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| "Arkansas' Voice on the Internet" | Previous Features / Investigations |
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Huckabee signs measure to put harsher sentences on youths guilty of murder ELIZABETH CALDWELL ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE A little more than a year after five people died in a schoolyard shooting near Jonesboro, the state has a law intended to be tougher on children who kill. Gov. Mike Huckabee signed Senate Bill 505 into law Wednesday at the Capitol. He was surrounded by about a dozen people he credited with bringing the measure to fruition, including sponsors Sen. Tom Kennedy, D-Russellville, and Rep. Stuart Vess, D-North Little Rock. The law would allow children of any age to receive adult sentences for capital murder or first-degree murder. The sentences could be as much as life in prison. Until now, state law provided that only offenders 14 and older could be tried as adults for those two crimes. Those younger than 14 could be found delinquent on the charges and released at 21. The new law comes in response to the March 24, 1998, shooting deaths of a teacher and four students at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro. Ten other people were wounded. Andrew Golden, then 11, and Mitchell Johnson, then 13, were convicted of capital murder and first-degree battery in the shootings. They were committed under juvenile-court law to the Arkansas Youth Services Division. The new law says children 14 and older would be presumed competent to stand trial for those two offenses. Children under 13 would not be presumed competent to stand trial on the charges. For a 13-year-old, the burden would be on the defense to prove to a judge that he was incompetent to stand trial. Huckabee hailed the bill as a major accomplishment of his legislative agenda. He said it gives the state a way "to treat things when a child commits things that are anything but childish." He said he would send one of the pens he used in the signing to Westside Middle School as "a way of telling them their pain and their tragedy has not been forgotten." The bill does not sit well with some survivors of the school shooting. Suzann Wilson, mother of Britthney Varner, 11, who was killed, said state officials "didn't do crap." Wilson, who has become an advocate of responsible gun ownership, was invited to President Clinton's State of the Union Address in January. "I feel like legislators felt they had to do something and threw this thing together," Wilson said. "They didn't listen to the prosecutors who opposed this." The bill places more burdens on prosecutors to prove the competency of offenders under 13, she said. "That's not fair," she said. "All this does is put it back on the victims. If this was in effect last year, those survivors at Westside would have to relive the shooting over and over in court every time hearings came up. "As a mother who lost a child, I can't cause those survivors any more heartache and grief just so I know they can hold those boys for life," she added. "My little girl wouldn't want them to go through that nightmare again. They're not being sensitive to the victims." Regina Kaut, Britthney Varner's aunt and director of People Against Violence Everywhere, a group of about 80 Jonesboro residents who advocate ways to stop violence in schools and homes, was also displeased with the bill. She said if the bill had been law before the shooting, Andrew Golden may have avoided incarceration. Andrew's attorney, public defender Val Price, attempted to enter an insanity plea during Andrew's adjudication hearing in Jonesboro on Aug. 11. "I am pretty sure that if this had been in effect then, it's possible those boys could be out much sooner," Kaut said. "Under this code, Andrew would have gotten his incompetent plea. For any child to commit an act like this, they'd have to have a mental problem." Arkansas law lets the Youth Services Division hold delinquent youths until they turn 21. But youths are released after their 18th birthdays because the state lacks a facility to hold them. This article was published on Thursday, April 8, 1999 Copyright, permissions and privacy policy Copyright © 2008, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. |
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