When Juveniles Murder

Is Milwaukee County Children's Court the place for Ronald Adams' murderer?

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

After a hard life, Ronald Adams died brutally.

He was 57, a Vietnam veteran, crack addict, ex-con and, it is alleged, solicitor of young male prostitutes. A year ago, police found his near-naked body beaten bloody. His long underwear was around his ankles, and the blue-handled claw hammer and the scissors that had punctured his skull and neck dozens of times were soaking in a sink in his N. 60th St. apartment.

That is an exceptionally brutal murder.

...A rare judicial decision has put the accused killer's first-degree homicide charge into Milwaukee County Children's Court, where he can be punished only up to age 25.

"It's almost unheard of," said Assistant District Attorney Joy Hammond, who argued unsuccessfully to keep the case in adult court, where a mandatory life sentence would have been the penalty.

The boy charged with Adams' slaying is 16 now, and his case is due back in court this afternoon before Children's Court Judge Mary Triggiano. Triggiano ruled without explanation Nov. 9 that the case should be tried in Children's Court, and said Friday she was preparing a written ruling that would include her findings.

The district attorney's office is awaiting that decision to decide whether to appeal it before the case goes to trial. The brutality of the slaying and the accused killer's conduct since being arrested - including two felony charges for attacks upon an Ethan Allen School guard and a fellow inmate, as well as smearing surveillance cameras with excretions - are among the arguments for trying him as an adult.

"Actually, I think there's a lot the (juvenile) system could offer him," Glen Link, a supervisor at Ethan Allen, testified in a Children's Court hearing over whether to try the teenager as a child. "But based on the history of his behavior, it's not going to be of any use to him if he's going to be in security all the time."

This boy is a serious threat.

It's absolutely unbelievable that he would be tried as a juvenile.

Homicide cases involving under-18 defendants do sometimes end up being handled in children's courts, but it is rare. Hammond, who has prosecuted violent cases in Milwaukee Children's Court for five years, recalled that she has seen it once, in the case of an accomplice in a drive-by shooting.

On Wednesday in Portage, a 16-year-old girl charged with three others in her mother's strangulation had her case moved into Columbia County Children's Court.

Adams' slaying in his cluttered Milwaukee apartment does have some similarities to the Portage girl's case. Defense attorneys in each instance claim their teenage clients are victims of their surroundings, and that the juvenile justice system is better equipped to salvage a young mind than the adult system is.

Victims of their surroundings?

Are we to assume that putting these murderers in "nice" surroundings will transform them into gentle, little lambs?

That's ridiculous. While I'm sure their surroundings have had an impact on their development, it's completely unrealistic to believe that they can change, undergo a personality transplant, with a simple change of scenery.

Court records outline the Milwaukee teen's troubled past. His IQ has been estimated at 83, and his childhood involved beatings and sexual abuse while his parents struggled with drug and alcohol addictions. The boy experimented with an array of drugs, has been treated in the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex and had his first experience trading sex with an older man for drugs at age 14, the records say.

His lawyers say his bleak upbringing led to the rage that exploded in Adams' apartment when the boy was forced to defend himself.

"The victim in this crime was trying to rape him, and he fought back," defense attorney Robin Dorman said. "Yes, it was a brutal attack, but my God, what's more serious than rape?"

Before Triggiano's decision to handle the case in Children's Court, Dorman and co-counsel Debra Flynn-Parrino contended the juvenile justice system afforded more opportunities for making the boy into a productive citizen.

There doesn't seem to be any question that the boy has had a horrible upbringing. And he was fighting off an attacker.

However, the boy didn't just defend himself. He murdered Adams in such a violent and brutal manner that it's difficult to believe that any system could turn him into a productive citizen.

Education and psychological programs for juveniles are more oriented toward intervention and the treatment of developing minds, they contended.

"We don't want to throw this 15-year-old boy away for the rest of his life," Dorman said, "or warehouse him for the rest of his life, when there's a good chance he'll respond to treatment."

First, he's not 15.

He's nearly 17, and the murder wasn't his only crime.

What makes authorities believe that "there's a good chance he'll respond to treatment"?

What indications are there?

The boy will turn 17 on the last day of this year. His court file contains a copy of an intercepted letter to his also-jailed father in January that illustrates the difficulty of figuring out whether he can be redeemed.

In the letter, the boy gloated about a number of criminal acts - from his life of drug dealing on the outside to attacking another inmate in jail, and even stealing the pencil he used to write the letter. He bragged he would "work some miracles" in a psychological evaluation that would factor into whether his case would stay in Children's Court.

"I've done these things a billion times," the boy wrote to his father, "so Ima (sic) make the right outcome come out of it."

Like father, like son.

This doesn't sound like a young man who would respond to "treatment."

He sounds manipulative and dangerous.

Bottom line: The boy must pay for his crimes. He made choices, the wrong ones.

It's outrageous for him to be sent to Children's Court.

He hasn't given any indication that he wants to respond to "treatment."