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258 A.2d 276

Farrow v. State

Supreme Court of Delaware

Decided October 8, 1969

Supreme Court of Delaware · decided 1969-10-08

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“A child is one year old on the first anniversary of his birth and is sixteen years old on the sixteenth anniversary. Before the sixteenth anniversary he is under the age of sixteen years and after that anniversary he is over the age of sixteen. Sixteen years is an exact and definite period of time. It does not mean or include sixteen years and six months. We should be realistic and not read something into the statute which is not there and which clearly was not intended to be there. This is a criminal statute and cannot be added to by strained construction. "Of the age sixteen years" must be construed to mean just what it says, i.e.; sixteen years and not sixteen years, six months and three days. If, speaking in terms of money, one were to say "The fee or charge will be fifteen dollars or under" there would be no possibility of misunderstanding. To say that sixteen years and six months means the same as sixteen years is to play loosely with words which have a definite meaning. It has been suggested that when one is asked to state his age he gives only the age at the latest anniversary of his birth and does not add the additional months and days which a completely correct statement would require, and this is cited as indicating it is commonly accepted that one is sixteen until his seventeenth birthday anniversary. All such arguments are unsound. When the legislature wrote "sixteen years" into the statute it intended the words to be construed according to their ordinary meaning”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including State v. Carroll, State v. Demby

Relies on Wilson v. Mid-Continent Life Ins. Co. · Rash v. Allen · Knott v. Rawlings

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1969-10-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently August 2003

6 state decisions

3019691970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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WOLCOTT, Chief Justice.

¶1 This is an appeal from the Superior Court of a conviction under 11 Del.C. § 468A of the possession of a deadly firearm during the commission of a felony. The sole point made in the appeal is that Tyrone Farrow, the appellant, was improperly charged and tried in the Superior Court.

¶2 At the time of the commission of the offense of which Farrow was convicted, he had passed his sixteenth birthday, but had not attained his seventeenth birthday. 11 Del.C. § 468A(c) provides:

“(c) Every person charged under this section over the age of 16 years shall be tried as an adult, notwithstanding any contrary provision of statutes governing the respective Family Courts or any other State law.”

¶3 It is argued on Farrow’s behalf that since § 468A (c) is a criminal statute, it must be strictly construed to exclude from trial as an adult a person who has passed his sixteenth birthday but on the date of the offense * has not attained his seventeenth birthday. Cited in support are Wilson v. Mid-Continental Life Ins. Co., 159 Okl. 191, 14 P.2d 945, 84 A.L.R. 386; Allen v. Baird, 208 Ark. 975, 188 S.W.2d 505, and Fallowfield v. State ex rel. Brentlinger, 240 Ind.2d 543, 167 N.E.2d 44.

¶4 We approach the construction of § 468A (c) in the light of the dictate of 1 Del.C. § 303, which requires that statutory language shall be “construed according to the common and approved usage of the English language.” See Haddock v. Board of Public Education, 32 Del.Ch. 245, 84 A.2d 157; Rash v. Allen, 1 Boyce 444, 76 A. 370.

¶5 *277 In common usage, a child becomes one year old upon the first anniversary of his birth and, thus, becomes sixteen years old on the sixteenth anniversary of his birth. Before his sixteenth anniversary, he is therefore under the age of sixteen years and, after that anniversary, he is over the age of sixteen years.

¶6 We think the matter is plain and that we should not read something into the statute which, on its face, is not there. As a matter of fact, this plain construction of language is the rule of the majority of the States. See Annotation, 73 A.L.R.2d 874. We particularly approve the rule laid down in Knott v. Rawlings, 250 Iowa 892, 96 N.W.2d 900.

¶7 Farrow cites the Mid-Continental case, an insurance case in which it was held that for policy reasons of the insurance industry, a person is not over a certain age until he reaches his next birthday. This case was distinguished in Application of Smith (Okl.Cr.), 351 P.2d 1076, a criminal case in which the construction we prefer was adopted. There, the Oklahoma court distinguished application of the present question when applied to insurance contracts. It is a well recognized principle that where the policy is susceptible to two constructions, that one is adopted which is most favorable to the insured. For this reason, the court held that Mid-Continental should he considered not as generally applicable to the body of law, but in light of the specific setting and interpretative objective sought therein. 351 P.2d 1076, 1077.

¶8 Allen v. Baird relied solely on Mid-Continental for its reasoning, and it is therefore similarly distinguished.

¶9 Upon a careful reading of Fallowfield v. State ex rel. Brentlinger, we find that the court’s final position is left unclear. The only proposition which can be drawn with certainty is that a person is not over, in that case thirty-five, on the day of his thirty-fifth birthday anniversary. Since the day of Farrow’s birthday is not the specific day in question, Fallowfield must be distinguished. In any event, we find the case to be unpersuasive.

¶10 The conviction is affirmed.

*

¶11 The question of whether or not 11 Del.C. § 468A(c) refers to the age of the defendant on the date of the offense, or on the date he is charged has not been raised by the State. The view we take makes it immaterial in this appeal.

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