Trial Manual for Defense Attorneys in Juvenile Court
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Description
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE MANUAL This MANUAL is a how-to-do-it guidebook for handling juvenile court cases from beginning to end. It differs from most books about juvenile court, which typically begin with an examination of the history and philosophy of juvenile court and thereafter focus (exclusively or predominantly) upon the aspects of juvenile practice that differ from adult criminal procedure. The MANUAL pretermits any discussion of purely academic, historical, or philosophical matters and deals exclusively with the tasks, skills, rules of law, and issues of strategic judgment involved in representing clients in juvenile court. Rather than ignoring those aspects of juvenile proceedings that mirror adult criminal practice, the Manual examines them at every stage. The Manual covers all of the types of cases likely to be handled by a practitioner in juvenile court. Part I, consisting of Chapters 2-39, covers juvenile delinquency cases. Representation of Persons In Need of Supervision (PINS) (called, in some jurisdictions, Children in Need of Supervision (CHINS) or “incorrigibles”) is covered in Part II, which consists of Chapter 40. Part II assumes that the PINS practitioner will read the delinquency chapters, since delinquency practice is virtually identical to PINS practice; Chapter 40 simply explains the few respects in which PINS practice differs from delinquency practice. Child protective proceedings—actions against parents for abuse or neglect of their children and proceedings to terminate parental rights—are covered in Part III, Chapters 41-48. This Manual is, quite consciously, a manual for defense attorneys. The delinquency and PINS chapters are written for attorneys defending children who are the subject of a Petition in a delinquency or PINS proceeding. The chapters on the child protective system are written for attorneys defending parents who have been charged with abuse or neglect or who are the subject of proceedings to terminate parental rights. While the Manual contains some material that may also be useful to the other players in the system—judges, prosecutors, and attorneys representing children whose parents have been accused of abuse or neglect—it does not purport to describe or analyze subjects falling outside the purview of a defense attorney’s obligations to his or her client. THE STRUCTURE OF THE MANUAL The Manual’s treatments of delinquency cases (Chapters 2-39), PINS cases (Chapter 40), and child protection cases (Chapters 41-48), each proceed, more or less, according to the chronology of an individual case. Thus the chapters begin with the earlies stages at which defense counsel enters the case, then advance through the pretrial stages and trial, and conclude with disposition and post-dispositional remedies. The Manual is published in looseleaf form for three reasons: (a) to allow its users to replace pages with periodic updates; (b) to permit users to interfoliate their own notes on leading cases, rules of practice, and other matters of significance in their local jurisdictions; and (c) to make it possible for litigators to remove sections of the Manual to take to court, rather than lugging the entire Manual along. The goal of making this Manual easy to use during court hearings has also led to the authors’ abandonment of other conventions of manual-writing. The Manual deals with topics as they become relevant at each particular stage of a proceeding even when this format requires dispersing material with related subject matters among different chapters. For example, the topic of suppression of motions is covered in five different chapters: a section on drafting these motions is found in the chapter on motions that need to be filed shortly after Initial Hearing; later there comes a chapter on techniques for handling suppression hearings, and then three substantive chapters covering, respectively, motions to suppress tangible evidence, confessions, and identifications. The latter chapters summarize the voluminous federal and state law on their respective subjects and serve as a quick reference source that can be removed from the Manual and taken to court for use duging suppression hearings. Citation form in the Manual has also been adapted to the realities of trial practice. Thus, for example, a supra citation will only refer back to prior citations within the same subsection so that attorneys consulting a chapter in the midst of a trial or hearing will not need to waste time in searching for the full citation in prior sections. CAVEAT—THE UNIQUENESS OF CASES Although this Manual attempts to summarize the practices and procedures that should be followed in an ordinary juvenile court case, not case is “ordinary” in any but a highly artificial sense. Every delinquency, PINS, neglect, or abuse charge is intensely personal to the accused. Every accused is a complex and unique individual. Every prosecution of an accused is unique in facts and in law and makes unique demands on the defense attorney. Every defense attorney has his or her own style. There is no such thing as conducting a defense generally. What is right in one case is wrong in another. The most important attribute of the good defense lawyer is perceptive selectivity—the ability to determine the precise requirements of each case and to respond to them in a highly specific manner. No book can capture or instill that quality. All that is attempted here is a listing of available options for the lawyer, an identification of the major strategic considerations that may affect choice among the options, an introductory description of the prevailing legal principles and potential legal arguments, procedures, and practical techniques that counsel may encounter or may wish to employ, some warning about common problems, and some suggestions of ways to avoid them or to cope with them. Counsel will have to cull all of these things according to his or her own lights and the needs of his or her particular case in order to make the ultimate, lonely decision what to actually do. A SECOND CAVEAT—THE NEED FOR A PRO The goal of this Manual is to dispel somewhat the edge or uneasiness that the lawyer with little or no juvenile court experience naturally feels when s/he is retained or appointed in a delinquency, PINS, or child protective proceeding. Having even a very general notion of what is coming and what can be done about it rightly inspires some confidence, and confidence can be a very important dealing with the client. However, as in all matters of grave professional responsibility, the lawyer must be careful not to let confidence get out of hand. Juvenile court practice is a specialty, and there is a lot at stake. It remains vital for the lawyer with relatively little juvenile court experience to recognize when s/he is getting into waters deeper than s/he can swim. In matters of complexity or difficulty, counsel should consider the practicability of consulting (formally or informally and on a limited or extended basis), associating with, or withdrawing in favor of, a more experience juvenile court practitioner.
Publication Date
1991
Edition
1
Recommended Citation
Hertz, Randy A.; Guggenheim, Martin; and Amsterdam, Anthony G., "Trial Manual for Defense Attorneys in Juvenile Court" (1991). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 25.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/25
