
Juvenile or adult? Leap-year suspect poses conundrum for court - hugh-avherald
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/canberra-court-leap-year-girl-adult-or-child/10242750
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jen729w
I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give
"one month" notice before they wish to be married.

This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the
accreditation were related to the calculation of this month.

The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year,
clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they
updated the fact sheet: I think even _they_ had messed it up first time round.

I'm pretty sure there's an Act which specifically defines this, and I think it
goes back many decades. Alas, I can't be bothered finding it now because I
have to go to the pub. ;-)

Edit: here we go. The marvellously named "Acts Interpretation Act" of 1901
([https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00691](https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00691)).

2G Months

(1) In any Act, month means a period:

(a) starting at the start of any day of one of the calendar months; and

(b) ending:

(i) immediately before the start of the corresponding day of the next calendar
month; or

(ii) if there is no such day—at the end of the next calendar month.

Example 1: A month starting on 15 December in a year ends immediately before
15 January in the next year.

Example 2: A month starting on 31 August in a year ends at the end of
September in that year (because September is the calendar month coming after
August and does not have 31 days).

~~~
jacquesm
A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have
simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more
than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.

~~~
lostlogin
Or simpler, just get rid of whatever moralising has lead to that law and just
accept that some people want to get married now.

~~~
jacquesm
The reason is not a moralizing one, it came into being when the registries
were less than perfect to avoid bigamy. It _probably_ could be abandoned in
the present day without any loss of functionality but it definitely was not
codified into law for moralizing reasons.

~~~
jasonjayr
Isn't bigamy typically a religious moral?

~~~
jacquesm
No, it is a legal one. There are pretty substantial consequences, for instance
with inheritance and paternity.

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supernes
It's a fun problem to reason about mathematically, but it's totally irrelevant
to the case in my opinion.

· Becoming an adult at 18.00 (vs. 17.98) years of age is a vague and somewhat
arbitrary threshold. If we define it as "knowing right from wrong" and
"knowing that your actions have consequences" in the context of the code of
law, then a couple of days are not going to have a considerable impact.

· If the major distinction between being tried as a juvenile or an adult is
the severity of the punishment and the amount of lenience applied, then it's
telling for the attorney to argue for the former, since it indirectly implies
that their client will likely be found culpable. Furthermore, if the defendant
is found guilty there is a likelihood that their punishment will not be
appropriate for their current age, which may seem unfair to some.

If it were up to me to decide, I would treat them as an adult for the purposes
of the trial, but take into account their young age as an extenuating
circumstance when sentencing.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If there was an election on the 28th of Feb 2018, would this girl have been
able to vote?

How about buy alcohol?

If we agree there has to be some arbitrary line, then we probably ought to
apply that sharply.

> it indirectly implies that their client will likely be found culpable.

I don't think that's fair at all. We don't know the specifics of the case.

> if the defendant is found guilty there is a likelihood that their punishment

This assumes that _punishment_ , as dealt out by the courts, is an appropriate
way of going about healing society after a crime has occurred.

~~~
jMyles
> This assumes that punishment, as dealt out by the courts, is an appropriate
> way of going about healing society after a crime has occurred.

Yes, goodness gracious, how has _this_ of all things become the sacrosanct,
canonical representation of justice?

More humane societies will follow ours, and they'll look back with
astonishment about our obsession with punishment to the exclusion of actual
restoration.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm pretty extremely compassionate, understanding, etc. I'm finding that once
someone wrongs you, most people won't voluntarily make amends and it becomes
absolutely necessary to play hardball. Nor can you force them to make
reparations. But you can punish people.

I would like to see more focus on crime prevention by helping everyone get
their needs met, not criminalizing things where no one is victimized, etc.

But once the deed is done, I don't know that it really works to not have some
element of consequences, unfortunately.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
All I can say in response to this is: this certainly is tricky!

Punishing crime has a disproportionate negative consequence on those who have
already been traumatised by the circumstances of their lives.

So I agree with your point about everyone's needs being met, but we can't have
that until we, collectively / globally, make some significantly different
choices.

So we'll probably have to continue getting by with an obviously suboptimal
crime and punishment system.

Edit: fixed a word

~~~
DoreenMichele
_Punishing crime has a disproportionate negative consequence on those who have
already been traumatised by the circumstances of their lives._

Assuming this is actually true, it would be so only because we
disproportionately let rich people off with a slap on the wrist, not because
poor people commit more crimes. ( _rich_ and _poor_ being imperfect proxies
for whose lives suck more or less)

Plenty of people are just selfish and don't care that other people got hurt,
like the Theranos debacle. That hurt many people and was perpetrated by very
privileged individuals, not poor schmucks whose lives sucked from the get go.

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noobermin
This really goes against what the spirit of these sorts of laws should be.

The 18 barrier to age of majority is treated as a threshold, sure, but the
reality of people is they mature in different ways and over longer periods of
time. I (and my culture I guess) considered myself an adult by 16 or 17 whilst
friends I know didn't consider themselves adults until 22 or 23. The thing I
know is under the law, everyone needs to be held to the same standard, but
does a day an adult make? Is that seriously the argument they make there?

Biologically and psychologically, we know that a day doesn't age someone,
maturation occurs on a longer timescale. The thing is 18 as a threshold is not
as important as how responsible, aware, and independent a person is. I know
that's a harder thing to measure, but when we confuse the map for the
territory, instead of actually using the law as intended, we play these weird
legal games.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I'm 34 and _still_ don't consider myself an adult. With this in mind, if I
break the law can I please be tried as a minor?

~~~
noobermin
This logic is not applicable linearly across all ages I think.

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natmaka
According to my experience PostgreSQL is very efficient at this game (and many
other ones).

"select (date '2000-02-29' \+ interval '18 years')" returns "2018-02-28
00:00:00", so the Court may be right.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Doesn't this just divert the decision making process to the PostgreSQL
developers.

~~~
anarazel
And we largely defer it to [https://www.iana.org/time-
zones](https://www.iana.org/time-zones) ;)

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emilfihlman
I absolutely don't see the issue here. The suspect was not 18 at the time of
the crime.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
It's not difficult, is it? I'm not sure why there's any debate whatsoever.

~~~
bonzini
Unfortunately, legal definitions can have counterintuitive consequences.

The article is saying that the justices disagree on when you become an adult.
One justice is saying that you become an adult 18 years after you're born, but
how are years defined by the law?

It could be defined as "365 days, or 366 days if the time period starts after
February 28th of a year preceding a leap year". Instead, the law first defines
"N months" to always end on the last day of the final month if there aren't
enough days in that final month, and then a year is simply 12 months.

This is actually sensible. If you enter a 1-year contract on Feb 29th, it
makes sense that it ends on Feb 28th rather than Mar 1st the next year.

Therefore you become an adult 216 months after you're born, which in the case
of this girl happened on the last day of February 2018 (because February 29th
2018 didn't exist). I agree that this is a problem, but if the problem lies in
the law's definition of "becoming adult", it might not even be possible for
judges to fix it.

Assuming it is actually possible for them to fix it, the alternative
definition could have been "on the day of your 18th birthday", but really you
need a more precise the definition actually must accommodate February 29th and
push it to March 1st. For example, as the other justice puts it, "until your
18th birthday has begun _or passed_ " (as if February 29th 2018 existed but
was of length zero). Of course you'd have to find out whether any other laws
are in conflict with this definition, and possibly fix all the computer
programs that were assuming the old definition (for example, would she have
voted on February 28th 2018? would that change with the new definition?).

BTW at least in Italy, if the justices reach parity they have to judge in
favor of the defendant. In that case she would be declared not an adult. But
the ancillary question of e.g. elections would not be resolved.

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mehrdadn
It'd seem like we could resolve this by determining if the {mean # of days in
a year} times 18 = 6574.365 days had passed or not?

~~~
frgewut
But then your birthday date would fluctuate.

~~~
mehrdadn
I meant for the purposes of settling this issue, not for all legal
calculations based on birthdays.

~~~
maccard
But then you're in a funny gray area of being legally an adult for some
considerations, but not others.

~~~
mehrdadn
Er, that's not what I meant. By "this issue" I meant leap days. If there are
no leap days causing issues then you use the normal calculation. If you're
trying to figure out stop or end times on a leap day then you use this. It'd
still be used for all considerations, so being legal age in all respects would
be the same for the same person. The only "problem" is it discriminates by
like 1 day for different people which hopefully we can still sleep soundly
with.

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k_bx
"The tyrrany of the discontinuous mind" by Richard Dawkins sums it up quite
nicely
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUxingKt90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUxingKt90)

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knorthfield
I just hope the crime was underage drinking. Drinking age is 18 in Australia
FYI.

~~~
bonzini
In that case the court would be arguing that she could _not_ have drunken on
February 28th, and the lawyer would be arguing that she could have.

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benmmurphy
i would think that on non-leap years you would 'age' on the 1st of March. but
i can see where the confusion lies.

for days before Feb 29th you get to the next year by adding 365 days on years
except the leap year. so for 2000-2004. [366, 365, 365, 365]

for days after Feb 29th you get to the next year by adding 365 days on years
except the year before the leap year. so for 2004-2004. [365, 365, 365, 366]

if you use one of these rules for Feb 29th you get the next year falling on
Feb 28th or Mar 1st for non-leap years..

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brassattax
Did anyone catch the stock photo and caption used on the article? That an
extra 30th day was "added to February in the year the girl was born". LOL

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Doncametic
What are the odds. Interesting case, thanks for the read :)

~~~
afoot
Surprisingly high. 350k people born per day - just takes one of them to break
the law on a particular day and get caught.

~~~
dis-sys
I don't have the numbers for Australia/other western countries, but there are
around 50,000 Chinese juveniles each year, to simplify the estimation,
assuming birthday and when they commit their crimes are all evenly distributed
during the year and there is no link between birthday and when/whether someone
is going to be a criminal, you are looking at a few such cases a year in a
country with 1.4 billion population.

the combined population of US/EU/AU/CA/NZ is close to the Chinese population,
assuming the crime rate is the same (which is obviously not, thanks to the
crime rate in US), you are look at a few such cases each year for the entire
western world.

for australia, there were probably a few such cases after WWII.

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zui
Edge cases ...

~~~
afoot
Isn't it!

I'd be surprised there isn't precedent somewhere actually, perhaps not in
Australia but at least a couple of similar cases.

The defendant in this case is absolutely 17 though. I can't see it any other
way.

~~~
robbick
Agreed - in my mind the easiest way to consider it is to consider the 29th as
an infinitesimally short day on non-leap years. On the 1st of March that day
has passed and they are 18, on the 28th of Feb that day hasn't started.

The same tactic works for working out when one month from the 31st August is

