Juvenile Criminal Attorney
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The courtroom was packed as the juvenile criminal attorney began wrapping the arson hearing against the thirteen year old boy who was accused of setting fire to the town's public library. The library had been torched at night and there were no injuries, but the small town in the Allegheny Mountains felt injured by the audacity of one of its own children who had been taught in the local school system and who had attended several church youth groups in town could do such an act. Some of the adults were surprised that there would be an open public court for an underage proceeding, but changes in adlescent law in most of the states in the 1990s had torn down the privacy associated with juvenile court proceedings of the past. Also surprising to many of the adults was the fact that the judge was actually a barrister from an adjoining town and not an elected judge. In fact, the county had begun appointing various attorneys to rule in many of its juvenile cases, and this proceeding was no exception. The juvenile defense lawyer sat quietly, still taking notes as she had done throughout the hearing, and once in a while glancing over and giving the seemingly very little boy seated next to her a confident smile.
The juvenile defense lawyer knew that the mood of the town was to see this young man put away until the advent of the offender's twenty-first birthday. In the past twenty years, the entire American view of juveniles had changed, and with this change juvenile courts responded by making more punishment and less rehabilitation the rule of practice. For underage offenders, there is no constitutional right to an indictment, bail or a jury trial. Both the juvenile criminal attorney and the juvenile defense attorney liked the last caveat, because although the courtroom was packed, there was no jury in the box, and the only person that had to be convinced that their case was the correct one was the judge, who happened to be a friend to both. The juvenile criminal attorney, also a county appointed officer of the court, laid out the very convincing case against the thirteen year old. Not only had the young man told most of the school what the young offender had done, but dirty fingerprints all over the gas can found to be used in the torching belonged to the young man.
Both the juvenile defense attorney and the juvenile criminal attorney had sat down six weeks before the public hearing with the attorney who had been appointed the judge in this matter. The young presumed offender kept insisting on innocence, and so the young offender's parents knew what the stakes were in this very criminal matter, and decided that some of the boy's college money would have to be spent on defending their only child. They understood that a hearing before the judge would really not be about guilt or innocence, but about the boy's immediate future. Both parents knew deep in their hearts that the young man was probably guilty. At this private hearing, both attorneys gave an impassioned plea regarding the next five to seven years of the young man's life. The barrister for the county asked repeatedly that the young man be placed in a reformatory for under eighteen offenders until the boy's twenty first birthday. The juvenile defense lawyer for the boy argued passionately for leniency, or a compromised approach to punishment, which included a pastor, the boy's current teacher, and a psychologist giving testimony as to the basically gentle nature they had observed in the young man.
After all the evidence had been heard, the lawyer/judge asked the young man how he felt, and whether or not the offender actually owned up to the act so clearly proven at the hearing. The boy broke down emotionally and said he was very sorry for the actions, and that what had been done was an act not just directed at a librarian that had treated the young man poorly, but against the entire town. The juvenile offender shared with the courtroom the sadness that came with the anger so many people at directed at the boy. The boy shared that wherever in town the youngster traveled, people called the boy names and threatened to hurt the family. The young man also expressed deep sorrow for not admitting earlier the responsibility for the arson.
Before the lawyer/judge rendered the decision, the judge asked that the juvenile criminal attorney, the juvenile defense lawyer, the psychologist and the boy's parents meet in the judge's chambers, which was borrowed from a circuit court judge for the day. The judge began asking the criminal barrister to again state the case for incarceration until the age of twenty one. The judge then asked the defense attorney to give a list of compromise ideas for the boy's immediate future. The ideas included mandatory family counseling, a summer at a youth boot camp, community service that would be decided by the Chamber of Commerce and would be carried all summer for five years and a denial of a driver's license until twenty one. The judge also asked for the parents to speak of the boy's attitude and resolve in the months since the act was committed. Finally, the psychologist was asked to give her opinion in regards to the boy's ability to accept and react to correctional measures. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
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