State v. Gleason

NICHOLS, Justice.

For the first time since the Maine Juvenile Code 1 took effect on July 1, 1978, we encounter a challenge to the constitutionality of the new Code. The fourteen-year-old juvenile, Michael Gleason, in these two appeals, consolidated for argument, has launched a broad-gauged attack upon the procedures embodied in this Code.

We conclude that the Maine Juvenile Code retains the beneficent and basically rehabilitative purposes of our prior law relating to juveniles. Fundamental fairness, after all, does not require identical procedures for dealing with juvenile crimes and adult…