This letter has been sent to our State Representatives by me and many Prosecutors across the state. I am not the original author of the letter and have edited it slightly for this publication, but it represents my opinion on this issue.

I join the rest of Washington’s Prosecuting Attorneys in strong opposition to the resurrection of last year’s bill, HB 1289, which would eliminate automatic transfer of serious violent cases involving 16 and 17-year old defendants to the Superior Court.

Automatic transfer has been part of Washington law since 1994. It focuses upon juvenile offenders over the age of 16, who commit violent crimes, most often with firearms or other weapons. It focuses upon older offenders who commit serious violent or repeat violent offenses.

Of the roughly thirty thousand juvenile offense filings each year in Washington State, only around 150 are automatically transferred from the Juvenile Court to Superior Court. King County annually sees about 50 such cases, almost all of which are murder, sexual assaults or aggravated assaults and robberies with firearms and other deadly weapons.

The most important dynamic to understand is that, absent transfer, the juvenile court’s jurisdiction over these very serious cases absolutely evaporates upon the offender’s 21st birthday. They walk free despite serving only a couple years for serious violent crimes. This is simply not justice in these cases.

A transferred juvenile offender will be kept at a state JRA facility until 18 years and optionally until 21 years of age – before transfer to an adult facility. We do not comingle adults and auto-transferred youth.

Safeguards exist in that if a transferred juvenile offender is convicted in Superior Court of a lesser non-auto-adult offense, the offender is returned to Juvenile Court for sentencing. The transfer only sticks if you are older and convicted by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of a serious violent or repeat violent crime.

Further, two years ago, the Legislature created the option for the Prosecutor to agree to keep a case in Juvenile Court if justice is better served there.

Currently, juvenile crime rates are falling. Juvenile detention populations at state facilities are reducing. The current juvenile justice act is working.

Once again, my position is that the justice system that is in place is doing what we need it to do; sort out those juveniles who should be treated as adults from those who should be treated as children, while still protecting the public.