In December the juv. is placed on deferred probation for 6 months for theft and ordered to make monthly restitution payments. His probation expires recently and the probation office informs me that they want to petition him on the theft because he didn't pay his restituion. Can you petition this juv. for this theft if the petition is not filed before the deferred expires?

There is an AG Op. (98-069) that says you may not petition on a successfully completed deferred when the probation violation happened after the deferred expired. The timing of the probation violations is the only thing different from my case but this Op. seems like a pretty strong argument that you handle these like adult deferred probations. Hope I'm wrong. Any advice appreciated.

I wouldn't file a petition if your deferral time is over. I don't think there is any black letter statute that says you can't or case law that I know of, but common sense would say, when its over, its over. Like it or not, the probation department dropped the ball by either not collecting or not telling you in time to file the petition.

There is a provision in the deferred statute that talks about the Judge being able to make the deferral period a year that if you just feel like you have to do something that I would explore before I filed a petition. (well let me take that back, I wouldn't file a petition, period.

Frankly, I would be up front with the victim and tell them what happened and file a motion to release juvenile records for them so that you could give them the juvi's parent's name and address so they could go after them in JP/small claims court.

Does it make a difference if a petition was filed on the juvenile before he was put on deferred prosecution? We do a lot of "deferreds" in which there is no petition filed. It seems to me that in juvenile cases, you have the opportunity to put a kid on "deferred" without having a judge involved. Therefore, I would think that if you had a kid that did not hold up his end of the bargain, as in this case, you could file a petition if you had not already filed one. I think that if the judge places him on an order of deferred prosecution then you are stuck with having to take care of problems during the term of the deferred prosecution.

Usually the Judge is not involved in juvi deferred cases, the statute makes an exception if you want to lengthen the time of the deferral.
I have filed petitions and then decided or been persuaded that deferral was the better disposition, and if the petition had already been filed in this case I think he woul dbe in a better position to move forward.

But I'm still bothered by the concept that we let the time we agreed to run and then say oh by the way its not over yet. And I understand that the kid has not fulfilled his part either, but that IMHO is something the probation officer should have brought to the court/prosecutors attention before the term ran.

Would you be able to do it in an adult deferred if the time had run ? I know thats like comparing apples to oranges with adult vs. juvi but its the closest thing we have to compare. Just doesn't pass the smell test for me.