In Re Appeal Misc. No. 32, Term 1975

Gilbert, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. A juvenile 1 was found by Judge Douglas H. Moore, Jr., District Court of Maryland for Montgomery County, sitting as a Juvenile Court, to be a delinquent child within the meaning of Courts and Judicial Proceedings Art. § 3-801 (j). The juvenile was ordered to be sent to the Thomas J. S. Waxter Children’s Center pending assignment to a forestry camp. An appeal was noted to this Court where the matter is now pending.

Counsel for the juvenile, in addition to the appeal, filed simultaneously in this Court a motion to stay the juvenile court’s order of commitment and this application for leave to appeal from the refusal by the Circuit Court for Montgomery County in a habeas corpus proceeding to set bail for the juvenile pending the appellate disposition of his case on the merits. See Courts Art. § 3-707. ⁷⁰³ See also Long v. State, 16 Md. App. 371 , 297 A. 2d 299 (1972); Bigley v. Warden, 16 Md. App. 1 , 294 A. 2d 141 (1972). Pursuant to Courts Art. § 12-701 (b), we, on January 7, 1976, conducted a hearing on the juvenile’s application for a stay of the commitment order. The same date, not having found that other “ ... suitable provision ... [had been] made for the care and custody of the child,” we denied the “stay”. 2 We now consider the application for leave to appeal from the denial of bail during the pendency of the juvenile’s appeal on the merits before this Court.

Counsel for the juvenile argued in the circuit court to Judge Joseph M. Mathias and here that the enactment of Courts Art. § 3-832, 3 when read together with Md. Rule 777 b, leads to the conclusion that juveniles are entitled to be admitted to bail while appellate review is awaited, and that the guidelines articulated in Bigley v. Warden, supra, are applicable thereto. 4 We do not share that view. A hearing before the juvenile court, be it conducted by a division of a circuit court or by the District Court of Maryland for Montgomery County, sitting as a juvenile court, is civil in nature, not criminal. Ex Parte Cromwell, 232 Md. 305 , 192 A. 2d 775 (1963). The Legislature has made it vividly clear that one of the principal purposes of the Juvenile Causes Act was to remove the juvenile offender from the stigma and “ . . . taint of criminality and the consequences of criminal behavior.” Courts Art. § 3-802 ⁷⁰⁴ (a) (2).

Juvenile proceedings are of a special species that has been designed by the General Assembly in response to a particular need and to meet a peculiar problem. The dispositions of the juvenile court are not to be considered as punishment for a crime nor are adjudications of delinquency “convictions”, as that word is generally applied with respect to criminal proceedings. In re Arnold, 12