Adult trials banned for youths 14 and 15
State high court upholds law that was challenged by county prosecutors
Fourteen and 15yearolds in California cannot be prosecuted in adult court, where they would face sentences of up to life in prison, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday, upholding a 2019 state law that was challenged by prosecutors.
The law requires youths younger than 16 to be tried in juvenile court. The maximum confinement for juveniles is up to age 25, although a juvenile court judge could then order a “safety hold” requiring placement in a medical center.
Prosecutors from a number of counties argued that the 2019 law violated a provision of a 2016 ballot measure, Proposition 57, that allowed them to charge 14yearolds as adults if a juvenile court judge decided the case belonged in adult court,
based on the crime and the youth’s record.
But that law actually limited prosecutors’ authority to try juveniles as adults. Under a 2000 ballot measure, Prop. 21, prosecutors could charge 14yearolds in adult court for serious crimes on their own, without review by a juvenile court judge, as the law had previously required.
Prop. 57, sponsored by thenGov. Jerry Brown, reinstated the pre2000 requirement of juvenile court approval for adult prosecutions and allowed the Legislature to enact further changes in juvenile law as long as they were consistent with the intent of Prop. 57.
That intent, the court said Thursday, was to keep youths out of prison and return them to the juvenile court system, which focuses more on rehabilitation than on punishment.
Quoting a state Assembly committee analysis of the 2019 law, the court said the prosecution of 14 and 15yearolds as adults in California dated from the 1990s, a period “where the state was getting ‘tough on crime,’ but not smart on crime.”
Society’s views have changed since then, based on scientific research about juvenile development as well as the financial and social costs of steadily rising prison populations, Justice Joshua Groban, a Brown appointee, said in the 70 ruling. He noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling banning the death penalty for offenders under 18, and its 2012 decision striking down state laws that required life in prison without parole for crimes committed by juveniles.
California lawmakers were entitled to conclude in 2019 that 14 and 15yearolds accused of serious crimes should be tried in juvenile court, “where they are more likely to receive appropriate education and emotional and psychological treatment, and less likely to reoffend after their release,” Groban said.
One of the stated purposes of Prop. 57, he said, was to “stop the revolving door of crime by emphasizing rehabilitation, especially for juveniles.” Groban also noted that the state’s voter guide said the ballot measure was intended to save money by “reducing wasteful spending on prisons.”
The ruling makes California the first state to prohibit adult prosecutions of youths under 16, said the Sentencing Project, a group working to reduce imprisonment. It said those prosecutions have disproportionately affected racial minorities.
The ruling does not affect prosecutions of 16and 17yearolds, who can be tried in adult court for serious crimes if a juvenile court judge grants the prosecutor’s request after reviewing a youth’s record and background.
The case came from Ventura County, where a 15yearold identified as O.G. was charged with two gangrelated murders in 2018. A state appeals court said prosecutors could seek to try him in adult court, ruling that the 2019 law barring such prosecutions violated Prop. 57 — contrary to rulings by seven other appeals court panels in similar cases. The law has been enforced in parts of the state but is on hold elsewhere to await the state Supreme Court’s ruling, which keeps O.G.’s case in juvenile court.
Groups that backed the 2019 law praised the ruling.
“Now the state will focus on rehabilitating young people,” said Elizabeth Calvin of Human Rights Watch. “Youth who are sent to the adult system miss out on the treatment, education and services offered in the juvenile system. Youth kept in the juvenile system are less likely to commit new crimes.”
The California District Attorneys Association, representing most prosecutors in the state, argued for continued authority to try the youths as adults. The association was not immediately available for comment. But attorney Kymberlee Stapleton of the proprosecution Criminal Justice Legal Foundation said the ruling would require the state to “release some of the most violent juvenile criminals in the country.”
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said he was disappointed that the court had not allowed adult prosecutions of youths in cases of murder and serious sex crimes, but agreed with the overall goals of “promoting rehabilitation and reducing prison spending and overcrowding.”
The ruling was applauded by the liberal California Prosecutors Alliance, representing district attorneys in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties.
“Research shows that rehabilitation works, and by rehabilitating our children, we will make it less likely that they will commit new crimes,” said Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, the former district attorney in San Francisco.
The case is O.G. vs. Superior Court, S259011.