Teenagers to Get Hearing on Being Tried as Adults

A Superior Court judge ruled Friday that two teenagers accused in last year’s killing of a Glendale high school student are entitled to a hearing on whether they should be tried as adults.

The ruling came hours after the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles agreed to hear arguments that Rafael Gevorgyan and Anait Msryan, as well as co-defendant Karen Terteryan, were wrongly charged with murder in adult court because California law does not permit minors to be indicted by a grand jury.

The Court of Appeal action is the latest to raise questions about the fate of Proposition 21, the ballot measure last March that gave California’s prosecutors, rather than judges, the power to decide whether juveniles charged in many types of crimes should be tried as adults.

“I am ecstatic,” said attorney Ted Flier, who represents Gevorgyan, 16. “It means my client finally has an opportunity to present evidence at a . . . hearing to show he should not be tried as an adult.”

Trying to Break Up a Fight

A district attorney’s office spokeswoman said prosecutors will make the opposite argument in juvenile court.

“Certainly, we will proceed with the fitness hearing and will be asking the juvenile court . . . to have these juveniles sent back to adult court to be tried for their crimes,” said Sandi Gibbons.

Last year, the district attorney’s office obtained grand jury indictments of the three teenagers in the killing of Hoover High School senior Raul Aguirre. The 17-year-old victim, who authorities said was not a gang member, was clubbed and stabbed as he tried to break up a fight between two Armenian teenagers and a Latino youth.

Authorities alleged that the slaying, outside campus in front of a crowd of students, occurred when Terteryan, then 17, stabbed Aguirre while Gevorgyan clubbed him with a tire iron. Msryan, then 14, allegedly drove her male accomplices to the crime scene and tried to help her boyfriend Terteryan escape.

The district attorney’s office initially charged the three with first-degree murder in Glendale Superior Court. But prosecutors dropped those charges after obtaining grand jury indictments.

In September, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler agreed with defense attorneys that California law does not permit the indictment of minors. The ruling, appealed by prosecutors, led to the Court of Appeal decision Thursday to hear the case in May.

Ruling Excludes 1 Suspect

With that hearing pending, Superior Court Judge Henry Barela decided Friday that Gevorgyan and Msryan were entitled to juvenile court fitness hearings. Barela’s ruling did not apply to Terteryan because, even under a recent Court of Appeal ruling in San Diego, juveniles are automatically charged as adults in certain murder cases where they are accused of being the actual killers.

Terteryan’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said Friday that he was nonetheless heartened by the Court of Appeal’s decision to review the case.

“It is unusual for prosecutors to go to the grand jury for adult [prosecutions] and it is virtually unheard of to do so with a juvenile,” said Geragos.

Since a recent appellate court decision in San Diego that struck down a key provision of Proposition 21, there has been “great uncertainty” in California over which juveniles should be tried as adults, said USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

“I think this [new Court of Appeal action] means the court has identified this as an important legal issue,” he said. “But we can’t read any more into it than that.”