A law limiting how much restitution a a judge can order a juvenile delinquent to pay is valid despite a Marsy's Law provision that gives crime victims the right to "full restitution," a state appeals panel ruled Thursday.
The statute limits juvenile restitution to an amount the juvenile alone is able to pay.
Marsy's Law is the state's victim's rights constitutional amendment adopted by voters in April 2020.
Its use of the phrase "full restitution" "appears to be potentially ambiguous, at least upon first glance and when read in isolation," Appellate Judge Rachel Graham wrote in the decision.
But, she added, "We agree with the parties that 'full restitution' means the total dollar amount ordered by a circuit court pursuant to the statutes," she said.
The juvenile limit stands.
Graham was joined in her opinion by District IV Court of Appeals Judges JoAnne Kloppenburg and Chris Taylor.
The panel's decision reversed a ruling by Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Brian A. Pfitzinger. The Department of Justice, representing the state on appeal, broke with the Dodge County prosecutor's office and Pfitzinger and agreed with defense counsel that the statutory limit was constitutional.
The state was represented on appeal by Assistant Attorney General Kara Janson. The juvenile defendant, identified as "M" in the decision, was represented by Megan Sanders-Drazen, according to the docket for the case. The attorneys who argued the case in circuit court were not identified on the docket or in the decision. Most records related to the case are unavailable because of the defendant's juvenile status.
M was found delinquent in 2020 for participating at age 14 with two other juveniles in a burglary and other acts that resulted in some serious property damage, Graham wrote. The county prosecutor said at disposition that the parties were “stipulating to the restitution amount” of $26,788.18, which represented the total amount of damage claimed by the victims. Since this was pre-Marsy's Law, the prosecutor asked for a hearing based on the restitution law to determine the juvenile's ability to pay.
But before a restitution order was entered, voters approved Marsy's Law, which gave victims the right to “full restitution from any person who has been ordered to pay restitution to the victim and to be provided with assistance collecting restitution,” Graham said.
The judge asked both sides to brief the issue of whether Marsy's Law killed the statutory juvenile limits.
The prosecutor said it did, arguing that the constitutional provision meant crime victims had the right to be 'made whole,' and “ 'statutes limiting restitution based on a defendant’s ability to pay' are unconstitutional," Graham wrote.
The defense lawyer argued that Marsy's Law was not meant to override the statutory limits.
"Like the State, M also focused his argument on the language of the constitutional amendment, specifically noting that the right to 'full restitution' is tied to a court order for restitution," Graham wrote.
M's lawyer said that there is no conflict between the law and the constitutional amendment because Marsy’s Law “ 'creates the right to full recovery of all the restitution that the court has ordered' pursuant to statutes," including the law limiting juvenile restitution, she said.
The circuit court sided with the prosecution and ordered the three juveniles to pay the $26,788.18. In M's case, Graham said, the amount "undisputedly exceeds what he is able to pay."
Dictionary definitions alone might mean that the "full restitution" language in Marsy's Law entitles a victim to be made whole, she wrote.
"Here, however, such definitions are not dispositive because 'restitution' is a legal term of art. ... Restitution is a creature of statute, there being no right to restitution in juvenile delinquency proceedings (or in criminal proceedings, for that matter) apart from the statutes that authorize it," Graham said.
Statutes implicitly define "restitution" by expressly stating what a judge may or may not order as restitution under the law, including the juvenile law limiting restitution awards, she said.
Had the Legislature intended victims to receive more than what is statutorily permitted, it could have "expressly guaranteed victims a right to 'total damages,' or to 'full compensation for all losses,'" she wrote. "Alternatively, it could have explicitly prohibited the existing statutory limitations on court-ordered restitution."
It did not, however, do those things, she wrote.
The panel remanded the case back to circuit court with instructions that M's restitution liability be recalculated consistent with statute.
In a footnote, Graham wrote that agreeing with Pfitzinger's ruling would raise new questions, including whether "victims can now recover restitution for general damages such as pain and suffering" contrary to existing state law, "whether other statutory caps on restitution are effectively repealed," "and whether criminal courts are divested of discretion to decline to order restitution if there is 'substantial reason not to do so,” as is now allowed.
The full decision in 21AP1437, State v M.L.J.N.L., is here.
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