Delinquent : Efrain didn’t fire the gun, but was charged with attempted murder, bound over. Should he have been prosecuted as an adult?17-year-old Efrain was charged with serious crimes in a non-fatal shooting, resulting in automatic bindover. He didn’t pull the trigger, and he’d never been charged with a crime before. A juvenile judge was blocked from weighing in.
“Ever since then, I just lost myself a little bit,” he recalls now. “That’s when everything started unraveling.” “I feel like if my friend didn’t get shot, I wouldn’t be into stuff and in the streets,” he says now. It also created new problems. With the brother behind bars, the people he’d harmed came after Efrain instead. He started getting death threats, so his father sent him out of state to live with an aunt. Efrain says the change in environment helped him, for a while, but sometimes he would still act out, and his aunt would threaten to send him back to Cleveland, which made him fear for his life.First, Efrain says someone shot at him while he was walking on the street.
The prosecutor might have also sought to indict Efrain as a Serious Youthful Offender, in which case he would have received a blended sentence. Efrain would serve the juvenile portion first, but an adult sentence could follow, if he were to reoffend during that period. For nearly a century, all bindover decisions were discretionary. It was up to a judge to consider the totality of a youth’s circumstances – their role in the alleged crime, their homelife, academic performance, prior court involvement and a psychological evaluation. Then, the judge would decide whether to keep them in the juvenile system or send them on to the adult system.
A child would also be subject to bindover if they come from a state whose laws require it, or if they’re convicted of a felony and have been bound over before. “Once an adult, always an adult,” according to the law. “He’s at a crossroads,” DiChiera told the judge. “He can be rehabilitated. There is hope in the future for this young man.”
Around that same time, Efrain’s house was shot up again. This time, police said the bullets went through the front door and windows. Instead of being mixed with adult offenders and placed in adult programs, Efrain could have received services designed for juveniles, like youth counseling. He could have gotten a high school diploma, instead of now seeking a GED. And he could have exited the system with some protections, instead of now being “saddled with record he can never have sealed or expunged.”
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)
@Exmeter Delinquent Bindover Cuyahoga County Juvenile Justice
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: screenrant - 🏆 7. / 94 Read more »
Source: screenrant - 🏆 7. / 94 Read more »
Source: SFnewsnow - 🏆 237. / 63 Read more »
Source: clevelanddotcom - 🏆 301. / 63 Read more »
Source: clevelanddotcom - 🏆 301. / 63 Read more »
Source: clevelanddotcom - 🏆 301. / 63 Read more »