Major Criminal Case to Decide if Juveniles Strikes are Strikes

Interesting things are happening in the appellate courts regarding 3 strikes and the record of juveniles. It had been well established in California that juvenile strikes count as strikes in adult offenses. You can imaginge the impact of this! Juvenile cases are handled(generally) less aggressively than adult cases and criminal records are built up quickly. There is no right to a jury trial and cases are settled more with an eye towards rehabilitating the juvenile and trying to get them on the right track in life. The consequence is that they frequently end up with offense that are technically strikes.

A bright lawyer has brought a case(People v Nguyen) citing the lack of jury trial and the fact that the juvenile court acts as parens patriae. That is a Latin phrase that means that the court stands in the place of the parent and rehabilitates the juvenile in a way that the parent should. It is for that reason that juvenile courts are less adversarial, why certain rules of evidence don’t apply, and why juveniles are not entitled through the constitution to a jury trial. That concept is inconsistent with applying strikes.

How the Supreme Court of California will decide is unkown. But regardles of how they decide this will impacts thousands and thousands of cases. And, it will ultimately be heard as an issue in the United States Supreme Court.