Justia Juvenile Law Opinion Summaries

A firearm was discovered at the minor’s school. School administrators suspected his involvement, and in the course of questioning him, they seized and searched the minor’s cell phone. Interspersed with the text messages on the phone were a number of digital images, including a photograph of the minor holding what appeared to be the firearm found on campus. When the prosecution sought to use these images as evidence in the proceeding below, the minor unsuccessfully moved to suppress them. The juvenile court found the minor had possessed an assault weapon, and declared him a ward of the juvenile court (Welfare & Institutions Code 602.1). The court of appeal affirmed in part, finding the search of the cell phone reasonable. Considering all the circumstances, the juvenile court properly found the search was justified at its inception and permissible in scope. The order must be modified to reflect his maximum term of confinement and the matter must be remanded to the juvenile court so that it may calculate the custody credits to which he is entitled. View "In re Rafael C." on Justia Law

The Alameda County District Attorney filed a juvenile wardship petition under Welfare and Institutions Code 602, 2 alleging that 17-year-old A.S. committed a misdemeanor assault (against her mother) by means likely to produce great bodily injury (Pen. Code, 245, (a)(4)). The court declared her a ward of the juvenile court. Her probation conditions required to submit her “electronics including passwords under [her] control” to warrantless searches by the probation department and law enforcement (electronic search condition) and prohibited her from unauthorized or unsupervised presence on school property (school grounds condition). The court of appeal modified the order. Under the particularized facts of this case, the electronic search condition is reasonable under the test established by People v. Lent, and is not unconstitutionally overbroad. The school grounds condition, however, was unconstitutionally vague because it did not incorporate a “knowledge” requirement so as to prohibit the unauthorized or unsupervised presence on property she knows is school property. View "In re A.S." on Justia Law

In 1993, Kristopher Kirchner, age 16 at the time, and Damien Miller, age 15, executed a plan to rob a gun store in Vista owned by Ross Elvey. Once inside the store, Kirchner repeatedly hit 59-year-old Elvey in the head with a metal pipe causing severe trauma that ultimately resulted in Elvey's death after languishing in a coma for 40 days. Kirchner was initially charged in juvenile court, however, the court found Kirchner unfit to be prosecuted as a juvenile and he was charged as an adult. Kirchner was found guilty of one count of first degree murder, and remanded to the California Youth Authority (CYA). CYA concluded there was a reasonable probability that Kirchner's likelihood to commit further crimes could be reduced or eliminated within the available confinement time if sentenced as a juvenile. The trial court declined to follow the recommendation of the CYA and sentenced Kirchner to LWOP on the murder conviction, plus one year consecutive for the weapon enhancement. Kirchner filed a second petition for writ of habeas corpus in October 2014 contending that under "Miller v. Alabama" and "California v. Gutierrez," his sentence violated the Eighth Amendment. The district attorney's return argued Miller and Gutierrez could not be applied retroactively and Kirchner was, therefore, barred from collaterally attacking his sentence. The court granted the request to file a supplemental return. Kirchner filed a supplemental denial. In 2015, the superior court granted Kirchner's petition. The district attorney appealed. The Court of Appeal concluded after review that the trial court correctly concluded the holdings of Miller and Gutierrez applied retroactively in state collateral proceedings such as the one presented here and that the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution required that when inmates, such as Kirchner, were serving life terms for crimes committed while they were juveniles, they must, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, be given an opportunity to seek parole. However, where, as was the case in California, a legislature has provided inmates serving life sentences for crimes committed while they were juveniles with an opportunity to obtain a parole hearing, the state has remedied any constitutional defect in the inmate's sentence. View "In re Kirchner" on Justia Law

Nicole, a minor, arranged for a friend to lure the victim, E.Y., to Heron Park in Brentwood. A school official obtained from an anonymous student a video depicting an attack on E.Y. by four females, including Nicole, who admitted her involvement but blamed others for arranging the assault. She said she gave her phone to another individual to record the fight. Following a contested dispositional hearing, the juvenile court adjudged Nicole a ward of the court and ordered that she be removed from her father‟s custody and detained in juvenile hall pending placement. The court imposed probation conditions, including a condition permitting searches of Nicole’s cell phone and other electronic devices. Nicole was placed at the Warner Mountains Group Home, approximately 340 miles from her father’s home, although there were closer facilities. The court of appeal upheld removal of Nicole from her home, but concluded no substantial evidence justified her distant placement. On remand, the trial court is to modify the search condition and specify the maximum time of confinement. View "In re Nicole H." on Justia Law

In 1993, Defendant, who was seventeen years old at the time, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and other charges. Defendant was sentenced to life in prison. Defendant later filed a petition for post-conviction relief pursuant to Ariz. R. Crim. P. 32, claiming that recent scientific findings concerning juvenile psychology and neurology were newly discovered material facts that entitled him to post-conviction relief. The trial court dismissed the petition. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that Defendant failed to present a colorable claim because the advancements in juvenile psychology and neurology offered by Defendant merely supplement then-existing knowledge of juvenile behavior that was considered at the time of Defendant’s sentencing. View "State v. Amaral" on Justia Law

Mark, then age 14, was being escorted to the office at his high school in connection with a fight during the lunch period. When a campus supervisor reported that she saw a suspicious bulge near Mark’s waistband, an officer pat searched him and retrieved a folding pocket knife with a blade two and three-fourths inches long. A search of Mark’s backpack revealed a canister of pepper spray, which is considered contraband at the school. Mark stated that he carried the items for self defense. Mark was arrested, and the district attorney filed a wardship petition under Welfare and Institutions Code 602(a). The matter was referred to the probation department for consideration of informal supervision pursuant to section 654.2. The juvenile court received the probation department’s report, which concluded that Mark was suitable for informal supervision, even though his alleged violation made him presumptively ineligible under section 654.3. Mark unsuccessfully argued that informal supervision was appropriate because he had a stable family. Mark later admitted the allegations in the petition. The juvenile court imposed conditions of probation, including a requirement that he submit to warrantless searches of his “electronics including passwords” The court of appeal affirmed, but modified to strike the electronics search condition. View "In re Mark C." on Justia Law

Montgomery was 17 years old in 1963, when he killed a deputy in Louisiana. The jury returned a verdict of “guilty without capital punishment,” which carried an automatic sentence of life without parole. Nearly 50 years later, the Supreme Court decided, in Miller v. Alabama, that mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. The trial court denied his motion for relief. His application for a supervisory writ was denied by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which had previously held that Miller does not have retroactive effect in state collateral review. The Supreme Court reversed. Courts must give retroactive effect to new watershed procedural rules and to substantive rules of constitutional law. Substantive constitutional rules include “rules forbidding criminal punishment of certain primary conduct” and “rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense.” Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law, which is retroactive because it necessarily carries a significant risk that a defendant faces a punishment that the law cannot impose. A state may remedy a Miller violation by extending parole eligibility to juvenile offenders. This would neither impose an onerous burden nor disturb the finality of state convictions and would afford someone like Montgomery, who may have evolved from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community, the opportunity to demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition—that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change. View "Montgomery v. Louisiana" on Justia Law

In 2002, Thurston was convicted of felony driving in disregard for safety of persons or property while fleeing from a police officer, with three prior strike convictions for robberies in 1990 and 1984, and two prison priors for the 1990 robbery and a 1999 violation of Vehicle Code section 2800. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the 2002 conviction plus two consecutive one-year terms for the prison priors. He appealed denial of his request for resentencing under the Three Strikes Reform Act. The appeal court affirmed the denial, rejecting his arguments that the trial court erred in finding he was not eligible for resentencing due to a 1975 juvenile adjudication of rape because that adjudication was not pleaded and proved in the third strike case; a prior juvenile conviction is not a “prior conviction” for purposes of determining eligibility for resentencing; the record of the juvenile adjudication was not properly before the court; the court’s statement that it would not resentence Thurston even if he was eligible for resentencing should be disregarded; and the evidence did not support the court’s statement that, if he was eligible, it would find that resentencing would pose an unreasonable risk to public safety. View "People v. Thurston" on Justia Law

Defendant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) because she participated in the murder of a 13-year-old when she was 16-years-old. Based on the intervening decision in Miller v. Alabama, and with the agreement of the prosecution, the trial court vacated the LWOP sentence and conducted a new sentencing hearing in 2015. The trial court ruled inadmissible defendant's proffered evidence of her rehabilitative conduct in prison and again sentenced defendant to LWOP. The court concluded that the trial court erred in excluding defendant's evidence of rehabilitation in prison where the state Supreme Court in People v. Gutierrez held that, under Miller, “a sentencing court must consider any evidence or other information in the record bearing on ‘the possibility of rehabilitation’” before imposing an LWOP sentence on a juvenile who kills. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for resentencing. View "People v. Lozano" on Justia Law

A grand jury returned an indictment against Defendant on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and active participation in a criminal street gang. The grand jury found reasonable cause to believe that Defendant came within the provisions of Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code 707(d)(4). Defendant initially pleaded not guilty but later demurred to the indictment, arguing that section 707(d)(4) requires a determination that a juvenile qualifies for prosecution in adult court, and because he was a juvenile at the time of the alleged offenses, the grand jury had no legal authority to inquire into the charged offenses. The trial court agreed with Defendant, allowed him to withdraw his plea, and sustained his demurrer. The court of appeal reversed. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that section 707(d) allows prosecutors the option of filing charges against certain juveniles accused of specified offenses in criminal court by grand jury indictment. View "People v. Arroyo" on Justia Law