Justice Not Served by Naming Names

The two girls were 15 and 17. The first had allegedly squirted a 76-year-old woman with pepper spray and stolen her car. The second, a local beauty pageant winner, had been arrested on suspicion of using a stolen credit card to buy diet products.

In the days that followed, another local newspaper published a picture showing the accused carjacker smiling as she was being led away in handcuffs, clearly identifying her. The paper named her in a follow-up story, and also later decided to identify the 17-year-old beauty contest winner by name in connection with her alleged misdeeds.

Although a carjacking by a teenage girl had obvious news value, The Times handled that story differently. We had a similar photo of the girl smiling into the cameras, but chose to publish a different picture showing only the back of her head. Nor did we ever name her.

In the case of the beauty pageant winner--not officially charged with a crime--The Times chose not to report the incident at all, deciding that there was no way to tell the story properly without identifying the teenager by name or title and thus contributing to her public humiliation.

Why the reluctance to jump in with both barrels blazing on such stories?

The Times generally does not reveal the names of juvenile suspects in criminal cases for the same reason the justice system itself gives them special protections: Young lives can still be changed and should not be casually jeopardized for the sake of a good story.

But there are exceptions to that rule, especially in the most serious of crimes--such as murder.

“It’s not absolutely hard and fast,” says Shelby Coffey III, editor of The Times. “Unless it’s a heinous crime, we try to protect the identity of minors. But there are situations where it can get tricky: celebrity cases, for example.”

With juveniles increasingly involved in crimes of violence in Ventura County, there have been many cases in which The Times has identified young suspects. But almost always they have been charged with murder, and usually bound over for trial as an adult.

Restraint is not necessarily a popular stand. Increasingly the public is fed up with young hoodlums terrorizing their communities, and not at all averse to seeing their names in the local paper. Some people, probably many people, would like to see the bar lowered even further.

But The Times is comfortable with its long-standing approach. In the case of the 15-year-old girl who smiled at the cameras and the 17-year-old who may have crossed the line in dealing with a weight problem, the decisions to hold back were relatively easy.

The accused carjacker’s father called the other day to thank us for not identifying her by name.

He is worried that the punishment she now faces for her admitted crime might be more severe because of media attention to the case. But he is also worried about her.

He thinks she has learned her lesson, he says. He hopes this will be a turning point and she can straighten out her life. Maybe so, and maybe not.

But such hopes are the reason there is a place called Juvenile Court. And why we tread very cautiously when we venture there.