Walk It Through: Seventeen
A search at school, a truancy letter, a complaint in juvenile court, and the birthday that changes less than it seems.
The assistant principal wants to look in your bag. The resource officer is standing beside her.
Two things a person in this spot might do. Picking one shows what the law says about it.
What a district excuses and the paperwork that proves it, the dispositions a juvenile court may order, transfer to adult court and its categories, children on individualized education programs or in custody arrangements, how a support order is actually terminated, and the ages for alcohol, tobacco, a concealed handgun license, jury service and voting are not covered here. A minor in an unsafe home is a child protection question for a county children services agency or a juvenile court rather than anything on this page.
A practice walkthrough, not a prediction of how any real one will go. Legal information, not legal advice.
Words this turns on
12 words · tap one for its definition
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
- CustodyFormal arrest, or a restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest. It is the condition that, combined with questioning, triggers the Miranda warnings.
- Probable causeFacts that would lead a reasonable person to believe a crime has been committed and that this person committed it. It is the threshold for an arrest and for a search warrant.
- Habitual truantA child of compulsory school age absent without legitimate excuse for thirty or more consecutive hours, forty two or more hours in a school month, or seventy two or more hours in a school year.
- Liquidated damagesA figure fixed in advance by statute or contract rather than proved after the fact. On unpaid wages it is six percent of the amount unpaid or two hundred dollars, whichever is greater.
- Unruly childA category a juvenile court adjudicates, defined to include a child who does not submit to the reasonable control of a parent, teacher, guardian or custodian by reason of being wayward or habitually disobedient, a habitual truant, and a child whose behavior endangers health or morals.
- AdjudicationThe juvenile court finding that a child committed the act alleged. It is what that court does instead of convicting, and what follows it is called a disposition rather than a sentence.
- AmenabilityWhether a child can be cared for or rehabilitated within the juvenile system. Where a transfer is discretionary, this is the question the hearing is about.
- Appointed counselCounsel provided at public expense to a defendant who cannot afford one, required in any case where imprisonment is actually imposed.
- BindoverMoving a case out of juvenile court and into adult criminal court. Ohio has a mandatory kind, where eligibility decides it, and a discretionary kind, where a hearing does.
- DegreeThe classification every Ohio offense carries, from minor misdemeanor up to felony of the first degree. The degree sets the available range before anyone looks at the facts.
- Sealing and expungementStatutory routes to restrict or destroy the record of a case. Sealing closes the record to most viewers; expungement is the destruction of it. Eligibility depends on the offense and on time elapsed.
- Legal disabilityA legal incapacity that stops a person acting for themselves, such as being a minor or being subject to a guardianship. The age of majority section grants full age to a person of eighteen who is under no legal disability.