Goff, J.
In a series of cases, our appellate courts identified a jurisdictional gap that prevented the State from prosecuting an individual who allegedly committed child molesting as a minor but was not waived into adult court before turning twenty-one. This jurisdictional gap prevented (1) the juvenile court from hearing the case because the individual was twenty one or older, (2) the juvenile court from waiving the case to adult court because the juvenile court lost jurisdiction—and thus the ability to waive to adult court—when the individual turned twenty-one, and (3) the adult court from hearing the case directly because adult courts do not have jurisdiction over delinquent acts committed by minors. Johnny Brown fell into this gap, so the trial court did not have subject-matter jurisdiction when Brown was convicted of Class C felony child molesting. But in 2023, while Brown’s case was pending on appeal, the General Assembly passed Public Law No. 115-2023 (or the Amendments), to amend the jurisdiction statutes and close the gap. From our reading of the Amendments, we conclude that even if the Amendments are remedial, the General Assembly did not intend to apply them retroactively to pending cases. We thus reverse Brown’s conviction and remand with instructions to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
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We first consider whether the trial court had subject-matter jurisdiction at the time of Brown’s trial. We conclude that it did not because Brown fell into the jurisdictional gap identified by our appellate courts. Next, we consider whether the Amendments enacted while Brown’s case was pending on appeal apply retroactively here. We conclude that even if the Amendments are remedial, there are no “strong and compelling reasons” to apply them retroactively because the General Assembly did not intend retroactive application. See N.G. v. State, 148 N.E.3d 971, 974 (Ind. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because there is no subject-matter jurisdiction in Brown’s case, his conviction is void.
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Juvenile courts have “exclusive” subject-matter jurisdiction over proceedings in which a “child” is alleged to be delinquent. Ind. Code § 3130-1-1(a)(1). A “child” for juvenile law purposes is (1) a person less than eighteen; (2) a person eighteen, nineteen, or twenty and who either is charged with a delinquent act committed before the age of eighteen or has been adjudicated a child in need of services before eighteen; or (3) a person less than twenty-one and who has allegedly committed what would be murder when less than eighteen. I.C. § 31-9-2-13(d). A juvenile court may also waive jurisdiction in certain cases to a court that would have had jurisdiction if the act had been committed by an adult. See I.C. ch. 31-30-3. But in recent cases, our appellate courts identified a gap in the juvenile-jurisdiction and waiver statutes that prevented the State from prosecuting certain defendants who allegedly committed child molesting as minors but were not waived to adult court before turning twenty-one.
In the first of these cases, M.C. v. State, the State attempted to file a delinquency petition in juvenile court against M.C. alleging that M.C. committed acts of child molesting between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. 127 N.E.3d 1178, 1179 (Ind. Ct. App. 2019). But M.C. was twenty-two years old when the State tried to file its petition, so the court held that the juvenile court did not have jurisdiction and the case was dismissed. Id. at 1181; see also I.C. § 31-9-2-13(d)(2) (2019) (defining a “child,” for “purposes of the juvenile law” as a person “who is eighteen (18), nineteen (19), or twenty (20) years of age” and who either “is charged with a delinquent act committed before the person’s eighteenth birthday” or adjudicated a CHINS before their eighteenth birthday) (emphases added).
Next, in D.P., a similar situation arose where the State filed juvenile delinquency petitions against two individuals who were twenty-one or older but committed acts of child molesting while they were under the age of eighteen. 151 N.E.3d at 1212. The State then argued for waiver from the juvenile court to adult court. Id. This Court concluded that because the juvenile court did not have jurisdiction over these individuals once they turned twenty-one, the juvenile court did not have jurisdiction to waive the cases to adult court either. Id. at 1214, 1217; see I.C. § 31-9-2-13(d) (2020).
Finally, in State v. Neukam, the State alleged that the defendant committed child molesting both before and after he turned eighteen. 189 N.E.3d 152, 153 (Ind. 2022). The State filed charges in adult court for the adult acts and sought to add the juvenile acts. Id. But this Court held that an adult court does not have jurisdiction over delinquent acts. Id. at 157. As a result of this jurisdictional gap, an individual who commits acts of child molesting as a minor but is not waived into adult court before turning twenty-one cannot be prosecuted in either juvenile court or adult court. Id. at 153.
At the time of his trial in 2022, Brown fell into this jurisdictional gap. Brown was twenty years old when the State filed a juvenile-delinquency petition in juvenile court. But as soon as he turned twenty-one the next day, the juvenile court lost jurisdiction. See I.C. § 31-9-2-13(d)(2) (2022). Because the juvenile court lost jurisdiction, its subsequent waiver into adult court was ineffective. See D.P., 151 N.E.3d at 1217. Brown therefore fell into the jurisdictional gap identified by our caselaw. But that conclusion doesn’t end our inquiry.
While Brown’s case was pending on appeal, the General Assembly amended the juvenile-jurisdiction statutes to close the jurisdictional gap. Under the amended law:
A court having adult criminal jurisdiction, and not a juvenile court, has jurisdiction over a person who is at least twenty-one (21) years of age for an alleged offense: (1) committed while the person was a child; and (2) that could have been waived under IC 31-30-3.
Pub. L. No. 115-2023, § 7, 2023 Ind. Acts 1216, 1225 (codified at I.C. § 3130-1-4(d) (2024)) (emphasis added). The Amendments also modified Indiana Code section 31-37-1-2 to provide:
A child commits a delinquent act if, before becoming eighteen (18) years of age, the child commits a misdemeanor or felony offense, except for an act committed by a person over which the juvenile court lacks jurisdiction under IC 31-30-1.
Pub. L. No. 115-2023, § 9, 2023 Ind. Acts at 1227.
Thus, under the Amendments, the State may file charges directly in an adult court against an individual who is at least twenty-one years old for acts committed before turning eighteen if the juvenile court could have waived jurisdiction had the State brought a timely delinquency petition in juvenile court. The State argues the Amendments should be applied to Brown and would give the adult court jurisdiction because Brown committed the offense before he turned eighteen, and he could have been waived to adult court under Indiana Code section 31-30-3-2 if the juvenile court still had jurisdiction.
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The State argues the Amendments here are remedial because they were intended to cure a “mischief in the prior law,” namely the jurisdictional gap that prevented the State from prosecuting serious violations of criminal law “through the luck of the draw.” Appellee’s Br. at 19. In Neukam, we definitively identified the existence of the jurisdictional gap and concluded the gap was one “only the legislature can close.” 189 N.E.3d at 153. The General Assembly acted in the first regular session after Neukam was decided by passing the Amendments. This was not a situation where the General Assembly was making a change or reversal in our policy on holding individuals accountable for child molesting. Cf. Lawrence v. State, 214 N.E.3d 361, 363 (Ind. Ct. App. 2023) (holding that Indiana’s elimination of the licensure requirement to carry a handgun was not remedial in nature but rather was a reversal of course by the legislature that signaled a “major change in Indiana’s policy on handguns”). Considering the fact that our statute of limitations allows the State to prosecute an act of child molesting at any point until the victim turns thirty-one years old, see I.C. § 35-41-4-2(e), the General Assembly likely never intended for the jurisdictional gap to exist. Therefore, the Amendments were arguably intended to address a “defect” in the law that prevented serious criminal conduct from being prosecuted.
But the Amendments do more than just close the jurisdictional gap. The Amendments added several provisions that significantly changed how courts handle various aspects of a case with an adult defendant who committed the charged offenses as a minor.
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Even assuming the Amendments are remedial, “retroactive application is the exception, and such laws are normally to be applied prospectively absent strong and compelling reasons.” Id. at 920 (quoting Gosnell, 503 N.E.2d at 880). And though “strong and compelling reasons” exist when retroactive application carries out the legislation’s purpose, N.G., 148 N.E.3d at 974 (quoting Talbot, 14 N.E. at 589), we conclude, from our reading of the applicable statutory language, that the General Assembly did not intend to apply the Amendments retroactively.
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The General Assembly did not provide a clear statement specifying that the amendments made by Public Law No. 115-2023 should apply retroactively. The expression of retroactive application of other amendments related to juvenile-court jurisdiction, but not the Amendments here, suggests that the General Assembly did not intend to apply them retroactively. See State v. Am. Family Voices, Inc., 898 N.E.2d 293, 298 (Ind. 2008) (concluding defendants were not exempt from the Indiana Autodialer Law because, despite crafting explicit exemptions to the law in other statutes, the legislature had not done so for defendants there).
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In general, “[s]tatutes are to be given prospective effect only, unless the legislature unequivocally and unambiguously intended retrospective effect as well.” Pelley, 828 N.E.2d at 919 (citing Bd. of Dental Examiners v. Judd, 554 N.E.2d 829, 832 (Ind. Ct. App. 1990)). Given the evidence suggesting that the General Assembly did not intend to apply the Amendments to pending cases, we conclude the Amendments do not apply retroactively.
When Brown turned twenty-one and had not been waived from juvenile court to adult court, he fell into the jurisdictional gap identified in M.C., D.P., and Neukam. While his case was pending on appeal, the General Assembly passed the Amendments to give the adult court jurisdiction, but we conclude that the Amendments do not apply retroactively to pending cases. Because Brown’s trial was conducted without subject-matter jurisdiction, his conviction is void. We thus reverse his conviction and remand with instructions to dismiss.
Rush, C.J., and Massa and Molter, JJ., concur.
Slaughter, J., concurs in part and in the judgment with separate opinion.
Molter, J., concurs with separate opinion in which Massa, J., joins.
Slaughter, J., concurring in part and in the judgment.
I agree with much of the Court’s opinion…
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Instead, I write separately because the Court does not end its analysis there. It goes on—unnecessarily, in my view—to apply our Court’s retroactivity test from N.G. v. State, 148 N.E.3d 971 (Ind. 2020). Respectfully, I continue to view that test as misguided for reasons I set out in my separate opinion in N.G., id. at 976 (Slaughter, J., dissenting).
As today’s opinion recounts, N.G. requires that we ask (among other things) whether a statutory amendment is remedial. Ante, at 8–9. I would have thought it obvious that the disputed amendments here are remedial: they were designed to fix—to remedy—the jurisdictional gap we identified in D.P. v. State, 151 N.E.3d 1210, 1216–17 (Ind. 2020), and State v. Neukam, 189 N.E.3d 152, 153 (Ind. 2022), and that exists here. Yet today’s Court doubts that the disputed amendments are remedial and so does not apply them retroactively, ibid., leaving me unsure what remedial even means in this context.
As I explained in N.G., the clearest test of retroactivity does not seek to divine legislative “purpose” or “intent” (as if 150 legislators all share the same purpose or intend the same thing) or assess whether an enactment is “remedial” (whatever that means). N.G., 148 N.E.3d at 976 (Slaughter, J., dissenting). The better approach is simply to ask whether the enactment tells us that it applies retroactively. If it says it applies to cases pending on its effective date, then it does. And if it does not say that, then it does not. A plain-statement requirement should be our default rule. It is easy to understand and apply. And it conveys in no uncertain terms how the legislature can overcome the judicial presumption that an enactment applies only prospectively.
The legislature, for its part, knows how to apply new statutes (or amendments to statutes) to pending cases. The legislature in 2011 expressed that certain juvenile-code amendments from 2001 apply “to all proceedings pending . . . on July 1, 2001” and other amendments from 2009 apply “to proceedings pending on or initiated on or after May 12, 2009.” Ind. Code § 31-30-1-0.1. Here, in contrast, the legislature in 2023 expressed nothing of the sort regarding these disputed juvenile-code amendments. Pub. L. No. 115-2023, § 7, 2023 Ind. Acts 1216, 1224–25 (codified at I.C. § 31-30-1-4(d)). Thus, under my proposed rule, the 2023 jurisdictional fix applies only prospectively and not to this case. Simple as that.
For these reasons, I concur only in part and in the court’s judgment. I would abandon N.G.’s quixotic search for the legislature’s “purpose” or “intent” or for “strong and compelling reasons” to apply a statute retroactively. Instead, I would rely on text alone and require an affirmative statement of retroactivity to overcome the judicial presumption that legislative silence means prospective-only application.
Molter, J., concurring.
The Court’s well-reasoned opinion faithfully adheres to our precedents, so I join it in full. But there is also much to commend in Justice Slaughter’s proposal for a clearer judicial presumption that legislation operates only prospectively unless the legislature explicitly directs us otherwise, and I remain open to adopting his proposed rule in a future case.
Massa, J., joins.