Rule 34.Waiver hearing

Rule 34 is one sentence, and it disqualifies a judge.

The provision

If jurisdiction of a delinquency matter is retained in the family court after a waiver hearing, the judge who presided over the waiver hearing shall not preside over the adjudicatory hearing.

Why

A waiver hearing asks whether a juvenile case should leave the family court for prosecution as an adult. Deciding it requires the judge to take a hard look at the seriousness of the alleged offence and at the child — material that has nothing to do with whether the allegation is true, and much of which would never be admitted at the adjudicatory hearing.

A judge who has heard all that and decided to keep the case cannot then be the finder of fact on the merits. Rule 34 removes the question rather than leaving it to a recusal motion in each case.

It is automatic

Nothing is required of the parties. No motion, no showing of actual bias, no objection to preserve. The disqualification attaches by operation of the rule, and it attaches only in the case the rule names — where jurisdiction was retained. If the case is waived out of family court, there is no family court adjudicatory hearing for the rule to reach.

The companion provision

Rule 37 works the other way for the next stage: the judge who presided at the adjudicatory hearing shall preside at the dispositional hearing, except as Rule 33(b) provides or unless otherwise unavailable.

Read together the sequence is deliberate. A fresh judge for adjudication, and then continuity from adjudication through disposition — the stage at which knowing the case matters most.