CHILD SLAYING SUSPECTS SEE THEIR CASE DISMISSED.

Byline: Pam Belluck The New York Times

In an extraordinary turn of events in an equally extraordinary murder case, prosecutors dropped charges Friday against two boys, ages 7 and 8, who had been accused of killing an 11-year-old girl by hitting her with rocks and suffocating her with her panties so they could steal her bicycle.

The case was dismissed after a laboratory analysis found semen on the girl's panties. Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine said medical experts told prosecutors that ``the possibility of semen coming from boys this age is at best remote.''

The case against the boys brought national attention because they were believed to have been the youngest children charged with murder as younger and younger children are being charged with serious crimes.

Prosecutors and police said Friday that they now are confronted with reconciling the physical evidence of the semen with the statements the boys made. Police refused to rule out the possibility that the boys still were involved; authorities said they have not done genetic testing to date and declined to say whether they plan to do any in the future.

Chicago police had said the boys confessed to the July 27 killing of Ryan Harris, a fifth-grade honor student from a Chicago suburb who was spending the summer with a godmother in the impoverished Englewood neighborhood, where the boys lived. They said the boys hit Ryan with a rock, causing her to fall off her bicycle and knocking her unconscious. Then, police said, the younger boy told them he put leaves in Ryan's nostrils and stuffed her panties in her mouth.

Faced with such apparently depraved actions by children so young, commentators took to the airwaves and opinion pages to bemoan the circumstances that could have led children to commit such a crime.

But Friday's dismissal is likely to raise a whole new debate - about the ability of juvenile systems in Chicago and elsewhere to be fair and accurate in their investigation of society's youngest accused criminals.

From the outset, the Ryan Harris case raised fundamental questions about the way to handle young children charged with crimes. Some experts questioned whether children so young could waive their right to a lawyer or their right to remain silent. The boys' defense lawyers had complained about the way their clients were interrogated, saying that because their parents were not allowed in the room and no juvenile advocate was present, police could have coerced or teased the statements out of the boys.

On Friday, defense lawyers for the boys already were calling for significant changes in juvenile proceedings in Chicago, the home of the nation's first juvenile court. Their demands included a requirement that police officers videotape confessions from children; a rule stating that children under 13 must have a parent present during the interview; and a policy that, as they do with adults, police could not file felony charges against children until prosecutors have reviewed the evidence.

``I think there was a rush to judgment,'' said Elizabeth Tarzia, a public defender for the 7-year-old. ``There were policies and procedures that were not in place in Juvenile Court that led to this happening.''

Friday's dismissal also provoked an explosion of reactions from the boys' families and neighbors.

``An apology is in order from everyone who convicted my child of something that it should have obvious he had nothing to do with,'' said the 8-year-old's father. ``I tried to get them to help find out who this monster was, and instead the authorities became the monster.''

Prosecutors and police defended their handling of the investigation and their decision to bring charges against the boys.

``We were all in new territory here with young people of these tender years,'' Devine said. ``To say, in retrospect, you could have done this differently, you could have done that differently, obviously we can all do that.

``This is a very tragically unique case. We took the action we thought was appropriate to take.''

Devine said the boys were arrested based on their confessions, a practice he said is very common. Tom Cronin, the commander of the Chicago Police Department's crime laboratory, said initial swab tests of the victim's underpants had turned up no traces of semen. He said the panties were then sent to the Illinois State Police crime laboratory for hair and fiber analysis, and also to be retested for semen. Those tests took several weeks and were discovered to be positive for semen late Thursday afternoon.

Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard said the police investigation was conducted properly, and he refused to rule out the possibility that the boys could be rearrested. He said police likely will interview the boys again, seeking to resolve the contradictions between the semen evidence and their statements, which he said revealed knowledge of details of the case that could only be known be someone who was ``intimately involved'' in the crime.

``There has been no - I repeat, no - misconduct on the part of any member of the Chicago Police Department,'' Hillard said.

Devine said prosecutors dropped the charges ``in the interest of justice,'' but added that investigators now face a gnawing puzzle. ``We have not resolved many of the questions raised by the conflict or inconsistencies between the physical evidence and the statements of the boys,'' he said.

Devine also said that, with respect to the broader procedural issues in the case, his office already had been considering some of the changes suggested by defense lawyers, including the videotaped confessions and the policy of prosecutors reviewing felony cases before charges are filed.

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PHOTO The mother of the 7-year-old Chicago boy whose murder charge was dropped speaks at a news conference Friday.

Stephen J. Carrera/Associated Press