Juveniles have the same right to reduced sentences as adults under Proposition 47, a three-judge state court has ruled.
The ruling came in the case of a 15-year-old identified only as Alejandro who was given a felony sentence of three years in juvenile custody for trying to steal a bag of chips and three bottles of vodka, reported the Los Angeles Times.
Proposition 47 reduced shoplifting felonies to misdemeanors if the value of items stolen were less than $950. In Alejandro’s case, this would have meant a maximum sentence of eight months.
“Under what rationale do we select out a 15-year-old for a more condemnatory consequence than a 32-year-old?” asked Robert Fellmeth, law professor at the University of San Diego and Children’s Advocacy Institute.
Alejandro’s public defender petitioned for the change to a judge in the Superior Court. The judge approved the change and had the felony stricken from his record, and had his DNA sample removed from the state’s database.
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis appealed and lost to a 3-0 vote by the state’s appeals court. The viewpoint of Dunmanis means juveniles could serve more time in custody than adults with the same crime,” according to arguments by the ACLU.
“We’ve always believed it applied to juveniles,” saidLos Angeles prosecutor Kerry White, who supervises the county’s juvenile division. Prosecutors did not wait until the San Diego case was decided,” according to White.
Alejandro is back in high school and has not been rearrested, according to Maryann D’Addezio Kotler, the assistant supervising attorney for public defenders in San Diego juvenile delinquency branch.
