On Monday, a day after a fire destroyed a church on North Lehmberg Road, Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton did something he admits investigators rarely do: He recommended the teenage boy accused of setting the blaze be charged as an adult.
“Arson is a serious crime,” Shelton said. “Thank God there wasn’t (anybody) hurt. However, if someone was in the building or if the fire had gotten out of hand and spread — there was a house right next to the church — it could have some real serious injury if the fire department hadn’t got there to respond in a reasonable amount of time to contain the fire. So he put a lot of people in danger.”
The juvenile, who Shelton said is between the ages of 14 and 16, allegedly set the fire at First Independent Methodist Church on Monday at about 1:35 a.m. Though firefighters kept the flames from spreading and put out the fire within about 90 minutes, the structures were total losses.
Investigators later linked the juvenile to burglaries at other churches in the area, so he was charged with arson and three counts of burglary.
Since the process for officially charging the teen as an adult is incomplete, police are still not publicly releasing his identity.
Most individuals under 18 who are charged with felonies will have their cases handled in youth court, though there are exceptions. Circuit court has original jurisdiction if a person between the ages of 13 and 18 commits a crime that would carry a sentence of life in prison, such as murder. At that point, a circuit judge would have to order the case remanded to youth court.
For a charge with a lesser sentence — such as arson or burglary — the case goes straight to youth court for a youth court judge or referee to determine if it should be transferred to circuit court, where adults are tried.
Lowndes County Youth Court Judge Allison Kizer, who has worked with juveniles in youth court as either an attorney or a judge for more than 20 years, said whether that happens depends entirely on the individual case.
Juvenile records are sealed and Kizer cannot discuss individual cases, so she did not comment on the arson case Columbus police are investigating. However, both she and 16th Circuit Court Judge Jim Kitchens said it is not particularly common for juvenile cases to be sent to circuit court.
“I’m going to have to brag on our youth court and our referees, because they usually don’t send us somebody unless they’ve pretty much worn out every opportunity they have,” Kitchens said. “… Usually by the time it gets up to me, if … they’re 15 or 16, they’ve usually got a track record in youth court. In other words, they’ve been sort of a frequent flier down there, and youth court kind of feels they’ve exhausted all resources and all manners that they have to deal with such a person.”
Kizer stressed authorities must take into account that juveniles are children.
“You think about choices you made at 10 or 12 or 15, versus now as an adult,” she said. “That’s why youth court is there. It’s really to try and rehabilitate them and keep them from recommitting and harming the community and to keep graduating up to worse things.”
Balancing the good of the child with the good of the public
Kizer and Kitchens both said it is extremely unusual for a juvenile’s case to be sent from youth court to circuit court, and that when it does happen, the juvenile typically already has a record.
Kitchens said he deals with it about twice per year.
“If you’ve got a … 13-year-old that commits some act (who) really has other issues and doesn’t understand, those kids don’t typically need to go to adult prison,” Kizer said.
Kitchens brought up one case where a 16-year-old was charged with three counts of selling drugs. Those were about the juvenile’s 14th, 15th and 16th felonies he had racked up since he was 12. The first dozen offenses had all been handled in youth court.
“In that particular case, that young man had broken into occupied dwellings, stolen cars, sold drugs, I mean you name it,” Kitchens said. “… The authority in youth court said, ‘No, they’ve got to go up to circuit court.’ I looked and I went through it, the lawyer asked me to send it back. … I pulled that person’s file and I couldn’t justify sending it back, given that person’s record.”
They said they both listen to attorneys, law enforcement, child psychologists and anyone else who may be able to weigh in on the juvenile’s — and the public’s — best interest.
Kizer said she looks at the juvenile’s age, maturity, circumstances, mental health, the seriousness of the offense and whether the juvenile harmed or could have harmed anyone before she determines if the juvenile must be tried as an adult.
“It’s really on a case-by-case (basis),” she said, adding there is no “checklist” that she ticks off to make the determination.
“Not every kid is bad,” she said. “In fact, most kids have something going on, to be honest with you. Everything that comes in through the delinquent side typically has something else going on in their life. I mean, you can have straight-A kids with good parents, good rules, and just they’re kids. They make mistakes.”
It’s also rare for cases where circuit court has original jurisdiction for judges to remand them to youth court. District Attorney Scott Colom said that typically comes up in sexual assault type cases.
An adult who has sex with a child under 14 can be sentenced to life in prison, he said, meaning circuit court has original jurisdiction in such cases.
However, that sometimes translates to 15-year-olds being charged as adults for having sex with 12-year-olds, he said — in which case judges and attorneys will look at the circumstances of the case, the age and maturity of the involved parties and the wishes of the victims when determining whether to remand the case.
“It’s generally better for juveniles to be handled in youth court versus circuit court,” Colom said. “I think that we need to spend more time and attention looking at ways to be proactive in youth court to prevent people from graduating to circuit court. That’s one of the things that I feel is frustrating, is starting to see those warning signs at 13, 14, 15. Maybe it starts with auto burglaries. … Youth court is doing whatever they can do, and eventually it gets more serious and we’re having to deal with it.”
Behind the scenes
While in many ways youth court is the same as other courts, the primary goal of sentencing in that case is to rehabilitate the child and keep them from committing crimes as an adult and entering the criminal justice system once they’re over 18.
“The main thing is youth court is not necessarily criminal in nature,” she said. “We use different terminology. They’re adjudicated, they’re not convicted. They’re delinquents, they’re not felons. … It’s the same standards. The same rules of evidence apply for delinquent cases. It’s not some relaxed component beyond a reasonable doubt, but youth court is focusing on the child and the child’s family.”
Youth court judges can sentence delinquents to juvenile detention centers or reform or training schools. Other options include house arrest or probation.
Youth court authorities also look at aspects like mental health, drug addiction and other factors playing into why a child committed an offense and try to address those underlying conditions, Kizer said.
Still, Kizer said, youth court authorities must take in the safety and good of the community when determining how to handle juvenile offenders.
“It doesn’t ignore the danger and the impact on communities,” she said. “That’s definitely a factor that’s considered, so I don’t want people to think that not a lot happens at youth court. A lot happens, it’s just behind the scenes. … There’s a lot of working parts to try and help that child and that family get assistance.”
Kitchens said sometimes juveniles simply cannot be treated legally as anything but adults.
He said he has a friend who is a youth court judge in another county who was dealing with a 15-year-old accused of rape. The judge sentenced him to detention in several facilities for juveniles.
“He was molesting the kids and the people in the other facilities,” Kitchens said. “And these were lockdown facilities that were meant for children. So at some point, (the judge) said, ‘Look, I can’t endanger any more children, because this young man … is trying to rape these people.’ It bothered him because it was somebody so young, but you can’t endanger the other people that are in those programs.”
Shelton said he understands the importance of rehabilitating juveniles, but in the case of serious crimes, those juveniles have to understand there are serious consequences to their actions.
“We want to protect the safety of the whole community,” he said. “We want a juvenile to … be rehabilitated and become a good productive citizen. However, they do need to be held (accountable) and have consequences for their action although they are juvenile.
“When I think about that fire, and I think about how close the house is that’s sitting there next to (the church). There were people in that house,” he added. “Thank God the fire department was just a couple of blocks away, but if that fire had burned 20 minutes or so, it could have got out of hand and it could have spread through that whole neighborhood, potentially destroyed that whole neighborhood or killed somebody.”
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