State Sen. Ken Gordon is planning legislation that would prevent district attorneys from bringing adult criminal charges against youths for crimes they committed at age 13 or younger, calling a recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision allowing the practice “terrifying.”
The appeals court recently upheld the 1999 adult criminal conviction of a 13-year-old Mesa County burglar. In that case, the district attorney charged the teen, Deitrich Bostelman, as an adult after he turned 14, leading to a 12-year prison sentence.
Though a controversial state statute allows prosecutors to unilaterally bring adult charges against youths “fourteen years of age or older” for serious crimes, it does not specify that they must be 14 or older at the time of the crime.
Gordon and other lawmakers who were provided copies by The Denver Post of the December appeals decision said they believed lawmakers never intended to allow prosecutors to hold teens responsible for crimes committed prior to age 14.
Gordon, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, said the code should be amended to prevent prosecutors from sending kids to prison for crimes committed at even earlier, possibly elementary-school, ages.
“We should write the statute in a clear manner,” Gordon said Wednesday, adding that he would prepare an amendment or bill to address the issue. “It’s very unusual to be convicted at 14, and we shouldn’t let the edges blur to take in even younger kids.”
Statehouse hearing next week
Lawmakers are focusing intently on how adult courts are handling youths and whether their sentences are too extreme. A March 9 hearing has been set in the statehouse to discuss a bill co-sponsored by Gordon and Rep. Lynn Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, seeking to scale back life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, allowing them a shot at release after 40 years. Gordon has said he will introduce a Senate-side amendment proposing an even earlier shot at parole.
Since 1998, prosecutors have filed adult charges against juveniles in 1,244 cases, according to a Post analysis of state court data. That number has surprised Gordon and other legislators. Though 14-year-olds make up a fraction of those cases, in recent years, they have increased – from two in 2002 to seven in 2004.
Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said he is not opposed to clarifying the state’s law to satisfy lawmakers’ intent. But he described the use of his discretionary power in the Bostelman case as fair because the teen was close to 14 years old and “dangerous.”
Bostelman also had six cases pending against him. “We’d been dealing with him for a long time, and he was a troubled kid.”
The teen was charged with burglary after homeowners let him in believing that he was “a friendly neighborhood kid,” according to briefs filed by the prosecution.
He pleaded guilty to multiple offenses and received a suspended 12-year prison sentence, conditioned on completing a sentence within the Youthful Offender System, a middle-ground incarceration program within the Department of Corrections. He failed to meet minimum requirements at YOS, triggering the prison sentence.
The Department of Corrections estimates he will be eligible for parole in December 2007.
Bostelman’s attorney, Jonathan Reppucci, has argued unsuccessfully that the adult charge was improper and that state law limits prosecutors to filing charges against kids who were 14 or older at the time of the crime. The appeals court disagreed in December, saying the statute is unclear but must be viewed in the light of legislators’ intent in recent years to “promote public safety.”
Learned from his mistakes
Another justice dissented, saying that lawmakers also wanted the “best interests of the juvenile” considered.
Reppucci has taken the case to the state Supreme Court, saying the appeals-court decision “audaciously alters the structure of the juvenile-justice system and sounds the death knell for the jurisdictional framework that has always governed” children.
In a phone interview from Buena Vista prison, Bostelman, now 21, said he has learned from his mistakes and has served enough time. “It’s more important to me now to live my life right and just not be another statistic stuck in prison,” he said. “If they can do that to me, what’s stopping prosecutors from doing that to a 10-year-old?”
Several current and former lawmakers, including some who voted on laws expanding prosecutorial discretion during the 1990s, said they never wanted to expose teens to adult prosecutions for crimes they committed younger than age 14 and believe the law should be quickly fixed.
“We were nervous about going as low as 14,” said Ed Perlmutter, a former Democratic state senator, of laws governing juveniles he helped approve in the mid-1990s.
“That’s the way I remember the way we intended it – 14 at the crime,” said Dottie Wham, a former Denver Republican lawmaker.
Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, said legislators can’t tolerate an ambiguous statute to allow improper prosecutions. “If it’s not clear,” she said, “it’s something this legislative body must address.”
Staff writer Miles Moffeit can be reached at 303-820-1415 or mmoffeit@denverpost.com.
