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Gov. Roy Cooper presides over the monthly Council of State meeting Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2022 at the NCDOT building in Raleigh.
RALEIGH
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper took out his veto stamp to oppose a bill that would require more teenagers facing criminal charges to be tried initially as adults.
House Bill 834 requires 16- and 17-year-olds who commit certain felonies to be tried first as adults in the state’s superior courts.
Currently, these teenagers are tried in the state’s juvenile court after a petition is filed. They are transferred over to the state’s superior courts after probable cause is found or they are indicted. The bill includes a mechanism for these cases to be transferred back to juvenile court, The News & Observer previously reported.
In his statement Friday evening, the Democratic governor wrote that “most violent crimes, even when committed by teenagers, should be handled in adult court. However, there are cases where sentences would be more effective and appropriate to the severity of the crime for teenagers if they were handled in juvenile court, making communities safer. This bill makes this important option highly unlikely and begins to erode our bipartisan ‘Raise the Age’ law we agreed to four years ago.”
“While a number of Senators worked to make this legislation better than the original bill, I remain concerned that this new law would keep some children from getting treatment they need while making communities less safe. Instead, the legislature should invest significantly more in our juvenile justice system to ensure resources are available to help prevent crimes and appropriately deal with children who break the law,” he wrote.
Cooper’s veto is unlikely to hold. The General Assembly has a Republican supermajority, allowing it to override Cooper’s stamp if three-fifths of the members of both legislative chambers vote together.
In the House, all GOP lawmakers voted in support of the latest version of the bill except for Rep. John Faircloth of Guilford County. All but seven Democrats opposed the bill.
Among those who voted in the Senate, all Republicans and all but four Democrats backed the bill. Those opposing it were Democratic Sens. Mary Wills Bode, Lisa Grafstein, Natalie Murdock and Gladys Robinson.
Raise the Age and juvenile court
Raise the Age was passed into law in 2017 and implemented in 2019. It pulled 16- and 17-year-olds accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies in North Carolina from the adult system into the juvenile justice system.
During debates in committees and on the House floor before the vote, multiple Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns with the bill rolling back these juvenile protections.
Those in favor have said the bill is a procedural change allowing the juvenile justice system to function more smoothly. A main proponent of the bill, Robeson County Republican Sen. Danny Britt, said in mid-May during a Senate floor vote that the bill is “trying to deal with these violent A-E felonies, trying to deal with these individuals that are mostly prosecuted in superior court but through a lengthy transfer process, a very convoluted transfer process. What we’re not doing is rolling back Raise the Age.”
With Raise the Age, “we had the goal of rehabilitating many of the youth who had committed crimes,” said Rep. Amos Quick, a Greensboro Democrat, during a House debate.
“I don’t think anyone in here is in favor of crime. I certainly am not in favor of crime, but I am in favor of juveniles. Juveniles who commit offenses need rehabilitation, not to have the book thrown at them,” he said. This legislation “is the wrong move to make,” he said.
The ACLU of North Carolina sent a letter to Cooper urging him to veto the bill.
“Prosecuting children as adults causes significant harm to young people and does nothing to address the underlying causes of youth crime,” says the letter.
“The juvenile justice system requires far more accountability, counseling, education, and family involvement than the adult system and it works better,” it says. “Recidivism is significantly higher when children go through the adult system rather than receive the services and punishment from the juvenile system.”
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