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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana Court of Appeals Friday rejected an argument that a juvenile delinquency case should have been dismissed because a fact-finding hearing wasn’t conducted within 60 days of the delinquency petition.
K.G. was adjudicated a delinquent for what would have been Class A misdemeanor theft. On appeal, K.G. contends the state was required to dismiss the petition because the hearing didn’t happen for several weeks after the 60-day deadline. The state was granted two continuances.
Judge Robert Altice wrote for the panel that affirmed the adjudication, “we have rejected such an argument on at least two occasions,” citing A.K. v. State, 915 N.E.2d 554, 556 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009) trans. denied, and J.D. v. State, 909 N.E.2d 1035, 1037-38 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009).
Altice wrote that continuances are contemplated under Indiana Code 31-37-11, and juvenile petitions are subject to dismissal for untimeliness only when the amount of time from petition to hearing is greater than one year. K.G’s hearing took place well within that timeframe.
“(W)e decline the invitation to read a discharge remedy into (I.C. § 31-37-11-2(b)) that the legislature did not mandate, especially where the legislature specified precise remedies in other parts of the chapter,” Altice wrote in K.G. v. State of Indiana, 49A05-1606-JV-1231.
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