This brief to the Connecticut Supreme Court dealt with a Connecticut statute that allows a prosecutor to choose the forum in which youthful offenders are tried. Amici argued that this statute deprived youthful offenders of their right to due process by placing sole discretion to waive in the hands of the prosecutor.
Challenged the court’s finding that an autistic juvenile was competent to stand trial and that there was sufficient grounds to adjudicate the juvenile delinquent based on resisting arrest and related charges.
Juvenile Law Center and two private attorneys filed a brief on behalf of an eleven-year-old charged with the murder of his stepmother. The brief argued that the trial court’s interpretation of the transfer statute requiring the juvenile’s confession at the pre-adjudicatory decertification hearing in order to demonstrate his ability to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system was in violation of his right against self-incrimination and rights to due process and fundamental fairness under both the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions.
Supporting a juvenile defendant in Illinois who challenged the representation he received in court, when his defense lawyer sacrificed his defense believing that it was in the child’s "best interests."
Juvenile Law Center challenged the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law (Act 53) that allows courts to order involuntary civil commitments for minors found to be drug dependent.