Edmonds v. State

In Edmonds v. State, 154 Ga. App. 650 (269 SE2d 512) (1980) the defendant argued that jurisdiction over his burglary indictment lay in the juvenile court because the offense occurred between 12:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. on the date of his seventeenth birthday, and his birth certificate showed that he was born at 1:10 a.m. According to the defendant, he did not turn seventeen until 1:10 a.m. on his seventeenth birthday, ten minutes after the crime took place. Rejecting this argument, this Court noted that the Juvenile Code was silent as to how age is computed; it then cited the common law "coming of age" rule, which specifies that "one became of full age on the day preceding the twenty-first anniversary of his birth, on the first moment of that day." Id. at 651 Based on this rule, the Court determined that, for the purpose of juvenile court jurisdiction, the Edmonds defendant turned seventeen on the day before his seventeenth birthday. Id.