My question involves criminal law for the state of: Minnesota or Wisconsin
I ask patience over my perhaps poor use of legal terms – I will do my best to explain what I mean. I tried to find the answer to my question through research, but I could not find anything, so I thought I would try this forum.
Say that a person commits, at an age of 0-10 years, an offense that would be a felony if it were committed by an adult. If charges were filed quickly, the juvenile courts would have jurisdiction on account of the defendant’s age. But what if the charges are filed many years later after the offense and the defendant has now become an adult? I found much discussion about adult courts being given jurisdiction over juveniles for juvenile offenses, but my scenario raises the image of something like an adult being tried in a juvenile court for a juvenile offense.
Similarly, is the idea of juvenile court jurisdiction:
1. To spare the offender from adult court jurisdiction, but only so that the offender can still develop into a lawful citizen as they reach emotional/psychological maturity, and that a person is subject to adult court jurisdiction for any offense committed, regardless of age, once they are an adult and finished maturing?
– or –
2. To spare the offender from adult court jurisdiction because the offender, when committing the offense, did not have the intentions and understanding/rationalization of the offense that an adult with criminal intentions would?
Thank you very much.![]()

