SUSPECT IN RAPE CASE TO BE TRIED AS ADULT.Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer A 16-year-old Saugus High School student will be tried as an adult on charges that he raped a 15-year-old classmate in a photography darkroom on campus, officials said Friday. Formal charges are expected to be filed Monday in Newhall Municipal Court after Sylmar Juvenile Court juvenile court n. a special court or department of a trial court which deals with under-age defendants charged with crimes or who are neglected or out of the control of their parents. The normal age of these defendants is under 18, but juvenile court does not have jurisdiction in cases in which minors are charged as adults. The procedure in juvenile court is not always adversarial (although the minor is entitled to legal representation by a lawyer). Judge Morton Rochman ruled that the youth was unfit to be prosecuted as a minor, officials said. The youth's identity is being withheld by court officials until he is formally charged as an adult. The boy has been held at Sylmar Juvenile Hall without bail since he was arrested May 27, shortly after the girl reported the attack. At that time, authorities described the youth as a gang member on probation for a variety of offenses. Deputy Public Defender Larry Miller, who is representing the boy, couldn't be reached for comment. In juvenile court, the boy - who will turn 17 in September - had been charged with forcible rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment false imprisonment n. depriving someone of freedom of movement by holding a person in a confined space or by physical restraint including being locked in a car, driven about without opportunity to get out, being tied to chair, or locked in a closet. It may be the follow-up to a false arrest (holding someone in the office of a department store, for example), but more often it resembles a kidnapping with no belief or claim of a legal right to hold the and another sexual assault offense, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office. Deputy District Attorney Dmitry Gorin said that in deciding whether a youth should be tried as a minor or as an adult, the judge weighs the degree of criminal sophistication in the offense, the gravity and circumstances, whether the youth has a record of delinquency, the outcome of previous attempts at rehabilitation and the opportunity to rehabilitate the youth before he turns 18. ``The law says the burden of proof burden of proof n. the most important rule of evidence in the trial of civil (not criminal) cases. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff (the party bringing the lawsuit) to show by a "preponderance of evidence" or "weight of evidence" that all the facts necessary to win a judgment are probably true. is on (the accused) that he should be treated as a juvenile under each of those five criteria,'' Gorin said. If the boy is convicted in adult court, he faces a state prison term, and the offense would count as a ``strike'' on his criminal record. Had he been tried and convicted in juvenile court, he could have been confined until age 25 in the California Youth Authority. Also, juvenile court convictions are sealed, meaning the boy would have had no adult criminal record upon his release, prosecutors said. |
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