Delaware General Assembly


CHAPTER 209

CONCERNING CRIMES COMMITTED BY JUVENILES BETWEEN THE AGES OF SIXTEEN AND EIGHTEEN YEARS

AN ACT CONCERNING CERTAIN CRIMES COMMITTED BY JUVENILES BETWEEN THE AGES OF SIXTEEN AND EIGHTEEN YEARS.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Delaware in General Assembly met:

Section 1. Any child, who has attained his or her sixteenth birthday and who is alleged to have thereafter committed an offense, which, but for the passage of this Statute would have been a delinquent act only and who, in the judgment of the Court which conducts, on behalf of the State of Delaware, a hearing in his or her interest, is not amenable to and will not profit by the processes of said Court, may, in the discretion of the Attorney General of the State of Delaware, and with the consent of a Judge of the Court of General Sessions or a Judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, as the case may be, of the County in which the offense is committed, be proceeded against by information or indictment and be prosecuted in the same manner and in the same Court, and upon conviction shall suffer the same penalties for the commission of the said offense as if said child were an adult beyond the age of twenty-one years at the time of the commission of the said offense.

Section 2. When the Attorney General exercises his discretion to proceed by information or indictment against such a child, and shall have filed in the office of the Clerk of the Peace of the County in which the said offense was committed, as a part of the permanent records in the case, a statement in writing, signed by the Judge of the inferior Court having jurisdiction of the child and of the offense, setting forth that in the judgment of the said Court said child is not amenable to and will not profit by the processes of said Court, and a Judge of the Court of General Sessions or a Judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of the County in which said offense is committed, has entered an appropriate order assuming jurisdiction for the proper Court, the same shall constitute a deprivation of jurisdiction over the person and the offense of the said child of all inferior Courts of this State, and the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the person and of the offense of the said child shall vest in the Court of General Sessions or the Court of Oyer and Terminer, as the case may be, and the Attorney General may thereafter proceed by information or indictment, as the case may be.

Section 3. If a Judge of the Court of General Sessions or a Judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of the County in which the offense is committed shall fail to enter an order assuming jurisdiction for the proper Court of the said child, then the inferior Court having original jurisdiction in the aforesaid matter shall continue to exercise its jurisdiction.

Section 4. This Act shall not be construed as dealing with those crimes over which the Court of Oyer and Terminer now has exclusive jurisdiction.

Section 5. All Acts inconsistent herewith are deemed amended hereby.

Approved April 7, 1947.