Court: Teen in Mayfair Mall shooting will be tried as adult
A teenage boy who shot eight people at Mayfair Mall in 2020 should be tried as an adult, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The majority in the 4-3 decision declared Children’s Court Judge Brittany Grayson erroneously exercised her discretion when she denied prosecutors’ request that the boy be waived to adult court.
The Court of Appeals called for a new hearing on the issue, but the Supreme Court said that was unnecessary.
“There exists no reasonable basis for denying the State’s waiver petition,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote. She was joined in the majority opinion by Justices Patience Roggensack, Rebecca Bradley and Jill Karofsky.
Justice Brian Hagedorn dissented, joined by Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet.
“Although another judge might have reasonably reached a different conclusion on the same set of facts, this decision was within the discretion the law affords to circuit court judges,” Hagedorn wrote.
“The majority, however, displaces the circuit court’s discretion with its own, even as it pays lip service to the deferential standard of review we are duty-bound to apply.”
Milwaukee County Chief Judge Mary Triggiano said the current Children’s Court judge handling the case would hold a hearing and formally waive it to adult court and set bail.
The District Attorney’s Office would then file a criminal complaint, the teen would make an initial appearance in court on the adult charge and be assigned to a general felony or gun court judge.
Triggiano could not say how long the process would take.
The case began in juvenile court, so the defendant has only been identified by a pseudonym, Xander. The boy, 15 at the time of the shootings, is charged with eight counts of first-degree reckless injury — punishable by up to 15 years in prison for adults — and being a minor with a gun, a misdemeanor.
Prosecutors say he opened fire in the mall on Nov. 20, 2020, injuring three people in a group he was confronting, a friend who was with him, and four random shoppers.
Dozens of police responded and the mall was closed until the next day.
Surveillance video from Best Buy showed Xander running from the mall and getting in an an Uber investigators learned had been called by a number “associated with” the teen’s father. It dropped Xander at home.
He was arrested two days later, in a car with Illinois license plates with a packed bag and the same Glock 9mm handgun used in the mall shooting.
Prosecutors sought waiver to adult court. Grayson, after hearing from a social worker and a psychologist, determined Xander should remain in juvenile court. Xander had already been adjudicated delinquent in another case and hadn’t complied entirely with his treatment.
Grayson, a former assistant prosecutor in Milwaukee, was appointed to the bench in 2019 by Gov. Tony Evers and elected to a six-year term in 2020.
The Court of Appeals reversed the decision and ordered a new hearing before a different judge. Xander’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to weigh in first.
The majority in Wednesday’s decision recounts in detail Xander’s past juvenile record, his failure to abide by conditions imposed, the details of the mall shooting and his family’s efforts to aid his escape from the scene. It also documented his failed attempt to leave the state.
Ziegler wrote a separate, concurring opinion to say Grayson also failed to provide “sufficient reasoning” to support her decision. Rebecca Bradley and Roggensack also joined the concurrence, but Karofsky did not.
In his dissent, Hagedorn quoted at length from the transcript of the waiver hearing. He used it to argue Grayson addressed the statutory criteria, even if her analysis “left something to be desired in both content and clarity.”