Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 37
Destiny: Chance, Choice, or Both?
Coos Bay, Oregon, Late Summer 1996 continued…
My work schedule eased up only in the sense that I got better at it, more efficient. The workload remained consistently intense. Even so, I tried very hard to never gloss over a case or be too unreasonable in making my charging decisions. If I had a righteous case with admissible evidence, I was going for every charge I could prove…in most cases. But I also paid attention to the facts that favored the defendants, particularly how those facts would hit with a jury. That was why incomplete police reports pissed me off so much – the missing facts could, and too often did, destroy the case with the jury and make me look like an asshole, too. On some really rare occasions, if the police report(s) included everything I needed to know, I might decide to charge a lessor offense, or none at all, “in the interests of Justice.”
As I was told coming into the job, being a prosecutor is really supposed to be the first line of accomplishing “Justice” in our system because the prosecutor is the only type of attorney who is legally and ethically obligated “to do Justice.” To “Do the Right Thing” in each case, every time. I took that very seriously, and I tried hard to meet that goal. It didn’t take very long for me to get good at it. My motivation didn’t come from religion, regrets about my past, or any other influence, it was just my choice to be an honest, ethical person in doing my job. I saw that clearly, and I liked it. As I would come to find out, my efforts got noticed, too.
As one example, a felony assault case came to me that had simple facts: a middle-aged, average-sized father broke a 2” x 8” board over his 14-year-old son’s ass when hitting him the second time while disciplining the boy for lying to him. The two strikes left distinct red marks on the kid’s buttocks with slight bruising around side portions of where the board impacted. In theory, this was a Measure 11 Assault 2 case, a weapon causing physical injury, with a mandatory minimum sentence of about six years in prison. The twist was that the kid was 6’1” and 185 lbs., athletic and strong. He was no child. And he admitted to the police that he had deliberately lied to his father and knew he would be punished if caught.
What was the lie, you ask? Irrelevant as to what the provocation was. It did not matter legally, not to the Grand Jury for sure – if I played it that way. (I seem to recall he was sneaking out with his girlfriend - ha!). What mattered was whether the amount of force exceeded what a jury would find was “reasonable” to “believe(s) it necessary to maintain discipline or to promote the welfare of the minor or incompetent person.” So basically, you could hit your kid as long as it wasn’t excessive, or unreasonable (i.e., the law essential was: don’t leave a mark).
The case was a tough call amongst all involved in the Office “L” chat about it. The division really fell upon age – the older folks in the D.A.’s Office found it perfectly understandable – a bit stern, but “reasonable” enough under the circumstances of disciplining this really big kid. “It had to be an old, rotted board to break like that,” was Gus Morton’s take. Steve and Peter agreed.
Ted, on the other hand, saw it as straight-up child abuse. “You gotta hit pretty damn hard to leave marks like that, AND break the freaking board, too!” was Ted’s take. We had pictures of the very well-defined red marks on the kid’s butt.
Given my particular family history and the extreme, almost deadly, beating that my mother took at age 16 from her father, I had a strong opinion about it, too. I was going to charge the guy with Assault 2. The Office chatter had an impact on me, and since I also vowed to do Justice, I decided to be as fair as possible about it and do what no prosecutor ever does. I invited the potential defendant to the Grand Jury proceedings to testify in his own defense. This NEVER happens, but perhaps it should…at least, when warranted.
After I laid out the prosecution’s case, I had the father/suspect come in to testify under oath. He was an average country Joe, a hard-working blue-collar guy all the way. He held nothing back and described the entire encounter, including why he disciplined his son. He admitted he could have done something else, but he felt his son had it coming after a few weeks of bad behavior.
The Grand Jury listened closely.
After the father’s testimony, I brought in the victim, his son. This was the biggest deciding factor to me – how he felt about it, and if he felt threatened being in that home. His son presented as calm, cool, and collected. He was another average Joe kind of guy, just a bit big for his age. It was clear to me that he was just being honest and had not been prepped to testify. There was no attorney representing either of them (the father had been Mirandized and could have had one), just the two of them telling their stories, individually. The son said he deserved it for his lying and other mischief, that he wasn’t beaten regularly or ever hit like that before, and that it wasn’t that bad. He wasn’t afraid of his dad but was sorry for lying to him. The kid seemed 100% sincere.
Again, the Grand Jury listened closely.
After a short deliberation, the Grand Jury rejected the Bill of Indictment. It was reasonable enough for them under the circumstances to NOT ruin the father’s life or destroy his family by imprisoning him. While I had my reservations about it, I respected their decision. More importantly, I was grateful that Justice was done – it was a decision of his peers to not charge him with a crime – and I didn’t have to put the family, myself, or the Court through the time, stress and expense of a full jury trial.
It was the right thing to do.