New NC law changes rules for kids in court. Here’s what it means for children under 10.
In the fight to pull young children from the court system in North Carolina, many juvenile advocates argued kids under 10 lacked the mental capacity to understand the court process and participate in their defense, as is expected.
Gov. Roy Cooper signed legislation raising the age at which a child can face prosecution in the state from 6 to 8. The change, which takes effect Dec. 1, stopped two years short of the minimum age of 10 proposed in an initial bill that passed in the Senate in March.
Instead legislators added a caveat saying 8- and 9-year-olds who face repeat accusations or high-level felonies could still be sent to court. The change addressed concerns from House members and the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, which was reluctant to lose jurisdiction over those cases, The News & Observer reported.
While the law will pull most 8 -and 9-years-olds from the courts, advocates said they don’t understand how children now deemed lacking capacity when accused of misdemeanors will be held competent for more complicated felony cases.
Many prosecutors, however, don’t see the issue as one of mental capacity, said Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.
“This is more a developmental and what is probably more an ethical and appropriate way to handle children that age,” she said.
The prosecutors supported removing 6-and 7-year-olds from the Juvenile Justice system because they agree that children that young don’t need to be handled by the courts, Freeman said. But they also wanted to keep jurisdiction over the few cases involving 8- and 9-year-olds accused of violent acts.
If a child commits an offense, such as shooting someone, there needs to be more than six months of counseling and consultations, she said.
“It was a collective decision or feeling of prosecutors across the state that we needed to have that discretion in those cases to handle that appropriately,” she said.
Not all districts attorneys agree.
In a statement, Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry said she supported raising the minimum age for court proceedings to 12, which is what the Task for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice established by Cooper recommended last year.
Number of complaints
About 67 complaints were filed against 6-year-olds and 123 complaints against 7-year-olds annually from 2015-18, based on data provided by Juvenile Justice officials.
About 575 complaints were filed against 8-and 9-year-olds each year on average during that time.
“The age is effectively raised to 10 for something like 99.9% of juveniles,” New Hanover Chief District Court Judge Jay Corpening said. He serves on the Juvenile Jurisdiction Advisory Committee, which is studying this and related issues for the General Assembly.
Over the last three years, about 30 children ages 8 to 10 faced juvenile charges that would meet the definition of serious felony in the new law while more than 1,000 would have been kept from the system, said Rep. Danny Britt, a Robeson County Republican and one of the primary sponsors of the bipartisan legislation, Senate Bill 207.
William Lassiter, North Carolina’s deputy secretary of Juvenile Justice, said the change and other adjustments to the law are significant. Until now, North Carolina had the lowest established age for court in the world, experts said. Most states in the U.S. don’t have a minimum age at which youth accused of crimes go to court.
“I think that it is a win for the state of North Carolina,” he said. “It is a win for kids.”
Change in the process
Juvenile cases start with a complaint, the equivalent of an adult charge. Court counselors determine whether the complaint should be dismissed, go to court or be deferred if the youth participates in a community program, social services and completes other promised action.
If a case goes to court and a juvenile is found guilty, the child can be referred to social services, sentenced to probation or community service, or committed to a state or private facility.
Most cases against 6-year-olds that go to court are deferred or dismissed there, according to attorneys and Juvenile Justice data.
Under the change, 6- and 7-year-olds, along with 8- and 9-year-olds facing first-time or low-level complaints, will be considered vulnerable juveniles and handled with referrals to support services and case management services for up to six months.
Counselors will work with a team that includes the parent, the Department of Social Services, schools and other community stakeholders, the law states. Parents who refuse the team’s recommendations put the child at risk of abuse, neglect or dependency, which the court counselor has to report to social services, the law states.
Issues continue to exist
Dorothy Hairston Mitchell is supervising attorney for N.C. Central University’s Juvenile Law Clinic, which helps children facing juvenile complaints and school suspensions.
North Carolina is on the right path, Mitchell said, but the change won’t solve the larger problem of kids facing juvenile complaints not understanding the legal process.
“We are still going to have the same issues that we deal with now, which is that we have a lot of children who are involved in juvenile delinquency courts that lack capacity,” she said.
Like others, Mitchell questions an 8-year-old accused of a misdemeanor being treated differently than one accused of a felony.
“They are kids that actually need services, counseling and substance abuse treatment, those type of things, as opposed to being caught up in the delinquency system,” she said.
In Wake County, Freeman said, the change won’t make a big difference because they don’t see cases of children that young.
Another change in the law
Another change under the law, however, will affect Wake County and help more juveniles by letting them stay in the juvenile system, which focuses more on rehabilitation than adult court, Freeman and others said.
In December 2019, North Carolina was one of the last states to move 16- and 17-year-olds charged with less serious crimes from adult court to the Juvenile Justice system. That left prosecutors in a position where if they wanted to keep a 16- or 17-year-old charged with a more serious crime in juvenile court, they had to plea it down to a less serious crime, Freeman said.
Now district attorneys will have discretion to keep teens facing E through G felonies in juvenile court. Those felonies include discharging a weapon into occupied property, taking indecent liberties with a child and common law robbery.
The law also extends the time 16- and 17-year-olds can remain in juvenile programs and probation., for example letting teens stay until they are 21 in some cases, instead of being transferred to adult prison when they turn 18.
“So that gives us more time, more accountability, but still within the juvenile system,” Freeman said.
Lassiter said the change will pull another 1,000 teens a year from adult court into the juvenile system.
“That’s huge,” Lassiter said.
Other changes in the legislation will streamline the process for youths to be evaluated after a judge’s order and require annual evaluations of intensive intervention services to make sure they’re working.
Juvenile Justice officials, however, are still working on recommendations to allow more assessments to determine whether the younger kids have the mental capacity to assist in their defense, Lassiter said.
“We hope to have proposal put together by next year in the short session to really look at that issue,” she said.
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 12:21 PM.
