523 N.E.2d 532 | Ohio Ct. App. | 1987
Appellee, Charlene Weeks, was indicted by the Franklin County Grand Jury for one count of obstructing justice, R.C.
"* * * Charlene Sue Weeks * * * with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of another for crime, or to assist another to benefit from the commission of a crime, did harbor or conceal such other person, to wit: Dale Lamb, Jr., and the crime committed by the person aided was a felony * * *." *66
Appellee entered a plea of not guilty and filed a motion to dismiss on the basis that Dale Lamb, Jr., the person alleged to have been harbored or concealed, was a juvenile delinquent and under Ohio law had not committed a crime. The trial court sustained the motion to dismiss, reasoning that R.C.
Appellant sets forth the following assignment of error:
"The trial court erred when it dismissed appellee's indictment for obstructing justice on the grounds that the person harbored was a juvenile and, therefore, incapable of committing a `crime.'"
Since the inception of a system of juvenile justice in Ohio, courts have distinguished between crimes committed by adults and delinquent acts committed by juveniles. In Prescott v. State
(1869),
"* * * [N]either a criminal prosecution, nor a proceeding according to the course of the common law, in which the right to a trial by jury is guaranteed.
"The proceeding is purely statutory; and the commitment, in cases like the present, is not designed as a punishment for crime, but to place minors of the description, and for the causes specified in the statute, under the guardianship of the public authorities named, for proper care and discipline, until they are reformed, or arrive at the age of majority. * * *"
In Cope v. Campbell (1964),
"Proceedings in a Juvenile Court are civil in nature and not criminal. The appellant was not prosecuted for a criminal offense. The appellant was never indicted, never convicted and never sentenced."
In In re Agler (1969),
"* * * A child is not a criminal by reason of any Juvenile Court adjudication, and civil disabilities ordinarily following conviction do not attach. * * *"
In Ex parte Januszewski (S.D. Ohio 1911), 196 F. 123, at 127, the court, in describing juvenile legislation in Ohio, stated:
"* * * The statute is neither criminal nor penal in its nature, but an administrative police regulation. * * * A consideration of the acts enumerated which respectively constitute delinquency precludes the thought that it was the legislative intent that they or any of them, when committed by infants within the specified age, should for correctional purposes be treated as a crime * * *."
This court has on several occasions recognized that an act committed by a juvenile is not a crime. In State v. Hale (1969),
"`The judgment rendered by the court under this section shall not impose any of the civil disabilities ordinarily imposed by conviction, in that the child is not a criminal by reason of the adjudication * * *.'" Id. at 212, 50 O.O. 2d at 343,
In In re Skeens (Feb. 25, 1982), Nos. 81AP-882 and -883, unreported, this court stated at 5:
"* * * While the commission of *67 acts which would constitute a crime if committed by an adult sets the machinery of the Juvenile Court in motion, the issue before the court is whether or not the minor has engaged in the kind of conduct that constitutes delinquency and will therefore justify the intervention of the state to assume his protection and custody. Evidence that the minor committed acts that would constitute a crime if committed by an adult is used only for the purpose of establishing that the minor is delinquent, not to convict him of a crime and to subject him to punishment for that crime."
Thus, a minor adjudicated as a juvenile delinquent for auto theft is not charged with a crime or convicted of a felony.Beatty v. Riegel (1961),
Appellant relies on In re Russell (1984),
Appellant also asks this court to use R.C.
In State v. Bronaugh (1980),
Judgment affirmed.
WHITESIDE and YOUNG, JJ., concur. *68