Oregon Supreme Ct - May 26, 2016
by: Aalvarez • May 27, 2016 • no comments
The trial court erred by ordering a 13 year old to stand trial as an adult when it waived him into adult court on the grounds that he understood and acknowledged his own role in the murder and knew that it constituted a crime and would carry criminal consequences. Although this finding is required before the court could waive a juvenile into adult court under ORS 419C.349, it is not sufficient.
Under ORS 419C.349 or ORS 419.352, a juvenile court must find that “the youth possesses sufficient adult-like intellectual, social and emotional capabilities to have an adult-like understanding of the significance of his or her conduct, including its wrongfulness and its consequences for the youth, the victim, and others.”
In making that determination, the juvenile court “will be called on to consider its own knowledge and assessment of the capabilities of typical adults and the capabilities of the particular youth who is subject to wavier and any evidence on that subject that the parties may offer[.]” After determining that the juvenile has an adult-like capacity to appreciate and/or comprehend “with heightened understanding and judgment, an act’s consequences and wrongfulness,” the court must then determine “whether the particular youth’s capabilities are sufficiently similar to those of a typical adult that the court can conclude that the youth has the requisite appreciation of the nature and quality of the conduct involved.”
Here, although the judge determined that the youth had knowledge of his physical consequences and criminality, he did not make the findings sufficient to determine whether the youth had adult like capacities that would allow him to appreciate the “significance and wrongfulness of his conduct and its consequences in both an intellectual and an emotional sense.” This is the determination that waiver into an adult requires. State v. J.C.N.-V, 359 Or. 559 (2016)
