by Katie Hill, '07
The Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project currently represents a fourteen-year-old boy, known as "R.H.," charged with first degree murder after a shooting in Chicago Heights. Although R.H. was not the shooter, the State believes he was present for the planning and at the shooting itself, which took place in the victim's driveway; the State has therefore charged him under a theory of accountability.
The State moved to transfer R.H.'s case to adult court as, in murder cases, thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds are subject to discretionary transfer to adult court under Illinois law. In the alternative, the State moved to try R.H. under Illinois' extended juvenile jurisdiction (EJJ) statute, under which a minor convicted in juvenile court also receives an automatically-imposed adult sentence should he violate the terms of the juvenile sentence. The legal team felt strongly that R.H. should not be tried as an adult or sentenced under EJJ. Since both the transfer motion and the EJJ motion were discretionary, the State must prove that the minor will not be served by the rehabilitative mission of the juvenile system.
R.H.'s legal team worked quickly (a hearing must be held within thirty days of the filing of the EJJ motion) to prepare a response to the State's motion and for the hearing. The Project's motions to deny transfer and EJJ highlighted R.H.'s lack of criminal history, his minor role in the events as they transpired, and his long and troubled social history, including poorly administered special education services and drug-impacted parents. R.H.'s social history, coupled with the input of students from the School of Social Administration (who visit R.H. weekly and who bring a valuable social work perspective to the legal process),make it clear that R.H. is not one of the so-called superpredators who inspired the enactment of the transfer and EJJ statutes in the first place. He is, rather, a kid who got in trouble but for whom the future is filled with hope. As such, R.H. is a prime candidate for the kind of rehabilitation that the juvenile system is meant to administer.
Just before Christmas, Clinical Professor Herschella Conyers, '83, argued both the motion to deny transfer and the motion to deny EJJ. She argued that transferring a kidlike R.H. was the same as giving up on him, and his short history of delinquent activity and long history of social and educational problems do not justify transfer. The State, which bore the burden of proving that transfer or EJJ would be appropriate, seriously undermined its own efforts by making several obvious errors in its proffered materials, including a claim that R.H. had been involved in a shooting in1992 (when he was two years old!) and a mob action in 1994 (at four!). The judge was less than thrilled about these obvious mistakes, and was convinced that Conyers's belief that R.H. would be better served in the juvenile system was correct. He denied both the motion for transfer and the motion to proceed under EJJ, a first in what we hope will be a series of victories in the case of R.H.
