New North Carolina law gives police increased power to publicize juvenile crime suspects

By Kimberly King

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    ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (WLOS) — A new state law gives police more latitude when it comes to publicizing a juvenile’s photo in order to find them and make an arrest in violent crimes like murder.

The change comes as cities report increasing teenage crime. The bipartisan supported bill, House Bill 186, was signed into law days ago.

“When you have a murderer on the loose, or a rapist on the loose, or some heinous criminal, the victims of the first crime need to know that everything’s being done to catch them,” said Eddie Caldwell, general counsel for the North Carolina’s Sheriff’s Association.

The new law allows a judge, or in some cases police, permission to release a picture or mug of a teen suspect to get them in custody. This has never been allowed under juvenile laws in North Carolina.

“When these folks commit these heinous crimes they give up some of these protections we would provide to other juveniles,” Caldwell said.

“What it does is make it easier for law enforcement to plaster somebody’s picture up on the media,” said Vicki Jayne, a longtime capital defender for the state of North Carolina. She said she’s aware the law will also help fast track 13-15 year-olds charged with murder to adult court.

Under the new law, a prosecutor could take a case before a grand jury and if the jury indicted the teen for a murder the case would automatically get tried in adult court. Prior to the law, the decision was in the hands of the prosecutor.

“It is a chipping away for a law that took us far too long to get on the books,” said Jayne. In 2019, North Carolina was the last state to move the juvenile age up to 18.

“Society as a whole recognizes young people are different than adults, they’re minds aren’t as developed,” said Steve Lindsay, a longtime defense attorney in Asheville.

But therein lies the controversy.

“There is to some degree a need for certain crimes committed by youth to be dealt with in a particular way, possibly as adults,” said Michael Hall, who runs the Asheville nonprofit Generation 2 Generation. “However, what’s the greater need, arrest them or treat whatever has led them to commit such crimes.”

Hall spent 14 years in prison. His crimes, he admits. “Attempted murder and armed robbery.”

He said he feels passing laws to crack down on teen crime does nothing about the root causes of what’s leading juveniles to commit murder.

“We arrest them, convict them, but don’t treat. With this demographic of youth, what gets focused on is what did they do, not what happened that led them to what they did,” he said.

Hall said he needed to go to prison after struggling as a teen. He lost his mother and developed deep anger with no love and no parent around. “I needed to slow down, think, evaluate my life. Everywhere I looked there was not an outlet for someone to say to me, slow down.”

Jayne also predicts another issue will come as a result of more teens ending up in adult court.

“What it will do, I suspect, is that it will clog up our court systems even further,” said Jayne. “Now you’re going to have a whole slew of 13-18-year-olds because it’s really, really, easy to go to a grand jury and get an indictment.”

Despite critics’ apprehension to what the law could mean, North Carolina is moving forward with the legal changes that will go into effect Dec. 1, 2023.

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