In Re Tahbel

By his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the petitioner, Henry Tahbel, father of Bodo Tahbel, a boy fifteen years of age, seeks his son’s release from “Juvenile Hall,” a detention home, in the city of Los Angeles, established under the juvenile court law as a place for the confinement of delinquent minors, and to which the boy was committed for refusing to answer certain questions when a witness in the juvenile court. The boy’s refusals to answer were made upon the ground that by his answers he might incriminate himself.

On January 19, 1920, there was filed in the juvenile court for Los Angeles County a petition wherein it is charged that the minor, Bodo Tahbel, is a person defined in subdivisions 2, 4, 11, and 13 of section 1 of the “juvenile court law” (Stats. 1915, p. 1225 et seq.), and that he comes within the purview of section 1 of that act in that he has no parent or guardian willing to exercise proper parental control; that, by reason of the depravity of his parents, his home is an unfit place for him; that, by reason of the association of his parents with lewd and lascivious characters and the influence of his parents and of such characters, he is in danger of…