Court affirms ban on adult court for kids of age 14, 15

A state appeals court has rejected a challenge to a new California law prohibiting the prosecution of 14- and 15-yearolds in adult court, where they could be sentenced to as long as life in prison.

The law, SB1391, refers youths ages 14 and 15 to juvenile court, where the maximum confinement ends at age 25. The law, passed last year, repealed statutes that had been in effect since 1995 allowing those youths to be charged as adults.

The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco upheld the law Tuesday, rejecting arguments by Solano County prosecutors that it violated a 2016 ballot measure that allowed juvenile-court judges to transfer youths’ cases to adult criminal court. It was the first appellate ruling on the issue, but similar cases are pending in other counties, and the issue could be headed to the state Supreme Court within the next year.

The 2016 initiative, Proposition 57, repealed a 2000 ballot measure that allowed district attorneys, on their own, to charge 14-year-olds in adult court for serious crimes. Prop. 57 required prosecutors to seek a transfer from a juvenile court judge, who would consider the youth’s history, potential for rehabilitation and the nature of the charges. SB1391 barred all such transfers for anyone under 16.

Tuesday’s case involved Alexander Cervantes, who was 14 when he broke into a Vallejo home in December 2010, stabbed a 13-year-old girl and her baby brother and sexually assaulted the girl. He was tried as an adult, convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder, and sentenced to 61 years to life in prison.

His appeals were still pending when Prop. 57 passed, prompting Solano County prosecutors to ask a juvenile court judge to approve the previous adult-court prosecution. That request had not been resolved when SB1391 took effect Jan. 1, barring adult prosecutions in such cases.

The district attorney’s office argued that Prop. 57 authorized prosecution of youths like Cervantes in adult court and could not be overridden by the Legislature without a new vote of the people.

The 2016 initiative “left in place mechanisms to protect the public from violent offenders who preyed on the innocent, took advantage of the vulnerable, and acted with violence,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

But the appeals court said the new law does not conflict with Prop. 57 and actually promotes the intent of the ballot measure.

Prop. 57 “sought to promote juvenile rehabilitation by channeling more minors into the juvenile system,” which is supposed to emphasize education and training rather than punishment, Justice Alison Tucher said in the 3-0 ruling. She said SB1391 “is consistent with and furthers Proposition 57’s goal of emphasizing rehabilitation.”

Tucher also said the sponsors of Prop. 57 had argued that increasing the number of youths in the juvenile court system would make the public safer, because “minors who remain under juvenile court supervision are less likely to commit new crimes.”

The ruling would end Cervantes’ detention at age 25, although a juvenile court judge could then order a “safety hold” requiring placement in a medical center or other facility.

Peter Obstler, Cervantes’ lawyer, said the new California law recognized “overwhelming scientific evidence that children who are 14 years old have a fundamentally different brain functioning and level of culpability. Not like an adult criminal.”

Representatives of the district attorney’s office were not immediately available for comment. The office could appeal to the state Supreme Court.