Although it’s no longer grabbing national headlines, the prosecution of a nine-year-old Arizona boy for shooting his father and a housemate to death last November is winding its way towards trial, much like a snake intent upon its prey.
The prosecution is now moving forward with efforts to have one of the first-degree murder charges dropped. Although that might seem like a good thing, as I noted in an earlier diary, it’s actually just a ploy to enable them to re-file the charge at a later date and try the child as an adult. There is no statute of limitations on murder for adults
The DA’s office first attempted this blatent move to ensure vengeance last December, but Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Roca said he did not want to rule on such a motion until after learning results of evaluations of the boy’s sanity. That didn’t stop the DA from pursuing his strategy to make sure the child pays for his crimes – eventually. The prosecution team filed a special action with the district court of appeals to force the judge to consider their petition. Friday the three-judge panel court ruled that there was no legal reason for Judge Roca to refuse to hear the prosecution’s arguments, although they did say that
It may be the better course of action in many circumstances to delay the consideration of substantive matters until the issue of competency is resolved,
In an interesting side note, the county revealed that one of the two law enforcement officers who interviewed the boy and eventually extracted a confession actually lived across the street from him, and knew him personally. At the time of the interview, she had been a detective for just one day.
Based on this and other circumstances, the defense is seeking to have the videotaped interview, which has been widely seen on television, and a resulting search warrant, thrown out as evidence that could be used during trial.
The third-grader, who celebrated his ninth birthday on December 29th, has been in a juvenile detention facility since his arrest on November 5th, although he was allowed two 48-hour furloughs to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with his mother. He began undergoing extensive psychological testing on December 17th. His defense attorney has asked that a therapist be assigned to the boy, whom he described as having a "hard time," and even offered to pay the costs of the therapist out of his own pocket.
Those of you with kids this age, try to imagine what it would be like for one of them to be locked up - removed from family, friends, and all things familiar. There are no other kids their age around. The "big boys" are either mean to them or ignore them completely. Armed guards watch their every move, and they are hand-cuffed and shackled everytime they are let out to attend a court proceeding.
As to the motive for his alleged actions, his grandmother has told the media that his father was very hard on the child. The boy is said to have told Child Protective Services workers that he had suffered hundreds of spankings, and had been keeping track, and when the total reached 1000, he had made up hs mind there would be no more. He told interviewers he had been spanked several times on the day of the shootings.
Experts are scheduled to testify on Feb 6th as to the boy’s mental status and competence to stand trial. If he is deemed incompetent, meaning he lacks the mental capacity to understand the court proceedings and properly defend himself, he may never face "punishment" for his alleged crimes - although years of therapy and possible in-patient treatment at a medical facility will almost certainly be in his future. The prosecution is pressing to have the ability to charge him again at a later date, apparently to make sure that he doesn't get off with mere "rehabilitation."