J.R. v. State

These consolidated cases ask the question whether a child who has been adjudicated delinquent may raise as error on direct appeal his mother’s exclusion from his adjudicatory hearing and, if so, whether excluding his mother from the courtroom until she testified was in fact error. We answer both questions in the affirmative and reverse for a new adjudicatory hearing.

At an adjudicatory hearing on January 12, 2005, after defense counsel invoked the rule of sequestration, the following transpired:

MR. MASON [defense counsel]: ... One additional matter before we start. Because I haven’t been in…