By David Rangaviz
In
re J.H.,
2013
VT 31
When I was in
grade school, I hinged a lot of my actions on the difference between the Rules and the Laws.
Rules—school
rules, house rules, any rules really—were made to be broken. I walked the halls during free period. I went to gym during other people’s gym
classes. I skipped the occasional school
day. I was a rebel, and flouting rules
was my cause.
Laws were
different. You didn’t mess with
laws. Breaking rules might earn me some
punishment, but it was punishment I could understand. I didn’t even know how one was punished when
a law was broken. I just knew it was bad
and that I wanted no part of it.
Thankfully,
when I was younger I didn’t know anything about juvenile law or Vermont state
truancy laws. It would’ve thrown my entire
values system out of whack—school rules with the potential to have the force of law. How can that be??
I’ll tell you.
In today’s
case, thirteen year old JH was adjudicated a “child in need of care and
supervision” (referred to as “CHINS”) on the basis of her truancy. A CHINS finding results in the formation of a
case plan that can call for anything from removal from the home and placement
in the custody of the Vermont Department of Children and Families to family
changes to correct the problem while leaving the child in parent custody.
According to
Vermont statutes, a juvenile can be adjudicated a CHINS, for, among other
reasons (primarily neglect or abuse), being “habitually and without
justification truant from compulsory school attendance.”
At the trial,
the only witness was the Bennington County deputy sheriff who served as the
county’s truancy officer. The officer
described the protocol applicable to truancy complaints: “usually” the
attendance clerk at the school calls the sheriff’s department, and the
dispatcher then initiates a truancy complaint and sends the officer to the
residence, where he speaks to the parents and then transports the child to
school.
The officer
testified that he had been to JH’s residence to respond to truancy complaints
on five separate occasions during the month of January 2012. The first three times, JH was home and the
sheriff brought her to school. Notably,
the sheriff “could not recall” whether JH or her father offered a valid reason
for JH’s absence on any of these occasions.
Two times after that, on the fourth and fifth visits, the sheriff
knocked, but no one was home.
On the basis
of this evidence, the trial court adjudicated JH a CHINS for her habitual
absence from school without justification.
JH appealed to the SCOV, arguing that the evidence against her was
insufficient to support the CHINS adjudication.
In a unanimous
opinion, the SCOV agreed and reversed the decision.
According to
the SCOV, the “without justification” portion of the CHINS statute establishes
an element that the State must prove by a preponderance of the evidence. It is not enough for the State to show that the
juvenile habitually missed school. Justifications
do not act as affirmative defenses that students can raise in response to the
State’s proof; the State itself must prove the absence of a justification in
its own case. Given the difficulty of
proving a negative, the SCOV was sure to add that the State meets this burden
simply by admitting school records “showing the child’s unexcused absence.”
In JH’s case,
no school records were forthcoming. In the
SCOV’s words:
There was no
evidence from the school … as to its routine practice, and thus no basis to
infer anything about what the school may have told the dispatcher on the days
in question. The State called no
witnesses from JH’s school to testify as to its policies and procedures
governing whether, when, and how it reports a student truant, and adduced no school
records to show that JH was actually absent without justification on the days
in question.
Because of
this lack of evidence, the State failed to meets its burden to prove the
elements necessary for a CHINS adjudication.
All we know is that the officer went to JH’s home five times because of
a truancy report from the department dispatcher. But, technically, don’t know whether JH’s
absences were unexcused.
This
distinction might sound like the height of formalism—after all, why would the
school have called the sheriff’s department five times in one month if JH was
home with a valid excuse?—but, under the text of the statute, the State simply
failed in its offer of proof. Courts
cannot ease the State’s burden by assuming a necessary element of the State’s
case. Going forward, for CHINS
adjudication based on truancy, the State must put forward school records to
show lack of justification for the absences.
In addition to
forcing the State to meets its burden, this legal requirement also has the
practical benefit of ensuring a measure of cooperation in CHINS cases between
the sheriff’s department, state’s attorney office, and the school itself. After all, the school has the most contact
with the minor and his or her family. As
a result, school officials are perhaps in the best position to know whether
state involvement, in the form of the initiation of the CHINS process, is
called for in individual cases. Requiring
the concurrence of schools officials will be a step toward ensuring that only
necessary cases of neglect and truancy result in a CHINS adjudication. If the State could meet its burden solely by
the testimony of a sheriff, that school input might be lacking, and the system
would suffer for it.
So formalism,
in this case, at least serves a function.
The
implications for my past self, however, are troubling. If school records reflect that a minor
habitually misses school, those record are now a critical part of CHINS proceedings. In some cases, truancy can even lead to
criminal charges. Of course, those
criminal charges are against the child’s guardian—I guess my parents should be
thankful that I never let truancy become a habit.
So, kids of
Vermont, do as I say and not as I did: Follow the law and the rules.
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