are equally rational agents since no developmental impediment
can make refraining from crime literally impossible—many juveniles do refrain from crime.
Second, juveniles do not receive adequate representation in juvenile court. Levick and
Desai11 ‘7:
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: THE
JUVENILE COURT. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
10 Morse, Stephen [Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law and professor of psychology and law in
psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania]. “Delinquency and Desert.” The Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science. 1999.
11
Levick, Marsha [Legal Director and Co-founder, Juvenile Law Center; Adjunct Professor of Law, University of
Pennsylvania School of Law and Temple University, Beasley School of Law] and Neha Desai [Sol and Helen
Zubrow Fellow, Juvenile Law Center]. Still Waiting: The Elusive Quest to Ensure Juveniles a Constitutional Right
9
5
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
Forty years after the United States Supreme Court first established that juveniles have a right to counsel
in delinquency proceedings,
juveniles’ access to timely, zealous, and effective legal representation remains a patchwork of
disparate state and local laws, policies and practices that fail to assure that all youth receive
skilled representation throughout their involvement with the juvenile justice system. The failure of states to
adequately fund juvenile indigent defender systems, or to even provide counsel at
certain
critical stages of juvenile court proceedings, leaves many youth vulnerable to the consequences
of false confessions and uncounseled guilty pleas, the perils of unnecessary detention while awaiting trial, or prolonged
periods of confinement in inappropriate facilities following adjudication
.
This turns neg contracts and constitutionality arguments because the juvenile court
violates the 6th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees “Assistance of Counsel”12
for the accused. Further, regardless of the cognizance of the rights, juveniles deserve them
because people inherently deserve rights. Basing rights allocation on knowledge makes no sense
since that paradigm justifies never protecting the rights of infants and young children. This is
also consistent with the current legal construct of competence to stand trial. Grisso13:
Current law does not include these developmental factors as relevant when considering
a defendant’s adjudicative competence. For example, when making a decision about waiver
of important rights, defendants are free to place a primary value on their immediate
gratification at the expense of their future welfare, or to `opt to please their friends rather than act in their best interests,
as long as they adequately understand and grasp the consequences of their choices. But if adolescents place a relatively
higher value on immediate gratification than adults as a consequence of their developmental immaturity, they may make different legal decisions than they themselves would make
to Counsel at all Stages of the Juvenile Court Process. Rutgers Law Review, Vol. 60:1 (2007), pp. 175-205, 175178.
12
The Sixth Amendment states: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district
shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be
confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to
have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
13
Thomas Grisso [University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts], Laurence Steinberg
[Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], Jennifer Woolard [Department of
Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC], Elizabeth Cauffman [Western Psychiatric Institute and
Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania], Elizabeth Scott [School of Law, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, Virginia], Sandra Graham [Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of
California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California], Fran Lexcen [University of Massachusetts Medical School], N.
Dickon Reppucci [Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia], and Robert
Schwartz [Juvenile Law Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. Juveniles’ Competence to Stand Trial: A Comparison
of Adolescents’ and Adults’ Capacities as Trial Defendants. August 2003. Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 27, No.
4.
6
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
in their adult years. Although psychosocial immaturity is not addressed in the formal legal construct of competence to stand trial, it needs to be investigated in this context to
provide a comprehensive account of adolescents’ capacities to participate in the trial process
.14
Next, even when juveniles do receive counsel, the paternalistic ideology of the court
provides a strong disincentive for defense attorneys to adequately represent their clients,
suppressing juveniles’ voices. Ainsworth15 3:
In addition,
defense lawyers who routinely practice in juvenile court face tremendous institutional pressures
to cooperate in maintaining a smoothly functioning court system. The [obstreperous]
defense lawyer who is seen as obstreperous in her advocacy will be reminded subtly, or overtly if necessary, that excessive
zeal in representing her juvenile clients is inappropriate and counter-productive. If she ignores these
signals to temper her advocacy, the appointed defense lawyer [she] is vulnerable to direct attacks, such as having her fees
slashed or being excluded from the [court’s] panel of lawyers from which the court makes indigent
.
appointments Seldom are such crude measures necessary, however. For most defense lawyers, withstanding the psychological debilitation attendant upon being the sustained
focus of judicial and prosecutorial disapproval is hopeless. In all of these ways,
the institution of the autonomous and distinct juvenile court
inherently discourages effective assistance of counsel for juvenile defendants. As long as a separate juvenile court
system exists, separate advocacy models appear to be the inevitable result. Although rooting out paternalistic attitudes toward children cannot be accomplished by fiat, abolishing
the juvenile court would go a long way toward ensuring that juveniles charged with crimes get the same caliber of legal counsel, operating under the same standards of zealous
advocacy, as adult defendants receive.
Ainsworth16 4 empirically confirms:
Even
when juveniles do have lawyers to represent them, the quality of the advocacy
they receive is too often deplorable. For example a study of the New York juvenile courts commissioned
by the state bar criticized almost every aspect of the representation received in juvenile court, concluding
[concluded] that only 4% of the
lawyers in juvenile court provided effective assistance of counsel to their clients. Similarly,
the 1994 Sanborn study found that the vast majority of juvenile court personnel thought that defense counsel
often failed to display an appropriately adversarial stance to zealously represent their
clients, adopting instead a more compliant, guardianlike role.
Many of the interviewees expressed skepticism about the quality of legal defense available to juveniles,
finding public defenders too overworked and private lawyers too inexperienced to provide effective assistance of counsel.
There are two impacts. First, juveniles’ voices will be suppressed by lack of external
checks. Feld172:
This card is not a strawman. Grisso concludes that “[psychosocial immaturity] needs to be investigated,” but
admits that immaturity is currently not relevant in the context of competence to stand trial.
15
Ainsworth, Janet E. Re-Imagining Childhood and Reconstructing the Legal Order: The Case for Abolishing the
Juvenile Court, 69 N.C. L. Rev. 1083, 1085-90, 1133 (1991).
16
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: The
Juvenile Court. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
17
Feld, Barry [Law Professor at the University of Minnesota], “Abolish the Juvenile Court: Youthfulness, Criminal
Responsibility, and Sentencing Policy,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 1997.
14
7
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
The juvenile court predicates its procedural informality on the assumptions that it provides benign and effective treatment.
co-optation
The continuing absence or
of defense counsel in many jurisdictions reduces the likelihood that juvenile
courts will adhere to existing legal mandates. The closed, informal, and confidential
nature of delinquency proceedings reduces the visibility and accountability of the justice process
and precludes external checks on coercive interventions.
Second, without adequate counsel, juveniles are left unable to contest the charges against
them, to contest their detention, and to propose alternatives to the disposition advocated by the
prosecution18, denying their voice in court.
Next, juveniles are competent to stand trial because a brief period of instruction easily
allows them to comprehend their rights. Grisso19 2:
This challenge may be less daunting than it at first appears. As suggested above, most youths who are not competent to stand trial as adults due to immaturity could likely be
adjudicated in juvenile court. Moreover, some
defendants whose incompetence is based solely on deficient understanding (rather than immature reasoning)
could likely be tried as adults after a period of instruction about the matters they do
not comprehend. Thus, the great majority of youths would be subject to
adjudication on their criminal charges with little delay even when an assessment of their abilities
indicates they do not meet adult competence standards.
Finally, even if due process protections exist, empirical studies confirm that juvenile
courts do not enforce those protections. Ainsworth20 5:
Nevertheless, more recent studies of the juvenile court confirm the findings of earlier ones.
Empirical[,] and evaluative[,] research, as well as
[and] survey research, indicate that the system today has failed to deliver the procedural
justice promise by Gault.
For example, in
a 1994 survey of 100 juvenile court [staff members] judges, lawyers,
and probation officers, a majority of the interviewed respondents, including nearly half of the juvenile court judges,
described judicial conduct
that they believed sometimes compromised the abilities of the juvenile defendants to get a fair trial. This conduct
included forcing unprepared parties to proceed with trial or guilty plea, interrupting the lawyers’
witness examinations with their own questions,
that juvenile court
and cutting off the lawyers’ questioning.
Two-thirds of the surveyed court workers noted
judges often had knowledge before trial of the accused juvenile’s prior
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: The
Juvenile Court. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
19
Thomas Grisso [University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts] et al. Juveniles’
Competence to Stand Trial: A Comparison of Adolescents’ and Adults’ Capacities as Trial Defendants. August
2003. Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 27, No. 4.
20
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: The
Juvenile Court. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
18
8
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
criminal record and of recommended disposition from the probation officer, and a majority of the respondents
thought that this knowledge created a bias in the judge against the juvenile. Despite the requirement that guilt be proven
beyond a reasonable doubt, almost half of the respondents maintained that juvenile court judges found juveniles guilty even when the evidence did not meet that standard. More
than a third of the surveyed participants felt that juvenile court judges admitted evidence that should have been excluded under the rules of evidence. Many respondents observed
that juvenile
court hearings were conducted too quickly, that the atmosphere was not serious enough, and that the
treatment orientation of juvenile court personnel—including judges, prosecutorys, and defense counsel—
interfered with the accused juvenile’s ability to have a fair trial. Sanborn’s study,
acknowledging that adult defendants do not always receive mandated procedural justice, nonetheless
concluded that the procedural
deficiencies of the juvenile court system were worse than those of the adult system.
9
Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Due Process AC
Jan/Feb ‘11
**Frontlines**
A2 Juveniles Waive Their Right to Counsel in Adult Court
1. Turn: It’s more common in the juvenile court, and unlike the adult court, checks on these
waivers do not exist. Thus the adult court ensures that the waivers were done in an
informed manner. Ainsworth21 4 writes:
A major national study encompassing urban, suburban, and rural court systems found that, in one-third of these systems,
some
significant proportion of juvenile defendants waive their right to counsel.
And, despite evidence suggesting that juveniles are generally less able than adults to understand and effectively exercise their constitutional rights,
juvenile
court judicial inquiries into the adequacies of the waiver process were
frequently less thorough than comparable inquiries in the adult criminal system,
or were absent altogether. Juveniles who are not represented by counsel are not
likely to exercise their other procedural rights effectively. They
are severely hampered in their ability to
contest the charges against them, [and] to challenge their detention, and to propose
alternatives to the dispositions advocated by the prosecution
.
Ainsworth, Janet E. [J.D., Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, Tacoma, WA]. “The
Court’s Effectiveness in Protecting the Rights of Juveniles in Delinquency Cases.” The Future of Children: The
Juvenile Court. Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1996. p. 64-74.
21
10
Download