Juvenile Transfers Compared

Juvenile Transfers Compared

Rule 20(d) gives juveniles a separate route that parallels the adult plea transfer taught in the preceding sections.¹ Under its opening clause, a juvenile as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 5031 may be proceeded against as a juvenile delinquent (a young person handled in the juvenile system for an act that would be a crime if an adult did it) in the district where the juvenile is arrested, held, or present, provided the listed conditions are met.² The framing already differs from the adult rule. The adult route exists to carry a guilty or nolo contendere plea to another district. The juvenile provision speaks of proceeding against the juvenile as a delinquent there, and it hangs that proceeding on a longer set of conditions.

The juvenile route is the more protective of the two, and the difference shows when the conditions are laid beside the adult ones. The adult route runs on two things: the defendant's own written statement and the written approval of the United States attorney in each district. As this reading presents the adult rule, it contains no ceiling on the seriousness of the offense, no requirement that an attorney have advised the defendant, no requirement that a court advise the defendant of rights, and no requirement that the receiving court approve the transfer. The juvenile route adds each of those.³ The reason lies in what a written consent can accomplish. A consent protects the person who gives it only if that person understands what is being surrendered, and an adult who agrees to plead in another district can be expected to grasp that cost. A juvenile is less able to appreciate what is given up by agreeing to be handled away from the district where the offense allegedly occurred, so the rule does not let the juvenile's consent carry the transfer alone. It surrounds that consent with checks supplied by other people: a limit that keeps the gravest offenses out of the route entirely, the advice of counsel, the court's own advisement of rights, and approval by the receiving court.

One feature carries over unchanged. The juvenile conditions include written approval by the United States attorneys for both districts, so the two-sided and written-form requirements taught earlier for the adult route apply here as well.⁴ The juvenile route therefore builds on the adult safeguards and adds to them. The added conditions fall into three groups, which the next subsections take one at a time: the offense limit and the attorney's advice, the rights advisement and the juvenile's consent, and the approvals by the prosecutors and the court.

On an exam problem, the usual mistake is to treat the adult route's statement and two approvals as sufficient whenever the defendant happens to be a minor. Written approval from both offices is necessary on the juvenile route just as on the adult route, but there it is one condition among several. The analysis should begin by asking whether the defendant is a juvenile within 18 U.S.C. § 5031. If so, each listed condition has to be checked in turn, and agreement between the prosecutors does not end the inquiry.

Offense Limit and Counsel

The juvenile route adds conditions to the adult safeguards, and the first two of them screen the case before the juvenile's own consent is ever considered. One condition looks at the offense, and the other looks at whether the juvenile has already had legal advice. Each is a separate prerequisite under Rule 20(d)(1), so a failure of either one closes the route even when every other condition is satisfied.⁶

The first condition requires that the alleged offense that occurred in the other district is not punishable by death or life imprisonment.⁷ The condition is a ceiling on the offense, and it does not depend on anyone's agreement. It asks about the penalty the law attaches to the alleged offense, so a prosecutor's private expectation of a lighter result does not bring a death-punishable or life-punishable offense within the route. The reason lies in what the route does. Handling a juvenile in the district where the juvenile is arrested, held, or present moves the proceeding away from the district where the offense allegedly occurred, and the stakes of that relocation rise with the severity of what the juvenile faces. Rather than weigh that cost case by case, the rule takes the two gravest categories of punishment out of the route altogether.

The second condition turns from the offense to the juvenile and requires that an attorney has advised the juvenile.⁸ The wording looks backward, so the advice must already have been given when the transfer is sought, and an attorney who is merely available does not satisfy it. The reason is that agreeing to be handled away from the district of the offense carries consequences that a young person is poorly placed to judge alone. The prosecutors and the court that approve the transfer each act in their own institutional roles, and the attorney is the one participant whose role is to explain those consequences to the juvenile. The advice therefore has to come before the juvenile's own decision, which is why the rights advisement and the consent, taken up in the next subsection, follow it in the list.

On an exam problem, the usual mistake is to treat agreement among the prosecutors and the juvenile as enough to open the route, which skips screens that no agreement can supply. The analysis should check the penalty attached to the alleged offense first, because an offense punishable by death or life imprisonment ends the inquiry, and should then confirm that an attorney has already advised the juvenile. Only after both are satisfied does it make sense to look at the conditions that follow.

Rights Advisement and Consent

The next two juvenile conditions work as a pair, and they have to happen in a fixed order. Rule 20(d)(1)(C) requires that the court have informed the juvenile of the juvenile's rights, including the right to be returned to the district where the offense allegedly occurred, and the consequences of waiving those rights.¹⁰ Rule 20(d)(1)(D) then requires that the juvenile, after receiving the court's information about rights, consent in writing to be proceeded against in the transferee district and file the consent in that district.¹¹ The first condition supplies knowledge, and the second records a decision made with that knowledge. Because the second condition is defined by reference to the first, the two cannot be checked off as unrelated items.

Each part of the advisement does its own work. The right to be returned is the very thing the juvenile gives up by agreeing to be handled in the transferee district, so a juvenile who has never been told the right exists cannot know what a signature surrenders. The statement of the consequences of waiver tells the juvenile what follows once that right is gone. The identity of the speaker also matters, because the rule assigns the advisement to the court. Counsel has already advised the juvenile under the preceding condition, and the prosecutors approve the transfer as parties to the case. The court is the one participant in the process that is neutral about whether the transfer happens, so its explanation is the one a young person can most readily rely on. A consent is meaningful only when the person giving it knows what is being given up, and requiring the court to supply that knowledge ties the written consent to actual understanding.

The phrase after receiving the court's information about rights fixes the sequence.¹² Consent is a waiver, and a waiver is only as good as the understanding the person had when giving it. A signature placed on a page before the court has explained the right to be returned was given without the information the rule treats as its foundation, so that order does not satisfy the condition. The text adds two further requirements. The consent must be in writing, so an oral expression of willingness, however clear, falls short. It must also be filed in the transferee district, so a signed consent that never reaches the file in that district leaves the condition unmet.

A short comparison with the adult route shows what the juvenile rule adds. Under Rule 20(a)(1), the adult defendant states in writing a wish to plead guilty or nolo contendere and to waive trial in the charging district, consents in writing to the court's disposing of the case in the transferee district, and files the statement in the transferee district.¹³ That provision describes the defendant's own writing and its filing, and it does not condition the statement on a court first informing the defendant of rights. The filing location is the same on both routes. What the juvenile route adds is the sequence: the juvenile's consent has to follow a court advisement, which the adult rule as written does not require.

On an exam problem, the usual mistake is to treat a signed written consent as satisfying the juvenile route without asking what the juvenile had been told when signing it. The analysis should first ask whether the court informed the juvenile of the right to be returned and of the consequences of waiver. It should then ask whether the written consent came after that information and was filed in the transferee district. A consent that fails either inquiry does not meet the rule, and the adult route's lack of a court advisement is no reason to excuse the omission for a juvenile.

Prosecutor and Court Approval

The last conditions on the juvenile route are approvals, and they come from two different kinds of institution. Rule 20(d)(1)(E) requires that the United States attorneys for both districts approve the transfer in writing, and Rule 20(d)(1)(F) requires that the transferee court approve it.¹⁵ The prosecutors' condition repeats what the adult route already demands, since Rule 20(a)(2) likewise conditions a plea transfer on written approval from the United States attorneys in both districts.¹⁶ Everything taught earlier about that condition therefore carries over: each office holds its own veto, one office's agreement cannot stand in for the other's, and an oral assurance does not satisfy a rule that calls for a writing. The reason for keeping the veto is the same on both routes. The charging district's office decides whether a case it brought will be resolved elsewhere, and the receiving district's office decides whether to take on a proceeding it did not begin.

The court's approval is the condition with no match on the adult route as this reading presents it. That route runs on the defendant's statement and the two written approvals, with no step in which the receiving court passes on the transfer.¹⁷ For a juvenile, the rule lays a judicial check over the prosecutors' veto, so the court that will be asked to handle the case decides whether it should. Two reasons support placing that decision with the court. The prosecutors approve as parties to the case, each office acting in its institutional role, while the court has no stake in how the prosecution comes out, which makes it the one participant able to ask only whether taking the juvenile's case is appropriate. The court is also the body that must carry out the proceeding, so the condition gives the body that bears the burden of the transfer a voice in whether the transfer happens. For that reason the court's approval does not replace the prosecutors' approvals, and their approvals do not replace the court's. Each is a separate condition under its own subparagraph.

Once the conditions are met, Rule 20(d)(2) tells the clerk what to do. After receiving the juvenile's written consent and the required approvals, the clerk where the indictment, information, or complaint is pending, or where the alleged offense occurred, must send the file, or a certified copy, to the clerk in the transferee district.¹⁸ The duty is triggered by documents in the clerk's hands rather than by anyone's say-so, because a clerk can verify only what is on file. The reference to the required approvals reaches the approvals the rule lists as conditions, which on this route include the transferee court's, so a clerk who sent the file before that approval existed would move a case the route does not yet permit to move. The sending clerk is described by two alternative locations, the place where the charging paper is pending and the place where the alleged offense occurred, and the receiving end is always the clerk in the transferee district. A certified copy is a duplicate the clerk attests to be accurate, so the rule allows the papers to travel without requiring the original to leave.

Exam stems about juvenile transfers often narrate the juvenile's consent and the prosecutors' signatures and then ask whether the file may move. The omission to look for is the transferee court's approval, because a reader who has just mastered the adult route is inclined to treat two written prosecutor approvals as the final requirement. Reversing the mistake is equally important: a court's approval cannot cure a missing prosecutor's approval, since the rule lists the two as separate conditions.