Juvenile prosecutions in weekend beating death eyed by state panel

In the same week that three teenagers have been arrested and charged with murder in the beating death of an elderly man in downtown Lynchburg, the Virginia State Crime Commission addressed an issue central to the case: how and when to prosecute juveniles as adults.

Though the timing was coincidental, the discussion in Richmond on Wednesday drew representatives of Lynchburg-area NAACP branches who spoke in favor of proposals that would allow lawyers to appeal the transfer of juvenile cases to adult courts. Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Doucette also shared his ideas about why those changes might not be a good idea.

Kenneth Davis and Vernon Jackson, both 16, and an unidentified 13-year-old were arrested Tuesday and charged with murder in the slaying of 81-year-old George Leroy Baker.

Baker, of Tempe, Ariz., was staying at the Craddock-Terry Hotel for his granddaughter’s wedding Sunday night when he left to go for a walk downtown, police said. He encountered a group of teenagers near the intersection of 11th and Main streets around 10:30 p.m. when he was attacked, according to court records.

An affidavit filed for a search warrant states Davis was showing off for some girls he was with and told them he was going to hit the next person he saw. Witnesses have named him as the person who started the attack by running up to Baker and striking him.

If a judge finds evidence to support the filing of the murder charges, the 16-year-olds both will be prosecuted in Lynchburg Circuit Court, where they face the possibility of adult-term prison sentences. The move is automatic under Virginia law. Because the 13-year-old is younger than Virginia’s 14-year-old threshold, he can’t be prosecuted as an adult.

The state crime commission has been studying how juvenile cases are transferred to adult courts since 2006. Discussion in Richmond on Wednesday largely centered on Senate Bill 205, proposed in the last session of the General Assembly.

Though it does not concern the automatic provisions for transfer of murder cases to adult courts, the bill would allow for lawyers to appeal the transfer of other violent crime charges out of juvenile court.

W.E. Clark III, chairman of the legal redress committee of the Lynchburg branch of the NAACP, said in an interview on Thursday that he disagrees fundamentally with treating children as adults in state courts. Clark said an academic analysis of crime statistics shouldn’t be substituted for real-world experience working with children.

He said he also objects to the practice for racial reasons. He said he believes a disproportionate majority of juveniles turned over to adult courts are African American.

“The environment for most African Americans has a number of forces in it that are causing some of this problem,” he said. “We are not in favor of doing wrong or committing crime. We’re against it. But we have great problems in Lynchburg and in other places.”

Lynchburg branch member Walter Fore, who also works with the redress committee, attended the meeting, too. Fore said he has worked as an advocate for juveniles in court and sometimes has found they don’t properly understand the process and are not treated fairly.

Both Fore and Clark condemned Baker’s slaying.

Doucette, the prosecutor, said he agreed with Clark that statistics can sometimes be cold and inhuman, “but the flip side of humanity is sometimes inhumanity. We sometimes have heinous crimes like what happened this weekend.”

He credits a change in the law in 1996 for a decrease in juvenile crime. That change allowed for the automatic transfer of murder and aggravated malicious wounding charges to adult courts for those 14 and older and for the transfer of some other violent-crime charges at the request of the prosecutor.

While the number of 10-to-17-year-olds has increased in Virginia 28 percent since 1990, Supreme Court of Virginia statistics show criminal complaints against them have increased only 1 percent, he said. Actual arrests have decreased 34 percent, he said.

“That would suggest that the amendments made back in the mid-1990s are working,” he said.

Jeff and Jennifer Bennett, the husband-and-wife team in Doucette’s office charged with prosecuting the teens in the Baker homicide, said that although the cases for the two 16-year-old may be decided by a judge in Lynchburg Circuit Court, the judge has a variety of sentencing options under state law should they be convicted.

The law allows them to be sentenced under terms they would have faced in juvenile court — a maximum penalty of state custody until their 21st birthdays — or to an adult prison term, or to a mix of the two, they said.

Preliminary hearings for the 16-year-olds are scheduled for Sept. 28. Because of the nature of the charges, the hearings will be open, a judge ruled this week. Proceedings for the 13-year-old will be closed and dealt with entirely in the juvenile system.

The Virginia State Crime Commission is not expected to take up the juvenile case transfer issue at its November meeting, but could address it again at a meeting set for Dec. 8.