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Racing toward juvenile justice

The high rate of no-shows in court among juvenile defendants has prosecutors speeding their cases to completion.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published September 6, 2005

TAMPA - The fourth-floor courtroom is packed. Defense attorneys and prosecutors crowd around two long tables cluttered with case files for more than four dozen accused juvenile offenders. Law enforcement officers, parents, witnesses and victims sit shoulder-to-shoulder along one wall. Dozens more wait in the lobby outside.

With dizzying speed, bailiffs call out the names of the 52 defendants on the day's docket:

McGhee!

Lewis!

Walker!

Some of the cases on this day will be resolved with plea deals. Several will go to trial.

But three of the juveniles scheduled for trial won't bother to show up. By the end of the week, 39 more young defendants will have skipped their court dates.

State prosecutors say this is business as usual in Hillsborough County's 13th Judicial Circuit, where the failure-to-appear rate for juveniles has been as high as 60 percent in recent years - worse than any of the other 19 judicial circuits in Florida.

During the first seven months of this year, for example, the Public Defender's Office handled 3,911 juvenile cases. In nearly 1,200 instances, juveniles represented by that office failed to appear for their scheduled hearing and trial dates.

Officials with the State Attorney's Office say the worst teenage offenders - the ones who have been arrested so many times they know the system's ins and outs - skip court dates because they realize they can do so without serious consequences.

Unlike adult defendants who miss court, juveniles can't be charged criminally with failure to appear.

Juveniles can be held in secure detention for only 21 days after an arrest, the maximum under state law. Then they must be released. If they fail to appear in court, the judge can set another court date and order them picked up. But even then, authorities are only allowed to detain them during the 72 hours before the hearing.

But officers might not find the elusive juvenile in time. So the case gets put off again.

"They know, on the 21st day, that they're out," said Assistant State Attorney Adam Gould. "They start committing crimes again, racking up arrests. It's a revolving door."

State Attorney Mark Ober's office is trying to counter the trend by speeding some cases to trial. Prosecutors call it "fast-tracking."

Cases that used to take a few months to get to a judge are being resolved before the young defendants leave their 21 days of detention. "It is one of the few tools we have to successfully prosecute the kids," said Patti Pieri, chief of the juvenile division for the State Attorney's Office.

The two judges assigned to juvenile cases in Hillsborough now get eight to 10 fast-tracked cases a week, Gould said. The State Attorney's Office is also pushing for a third juvenile division, which they say would allow them to fast-track more cases.

But the Public Defender's Office is concerned about the strain that fast-tracking puts on their office.

"We need to take depositions in these cases, we need time to prepare," said Theda James, juvenile bureau chief for the Public Defender's Office.

"If one of our attorneys has a caseload of 100 and he gets a fast-tracked case, he has to drop everything for that one case. That means the other 99 cases suffer."

Even prosecutors concede that fast-tracking requires an intense commitment of time and resources.

Assistant state attorneys, law enforcement officers and defense attorneys have to analyze and submit evidence, take depositions and call in witnesses within days rather than weeks.

"It's inconveniencing at times, but we've got to get some of these pressing cases to where we are doing something with them," said Hillsborough sheriff's Capt. Craig Latimer, deputy commander for the criminal investigations division. "Deputies know they have to be ready to respond to a subpoena at a moment's notice."

The Tampa Police Department now has an assistant chief who coordinates with the State Attorney's Office to get fast-tracked cases to trial on time.

"It is a very intense process on our behalf, but it is so important we get them to trial," said Tampa police Chief Steve Hogue. "Because if you put them back onto the street, they just commit more crimes.

"And that means we have more victims."

* * *

In Florida, juveniles are responsible for one in four violent crimes, according to the Department of Juvenile Justice. Just 14 percent of juveniles are responsible for 42 percent of all crimes committed statewide.

Local law enforcement officers say the proportion holds true for Hillsborough County.

"This is that 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kid who goes to the mall, steals your purse or your laptop, and he goes from the mall to Westshore Boulevard, down to Hyde Park and he steals some more," said Tampa Police Sgt. Jim Contento.

Fast-tracking is reserved for a small percentage of the hundreds of cases that make their way through the juvenile division each month.

The fast-tracked cases are typically those of robbery suspects, teens caught with marijuana for the second or third time, and preteens who have already racked up prior arrests and failures to appear, said Gould, the assistant state attorney.

"We're not going to fast-track a first-time petty theft," he said.

The State Attorney's Office also does not fast-track the cases of older teens who are charged with violent crimes and might be eligible for stiffer prosecution in adult court, Gould said.

James, of the Public Defender's Office, concedes that the juveniles whose cases are fast-tracked "are not good kids." They are the defendants facing confinement in a state Juvenile Justice Department facility, she said.

Still, she worries that juveniles are being shortchanged by the pace at which their cases get to a judge for trial.

"What we're talking about is limiting the amount of time we have to prepare for a trial," James said.

"Juvenile convictions now stay on your record for the rest of your life. So the way these are litigated has long-term consequences."

--Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3373 or svansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 6, 2005, 11:14:55]