Cannot Arrest Juvenile for Truancy

Monday, April 23, 2018

Page 3

Cannot Arrest Juvenile for Truancy

By THERESE M. STEWART

(The writer is a justice of the First District Court of Appeal’s Div. Two. What follows is the introduction to an opinion filed late Thursday. The full opinion appears in today’s S.O.S. at page 1886.)

This case would be almost comical if it were not so troubling. Some parents of unruly teenagers undoubtedly have fantasized at one time or another, when all else fails to get their teens out of bed and off to school, about having authorities press criminal charges. But in this case, what might be outlandish fantasy became reality.

R.M., a mouthy 17-year-old high school student with an abysmal school attendance record, was held to answer criminally for her truant ways. Standing in the parking lot of her high school campus one morning, where she had grudgingly been driven after initially refusing even to leave home, she refused to obey a deputy sheriffs order to go inside to class. She was then handcuffed, arrested and escorted to juvenile hall where she was held in custody for two days. The juvenile court sustained allegations that R.M. violated Penal Code section 148 by resisting, delaying or obstructing a peace officer in performing his or her duties. It declared her a delinquent ward of the juvenile court under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602.1 ordered her confined for 15 days to juvenile hall and thereafter placed on probation. Her previously clean criminal record was clean no more. She now appeals, challenging both the jurisdictional finding that she violated the criminal law and several terms and conditions of her probation.

We reverse. R.M. did not violate Penal Code section 148, because the arresting officer was not performing a legal duty when he ordered her to class. Since he had no legal duty to do that, R.M. could not be charged criminally for disobeying his order. However well-intentioned the officer no doubt was, and despite the difficult predicament in which school authorities were placed by R.M.’s defiance and belligerent attitude, the proper recourse was for school officials to pursue appropriate channels for seeking a declaration of wardship under section 601, subsection (b) for habitual truancy (which in fact they eventually did). Not resort to the criminal law.