Discuss how the Supreme Court decisions in the Kent v. United States and the Breed v. Jones cases ...

Kent v. United States
The Court, in a far-reaching opinion, agreed that Gerald Gault's constitutional rights had been violated. Notice of charges was an essential ingredient of due process of law, as was the right to counsel, the right to cross-examine and to confront witnesses, and the privilege against self-incrimination.

Significance of the Case
The Gault case established that a child has the due process constitutional rights listed here in delinquency adjudication proceedings, where the consequences were that the child could be committed to a state institution.

Furthermore, in an appendix to its opinion, the Court set up criteria concerning waiver of the jurisdictions. These are:
 The seriousness of the alleged offense to the community
 Whether the alleged offense was committed in an aggressive, violent, or willful manner
 Whether the alleged offense was committed against persons or against property
 The merit of the complaint
 The sophistication and maturity of the juvenile
 The record and previous history of the juvenile
 Prospects for adequate protection of the public and the likelihood of reasonable rehabilitation
Breed v. Jones
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the prosecution of Jones as an adult in the California Superior Court, after an adjudicatory finding in the juvenile court that he had violated a criminal statute and a subsequent finding that he was unfit for treatment as a juvenile, violated the double-jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Significance of the Case
The Breed case provided answers on several important transfer issues: (a) it prohibits trying a child in an adult court when there has been a prior adjudicatory juvenile proceeding; (b) probable cause may exist at a transfer hearing, and this does not violate subsequent jeopardy if the child is transferred to the adult court; (c) because the same evidence is often used in both the transfer hearing and subsequent trial in either the juvenile or adult court, a different judge is often required for each hearing.

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