Adult Trials of Juveniles Get New Scrutiny

The tide has not reversed. Not yet anyway. But after a decade when more than 40 states made it easier to try juveniles as adults, a California Court of Appeal ruling this week striking down a key portion of Proposition 21 is prompting new debate on how best to handle felony prosecutions of youths.

On Thursday, several district attorneys’ offices said they would not oppose Juvenile Court judges deciding whether teenage offenders currently in adult courts should be tried as juveniles. In Los Angeles County, the district attorney’s office did not go as far, but it did say its prosecutors would not mount an all-out fight to prevent such hearings in as many as 200 cases now in adult courts.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys who try cases in the county, which has the nation’s largest local criminal justice system, said they plan to use the appellate decision to buttress their claims that young clients--including three teenagers held in a slaying at Glendale’s Hoover High School--have been unfairly rushed to adult court.

The ruling Wednesday rejected Proposition 21’s provision giving prosecutors, instead of judges, the right to decide whether teenagers should face adult prosecution for many types of serious crimes.

Whether the ruling will reverberate elsewhere in the nation was a matter of debate.

“If this decision is upheld by the California Supreme Court, I think it will be one that judges and maybe even legislatures across the nation will look at,” said Vincent Schraldi of the Washington, D.C-based Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “This didn’t happen in Idaho. It happened in California. So I think it can have an impact.”

Frank Zimring, professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, disagreed.

“Proposition 21 is well below the public’s radar, so cutting back on it, symbolically, may be a step in the right direction,” said Zimring, author of “American Youth Violence.” “But it is not a moment in legal history that people will commemorate as important.”

Many states have laws permitting prosecutors to send teenagers directly to adult court, according to lawyers and legal scholars. But unlike California, the other states maintain some judicial discretion so adult court judges can either send youths to Juvenile Court or issue sentences under juvenile laws.

Santa Clara University law professor Gerald F. Uelmen said the unilateral power that California prosecutors have under Proposition 21 is an aberration from the national pattern. “In most jurisdictions, shifting an individual from Juvenile Court to adult court is a judicial determination,” he said.

In its opinion Wednesday, the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego ruled 2 to 1 that a key provision of Proposition 21 violates federal and state separation-of-powers doctrines by giving judicial power to prosecutors.

That argument has been made in a Los Angeles appeal by attorneys on behalf of three teenagers who were indicted by the Los Angeles County grand jury in the slaying of a classmate last May at Hoover High School.

“We have argued from Day 1 that the procedure against our clients should have been made by way of Juvenile Court,” said attorney Ted Flier, who represents a 14-year-old girl in custody since the slaying.

The appeals court ruling will not affect certain murder and rape cases that, under Proposition 21 and previous laws, automatically require defendants 14 and older to be tried in adult court.

Prosecutors in San Diego have not yet announced whether they will appeal the ruling in a case involving the beating of several Mexican migrants to the state Supreme Court.

Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst has said he is leaning against appealing because of the advanced age and shaky health of the victims and the fact that an appeal might take a year or more.

“I don’t know if we have a year with this case,” he said Thursday.

But others predict that eventually the issue will make its way to the state high court, whether through the San Diego case or several others now pending before Courts of Appeal elsewhere in California.

Since the passage of Proposition 21, San Diego prosecutors have referred 26 cases involving teenagers directly to adult court, and all of the cases were under review by prosecutors Thursday. Of those 26 cases, 19 involved armed robbery.

In Orange County, prosecutors Thursday stopped filing serious juvenile cases in adult court. The district attorney’s office also said it would not oppose efforts by any of the 28 juveniles already charged in adult court to have their cases reviewed by Juvenile Court judges.

In Ventura County, where prosecutors have charged five youths as adults since the ballot measure was approved, the district attorney’s office will ask a Juvenile Court judge to declare them all unfit to be tried as juveniles.

Los Angeles prosecutors, hoping to preserve future appellate rights, said Thursday that they will formally object to defense motions allowing juveniles now in adult courts to have hearings on their status held before Juvenile Court judges. However, they said they would not mount a full-blown objection and would acknowledge to judges that they expect the cases to be sent to Juvenile Court for fitness hearings.

At that point, said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, prosecutors would expect Juvenile Court judges to send most of the cases right back to adult court.

Before Proposition 21 was overwhelmingly approved last March, Juvenile Court judges in Los Angeles County granted more than 80% of the 600 to 800 requests filed each year by prosecutors to send juvenile offenders to adult court, the district attorney’s office said. Because the office’s filing criteria remained the same after the ballot measure took effect, officials said it seems likely that Juvenile Court judges will continue to agree with most of their adult fitness filings.

“Our policy has been, when in doubt, keep it in Juvenile [Court],” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Spillane.

In Ventura County, the only case under Proposition 21 that has resulted in a conviction is that of 17-year-old Erik Paul Rayas, who was sentenced to 6 years and 4 months in state prison after pleading guilty to three robberies and two attempted robberies. Police said he was a suspect in 16 robberies in Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

His attorney, Jaye Ryan, said Thursday that she plans to reexamine the case to determine whether or not to appeal Rayas’ conviction. But she fears that if he is sent back to Juvenile Court and found unfit to be tried as a juvenile, he could face an even harsher sentence in adult court.

“I’m not sure if it is the best thing for Erik,” she said.

Still, Louis Rayas said he believes that his son should be treated as a juvenile and be incarcerated with people his own age. “I don’t think my son is a hardened criminal,” he said. “I think he made a terrible mistake.”

He added: “I don’t want him in there with lifers. I worry that he’s going to come out and be a lifer himself.”

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Times staff writers Tony Perry, Anna Gorman, Maura Dolan, Henry Weinstein, Richard Fausset and Stuart Pfeifer contributed to this story.