A Pulaski County Circuit judge Friday rejected a Jacksonville teenager's bid to be prosecuted as a juvenile over accusations he killed a North Little Rock man last summer.
Judge Leon Johnson ordered Robert Chandler Harris to stand trial as an adult on the capital murder and aggravated robbery charges, ruling that, at age 18, Harris was too old to qualify for almost all of the rehabilitative services offered by the juvenile justice system.
Harris' lawyer had sought to have the charges transferred to the juvenile court under the Extended Juvenile Justice Act, which would keep Harris under the jurisdiction of authorities until he turned 21 in July 2017. Under that designation, if the teenager was found not to have been rehabilitated by that time, he could be sentenced as an adult to prison or probation. There have been five teenagers charged with capital murder prosecuted under the juvenile act in the past 14 years, according to testimony Friday.
Victim Michael Cook, 28, was shot to death in July, less than a week before Harris' 18th birthday, near the intersection of Campbell Road and Whippoorwill Lane in North Little Rock. Harris surrendered to police the next day and first told them he had never seen Cook before, then said another man -- the eyewitness who told investigators Harris was the killer -- had fired the fatal shots.
Two other witnesses said they were with Cook and Harris shortly before the slaying and had seen Harris showing off a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol. Cook was killed with the same caliber gun, and 10 .40-caliber shell casings were found at the scene, according to police testimony.
The attorney, Willard Proctor, asked the judge to consider the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision that made life sentences for minors illegal. In that holding, Miller v. Alabama, the nation's highest court recognized that teenagers' brains are not fully developed, limiting their appreciation of the consequences of their actions and causing them to act more impulsively than adults, he told the judge.
Proctor also questioned whether the judge had authority to keep the case in his court. He cited a provision of Arkansas Code 9-27-318, the provision that governs transferring criminal charges from adult court to juvenile court. The statute requires transfer requests to be decided within a month if the defendant applying is jailed, Proctor said.
At most, the court has three months to act on the request, if the defendant is not locked up, he said, telling the judge he only recently noticed the provision while researching the law.
Proctor said his understanding of the provision was that if the judge had not held the transfer hearing in the required time frame, he lost jurisdiction over the case and it was automatically transferred to the juvenile system.
Deputy prosecutor John Hout disputed Proctor's interpretation of the provision. He said the hearing, which had been set for December, was only moved to Friday because Proctor had a scheduling conflict with that first date.
In determining whether Harris should face prosecution as an adult, Hout said, the judge should consider the circumstances that led to the teen being expelled from school last year after an arrest at Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood, where police said he fought another teenager, then threatened to get a gun and come back and shoot up the crowd that was watching the altercation. Charges from that arrest are pending in juvenile court.
Testifying on the teen's behalf in hopes of persuading the judge to send the case to juvenile court were his parents, Robert and Emily Harris. They said their son, one of five children, was a good boy, obedient and compassionate, who is studying to get his high school diploma while he waits for his criminal charges to be resolved.
Metro on 01/10/2015