Court rules juveniles can be charged with DUI

The South Dakota Supreme Court unanimously ruled recently that the state can charge juveniles with DUI.

Justice Janine Kern wrote the opinion after appeals made in Pennington and Meade counties.

Three persons under the age of 18 were arrested and charged with DUI between 2018 and 2019.

In each case, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss the charge for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction, arguing they could only be charged under the zero tolerance DUI state statute governing juveniles and their cases could only be heard in juvenile court.

All of the dismissal requests were denied in magistrate court and then in circuit court.

The state submitted that the jurisdiction in magistrate court was proper since a DUI charge is a traffic offense “excluded from the delinquency statues and not listed in the definitions of a (children in need of supervision or CHINS).”

“Despite the appellants’ perceived disharmony among the different avenues that the state may take when charging underage drivers under the zero tolerance or DUI statutes, these arguments involved the wisdom of the legislature’s penal code, which are ‘questions of public policy, not appellate error,” Kern wrote.

She wrote that contrary to the claim that the overlapping statutes cause disharmony, the conclusion upon reading the statutes is that the legislature intended to  provide prosecutors with the option of charging juveniles under either statute.

Kern concluded that the appellants failed to support their arguments that the language of the statutes prevents the state from charging them in magistrate court.

“The statutes are clear and unambiguous,” she wrote, noting the state has the discretion to charge juveniles with DUIs in magistrate or juvenile court.