In the Interest of M.M.C.

ANDREASEN, Justice.

A thirteen-year-old juvenile was charged with murder in the first degree. After a delinquency petition was filed, the juvenile entered a plea of guilty to the delinquency charge of second-degree murder. Following a combined adjudicatory and dispositional hearing, the court ordered the juvenile to be placed in the custody and guardianship of the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) for commitment to the state training school until the juvenile’s eighteenth birthday.

Two years later the juvenile court, at a dispositional review hearing, ordered the juvenile, then fifteen…