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December 18, 2006

Court expands on charges facing youths tried as adults

PROVIDENCE -- The state Supreme Court today reinstated the indictment of a Scituate man who, as a teenager, was accused of breaking into the Ocean Tides school for troubled youth and locking a counselor in a walk-in freezer.

The case marked the first time the state’s high court has weighed in on whether the attorney general can charge a youth with additional offenses after Family Court waives jurisdiction, thereby allowing the youth to stand trial as an adult.

Superior Court Judge Edward C. Clifton had dismissed the indictment, saying the answer to that question was no. But the Supreme Court said the answer is yes – as long as the additional charges are based on the same set of facts.

“We hold that once a Family Court justice determines that a child should be waived from the jurisdiction of the Family Court, there is no limitation to the charges that may be lodged against the child in the adult court, as long as those charges spring from the nucleus of operative facts upon which the Family Court waiver of jurisdiction is based,” Justice Francis X. Flaherty wrote.

-- Journal staff writer Edward Fitzpatrick

Posted by Steve Peoples  at 6:47 PM | Permalink

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