Juvenile Felonies Can Count Toward 3 Strikes

SAN FRANCISCO —  The California Supreme Court gave prosecutors a victory Thursday, ruling that serious felonies committed by a juvenile, even when dealt with by a Juvenile Court, can count as prior strikes under the state’s three-strikes law.

Legal experts said the ruling settles the issue of what a judge may consider in deciding whether a convicted adult felon is subject to the 25-year-to-life sentence mandated by the three-strikes law for repeat felons. Until now, some judges have considered juvenile records and some have not.

The decision could affect the cases of thousands of adults with juvenile records, prosecutors and public defenders said.

In the 4-3 decision, justices said judges can count felony cases where youths were found guilty in Juvenile Court, not just those where teenagers were tried as adults.

Public defenders and some youth advocates denounced the decision, saying teenagers who commit offenses will be followed by their records for the rest of their lives.

The ruling also could further fuel get-tough efforts in Sacramento, where Gov. Pete Wilson and many lawmakers have called for laws that, in the extreme, could result in the death penalty for juveniles who commit murder.

“This is excellent news for California,” said Sean Walsh, Wilson’s spokesman. “There are 16- and 17-year-olds who commit rape, armed robbery and murder. Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms that if you commit adult crime, you will serve adult time.”

“Now with this holding, the dam has broken open,” said Richard Iglehart, chief assistant district attorney in San Francisco and an expert on the three-strikes law. “This is a whole new ballgame.”

A spokesman for Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said the case was an important victory for prosecutors.

“Obviously, we’re pleased,” said spokesman Rob Stutzman. “It expands the effectiveness of the state’s three-strikes law. It allows local prosecutors to lock up dangerous criminals sooner, by being able to use the juvenile record.”

Under the 1994 three-strikes law, repeat criminals convicted of a third felony face 25 years to life in state prison.

As the three-strikes law was being debated in the Legislature, critics pointed out that the measure’s wording was ambiguous on the question of whether prosecutors could consider prior offenses committed by juveniles when those offenses were dealt with in Juvenile Court.

Once the measure became law, Iglehart said, many California prosecutors, not wanting to risk losing on appeal, simply did not charge adult felons with additional strikes for offenses committed when they were juveniles, unless the felons had gone through what is called a fitness hearing to determine whether they should be tried as adults or juveniles.

The law was clear on a related point: Felons’ prior crimes could be counted as strikes, if as juveniles they were tried as adults for violent or serious felonies such as murder, rape or robbery.

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The Supreme Court’s decision in People vs. Davis applies to 16- and 17-year-olds whose cases were heard in Juvenile Court. It means that if a teenager was twice found guilty in Juvenile Court of committing serious felonies, a single felony conviction as an adult could subject him or her to a sentence of at least 25 years to life in prison.

“It’s Katie bar the door now,” said Iglehart, a veteran prosecutor who was chief consultant to the Assembly Public Safety Committee in 1994 and analyzed the three-strikes legislation. “There are a lot of juveniles in that pool. This will open the floodgates to a massive number of strikes that weren’t charged before.”

The three-strikes law lists 15 violent felonies that trigger the statute, including murder, attempted murder, voluntary manslaughter, mayhem, any felony in which a defendant uses a gun or inflicts great bodily injury, robbery in a home and various sex crimes, ranging from forcible rape to child molestation.

In addition, the law specifies 26 serious felonies that count as strikes, including bank robbery, assault with intent to rape or rob and kidnapping.

There is some question whether residential burglary committed by a juvenile qualifies as a serious felony. The high court did not address that issue.

In Thursday’s case, the Supreme Court court ruled that defendant Robert Davis qualified for the three-strikes law on the basis of one felony he committed as a juvenile and a felony he had committed as an adult before he was convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1994 in Contra Costa County. At age 22, Davis shot to death a pregnant teenager and seriously injured her boyfriend.

Some prosecutors said that there would be practical obstacles to using juvenile records in adult three-strike cases.

Juvenile records are often sealed and not always accessible, even to prosecutors, said Lawrence Brown, executive director of the California District Attorneys Asson. Prosecutors will have to obtain court orders to have the otherwise confidential records unsealed, Brown said.

Public defenders criticized the decision as a further erosion of the wall in the criminal justice system between the treatment of juveniles and the treatment of adults.

Dean Allen, supervising deputy public defender in the Orange County Juvenile Court system, said he opposes using juvenile offenses as strikes case because juveniles don’t generally have the same legal safeguards that adults do.

Allen said that, because the focus of the juvenile court system is rehabilitation, many juveniles admit to crimes as a way to settle the case. Defense attorneys probably would have handled those cases differently if they had known the consequences under the three-strikes law, he said.

“There are a lot of procedural safeguards available to adults that juveniles just don’t have, such as jury trials and preliminary hearings,” he said. “The whole goal of the juvenile system is for rehabilitation, where for adults the focus is punishment. We are just anticipating that there will be many abuses and injustices in the future.”

Traditionally, juveniles were looked at as less mature offenders who had a chance of rehabilitation. But society is less and less willing to see youthful offenders as redeemable, said Lisa Greer of the California Public Defenders Assn.

“We are losing our consensus in society of what it means to be a child,” said Greer, also a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County. “It’s a very sad day. This decision means it no longer matters if you stay in Juvenile Court or go to adult court. We used to think that if you stayed in Juvenile Court, you were salvageable.”

Juvenile hearings do not take place before a jury, and the judge’s ruling is called an adjudication, not a conviction.

“I’m very concerned about what it means as a practical matter, because of the way Juvenile Court works,” said Sue Burrell, staff attorney with the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, a nonprofit law firm that works nationally on policy issues that affect children.

Burrell said that in the overloaded juvenile justice system, inexperienced public defenders often give poor advice and representation to teenage defendants facing serious charges.

“I was a public defender, and I know what happens,” Burrell said. “You sit with your pile of cases, go through them and within a few minutes mete out agreements that are now going to have serious consequences way down the line for that child’s life.”

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Teenagers who rob someone of a skateboard and are found guilty of robbery in Juvenile Court will now have a strike against them, said Janice Brickley, who represented Davis in the appeal. “The unfortunate result of the decision is that three-strike life sentences are going to be imposed for offenses committed as a juvenile that were not truly serious,” she said.

But Stutzman dismissed such concerns.

“It is the will of the people and the intent of the Legislature to deal with minors in an adult manner” when those minors behave violently, he said.

Vickie Hix, supervising deputy district attorney in the Orange County Juvenile Court system, said the ruling affirms that system’s existing policies.

“We have been keeping track of them. . . . We’ve been following the law and applying it when appropriate,” Hix said.

Hix and others noted that doing so doesn’t seem unusually harsh when a defendant has racked up repeated offenses--and obviously did not learn from his or her stint in the Juvenile Court system.

“Kids aren’t committing just graffiti crimes anymore. We are handling some really serious cases here,” Hix said. “No, I’m not surprised [at the court’s decision]. It makes sense.”

In Los Angeles County, which has handled by far the greatest number of cases under the three-strikes law, Assistant Dist. Atty. Robert P. Heflin praised the court’s ruling, but predicted no real change.

“I do not think it will have a dramatic impact on the way we do business in L.A. County . . . [because] it validates the way we have been doing things,” said Heflin.

The office has not kept any record of how many juvenile cases are among the more than 21,000 second- and third-strike prosecutions handled by Los Angeles County since the law took effect, Heflin said.

In San Diego County, prosecutors said they had previously considered only cases in which youths were convicted in adult court.

In the case that landed before the Supreme Court, Davis is serving a consecutive sentences of 35 years to life plus five years.

In Thursday’s decision written by Justice Janice Brown, the court upheld an appellate court’s ruling that Davis’ felony assault adjudication as a juvenile could be counted against him. With that juvenile conviction and one conviction as an adult for robbery, the murder charges made Davis eligible for the three-strikes penalty of up to life in prison.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Greg Krikorian in Los Angeles, Tony Perry in San Diego and Lorenza Mun~oz in Costa Mesa. Curtius reported from San Francisco and Morain from Sacramento.