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RE: Trialling kids as adults
November 23, 2015 at 10:38 am
What does that have to do with criminal offenses Chad?
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RE: Trialling kids as adults
November 23, 2015 at 10:47 am
For informational purposes, here's a rough sketch of Pennsylvania law on trying juveniles as adults:
1. If the crime is murder, rape, or sexual assault, it starts in criminal court, and the defense must petition the judge to move it to juvenile court.
2. All other charges start in juvenile court. If a prosecutor wishes to charge a particular juvenile as an adult, he needs to petition a judge to certify the juvenile as an adult.
3. For transfer to be considered, all of the following must be true:
a) juvenile is at least 14 years old
b) a hearing takes place where both sides can present evidence of whether or not the juvenile should be tried as an adult
c) there's a prima facie case that the juvenile committed the offense
d) the offense is a felony (that is, *would be* a felony if committed by an adult)
e) "there are reasonable grounds to believe that the public interest is served by the transfer of the case" for prosecution as an adult. The factors to be considered are:
- essentially, how bad the offense was, both for the community and the victims
- how likely the juvenile is to harm the community going forward
- "adequacy of alternative punishments" (essentially, is the crime committed such that keeping the kid in juvenile detention for the maximum time would still be inadequate punishment)
- whether the child is "amenable to treatment" in the juvenile justice system, based on things like age, prior record, mental capacity, maturity, "criminal sophistication" and the like
4. In most cases, the burden is on the prosecution to prove that the juvenile should be sentenced as an adult; the presumption is that the juvenile should not be. The juvenile has the burden in the following cases:
a) when the child is at least 14 and uses a deadly weapon during the crime
b) when the child is at least 15 and has already committed at least one felony that was adjudicated in juvenile court
c) when the charge is murder, rape, kidnapping, automobile theft, or robbery
So... those are the guidelines. Something like that is going to be the procedure in most states.
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