[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Smith, Slip Opinion No. 2022-Ohio-274.] NOTICE This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is published. SLIP OPINION NO. 2022-OHIO-274 THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLEE, v. SMITH, APPELLANT. [Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Smith, Slip Opinion No. 2022-Ohio-274.] A finding of probable cause is a jurisdictional prerequisite under R.C. 2152.12 to transferring a child to adult court for prosecution of an act charged—A juvenile court may transfer a case or a matter to adult court, but the adult court’s jurisdiction is limited to the acts charged for which probable cause was found. (No. 2019-1813—Submitted March 31, 2021—Decided February 3, 2022.) APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Cuyahoga County, No. 107899, 2019-Ohio-4671. _______________________ BRUNNER, J. {¶ 1} Ohio juvenile law is organized around the tenet that children who are charged with acts that would be felonies if committed by adults must be recognized by courts as children when adjudicating and determining the consequences to be SUPREME COURT OF OHIO imposed on them if they are found to have committed those acts. In the statutory scheme for juvenile justice, “[i]nstead of ‘defendants,’ children are ‘respondents’ or simply ‘juveniles’; instead of a trial, children receive ‘hearings’; children are not found guilty, they are ‘adjudicated delinquent’; and instead of sentencing, children’s cases are terminated through ‘disposition.’ ” State v. Hanning, 89 Ohio St.3d 86, 89, 728 N.E.2d 1059 (2000). Legislatures and courts, including this court, have recognized that the special interests involved in juvenile cases cannot be adequately addressed by the adult-criminal-justice system, but they have also recognized that juveniles accused of crimes must be afforded the same procedural- due-process protections as adult criminal defendants, see In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 13, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967) (establishing that “neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Bill of Rights is for adults alone”), abrogated on other grounds as recognized by Allen v. Illinois, 478 U.S. 364, 106 S.Ct. 2988, 92 L.Ed.2d 296 (1986). {¶ 2} This court has also noted that “[j]uvenile law and criminal law are not synonymous,” State v. Hand, 149 Ohio St.3d 94, 2016-Ohio-5504, 73 N.E.3d 448, ¶ 13, and that “the very purpose of the state juvenile code is ‘to avoid treatment of youngsters as criminals and insulate them from the reputation and answerability of criminals,’ ” id. at ¶ 19, quoting In re Agler, 19 Ohio St.2d 70, 80, 249 N.E.2d 808 (1969). Stated another way, the juvenile-justice system must provide for accountability; yet it must also meet society’s need to …
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