I do not prosecute juveniles, however, I had one certified as an adult. We went through the whole process in adult court and now I am looking at an appeal brief that says the juvenile court did not have jurisdiction to certify him as an adult. Jurisdiction was lacking because the juvenile was initially served only 8 minutes prior to the hearing. In my initial research it appears that the appellant is right and the juvenile court had no jurisdiction. I think that I am sunk. Should I concede here or am I missing something????

Depends, but you certainly have your work cut out for you. I am guessing no waiver of service time on record so....

see:
Aliniz 2 sw3d 451
MDR 113 sw3d 552

but
KPS 840 sw2d 706

Thank you Stacey Brownleee. I have no choice but to concede. It seems like a terrible abuse of resources for the defendnat to go through the whole process and never complain until he didn't like the outcome.

I think I agree with you - the statute is pretty clear on the question. Lack of proper service is a "killer mistake". It's not the prosecutor's job - but you better be sure it's done, because your case will be reversed - and this is true for ALL juvenile cases, not just certifications. After getting reversed on this issue - and seeing others get reversed - I learned to check for service before proceeding on any case. For a Certification, best practice is to have a setting where you make sure that he is properly served (make sure the return is in the court's file)and then have the judge tell him that he will be the subject of a certification hearing and explain to him what that means and what will be involved and then reset the case for the certification hearing date. (all this will be on the record.) Then, I always used to put a certified copy of the return of service into evidence at the beginning of the certification hearing so that it was on the record in the cert hearing and it was secure in the evidence envelope in case the original "disappeared" from the court's file. We had that happen once and it was later challenged and there was no record of proper service in the court's file - so from that point on - we made sure it was in the record and that certified copy was in evidence.