Steve Palmer: All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk. They don't teach you that in Law School. What does that mean? Well, it means they don't teach you that in Law School. So we are off the air or on the route, whatever it is. You get it. Um, but we've got a series here, uh, with Troy from Cap University Law School. Troy is a law student working with me upstairs in my criminal defense practice where we take on the nuts and bolts of criminal defense all the way up. I mean, really, from traffic cases all the way to complex federal cases. I just resolved one up in Toledo, uh, not that long ago. And, uh, a lot of appellate work, a lot of post conviction type work, Innocence Project type stuff, if you will. Um, but you know, over the, over the course of you working upstairs, we've kicked around lots of questions and, uh, as I say, each and every week, they don't teach you a lot of stuff in Law School. They teach you the basics and then you've got to go figure it out. So we are here to help unravel some of the real world conundrums and problems that emerge. And you asked me a question. You know, we've got an ongoing juvenile case. I'm going to resolve it today. I won't go into details about it here, maybe some other form, but, uh, and it's a public case, but, uh, you asked me a juvenile question and, you know, so juvenile law is sort of on my brain. Uh, so what's your. We were talking about, uh, what happens to juveniles in adult court, et cetera. But, uh, so tell us your question. What didn't they teach you in Law School about this?

Troy Henriksen: So they didn't teach me in Law School really, about anything juvenile. The juvenile world is like its own legal playground, I guess because I didn't know that we protect these people's names. We don't have them as guilty or I guess just that they are tried, not as adults. I didn't know. So it was like a whole different system, it seems like.

Steve Palmer: Yeah. Juvenile court is its unique entity. Now, what's interesting is the Constitution still applies in juvenile court. You don't check your rights at the door just because you entered juvenile court. You still have constitutional protections, but it is not the same. Um, there's different language, there's different vocabulary, there's different punishments. There's, uh. And one big difference is, typically speaking, there's no. At least in Ohio, there is no right to trial by jury in juvenile court. So it's always a trial by judge. But you still have the right of cross examination. You, uh, the government still has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, where you're presumed innocent at a trial, where they can't force you to testify against yourself. And again, you can. You have a right to confront and cross examine your accuser, subpoena witnesses on your own behalf. I mean, you have all the basics in juvenile court, but it's different. Um, now you mentioned something about, um, uh, the terminal. We'll get to that in a second. We'll get to the binders in a Sense. But you mentioned something about terminology, and I think that's important. So in juvenile, uh, in adult court, we sort of use ubiquitous terms like I was convicted of a crime. In juvenile court, it's almost always different vocabulary. Here in Ohio, you're not convicted of a crime, you are adjudicated a delinquent minor. Why does that matter? Because when you answer questions on say, like a job application, they will ask you, have you ever been convicted of a crime? And if you've been adjudicated a delinquent minor, the vocabulary matters, the terminology matters, definitions matter, folks. This is why it's so important that you can't. In our society, I'm not going to get political about it, but in our society we have sort of watered down concrete meanings and definitions of terms. You can't do that in the system. There has to be a common understanding of terminology, and this is one of them. So if you're adjudicated a delinquent minor, it means that you're adjudicated a delinquent minor. It does not mean you've been convicted of a felony. It's different. Um, and you know that the other sort of part of juvenile court that is important to understand is the overreaching principles of juvenile court are sort of framed this way. What is in the best interest of the child adult court, we talk about punishment, we talk about retribution, we talk about protecting society. And those terms, you know, sort of morphed over the years, and that's getting closer in juvenile court for sentencing considerations. But, you know, generally speaking, we are treating kids differently. Um, the worst case in juvenile court generally in Ohio is you are, you are permanently committed to DYS Department of Youth Services until you're 21 years of old. 21 years of age. Um, so DYS Department of Youth Services is the equivalent of prison. If you're an adult, then you also have detention. So you could go to a local detention. Um, that would be like a local jail as an adult. So it's got sort of these parallels that are similar but a little bit different, um, the idea of juvenile court, I think if you're really going to dig into it and sort of talk. I've done another episode on this years ago in Lawyer Talk where we had a juvenile expert. And what we have to understand is even going way back to common law in old France and England, uh, juveniles are different. Even back then we realized that our brains, particularly for young men, young boys, and look, I'll get to the girls, too. Don't never fear. Um, but typically for young boys, our brains develop a little bit later. There's a reason you're a military guy.

Troy Henriksen: Yes.

Steve Palmer: When did you enter?

Troy Henriksen: I entered when I was 17. I had my parents sign me over.

Steve Palmer: So you quick and. Yeah. All right. Well, there's a reason we send our 17, 18, 19 year olds over to fight the wars. Um, and it's because you don't perceive the risk as you do later on. So somewhere around 25 to 30 years old, physiologically, there's a part of our brain right here. I think it's called the prefrontal cortex develops, and that's designed to help us appreciate risk, fear, um, danger, impulse, um, control. And as kids, we don't have that. And I think there's probably a good reason for it. You know, when, you know, you have to go fight for food, fight for survival, do those things. Um, but it also means that juveniles do stupid stuff. So there's a reason that I jumped off the top of my tree house when I was 10 years old. I would never do that. I mean, it was a dumb. I mean, looking back, it's like, what the h*** was I thinking? And I didn't. You know, we thought it was cool. I was trying to be Spider man, and I was. I didn't. I didn't break my ankle, but I got. You know, I think my knee came up in my chin and I busted up my lip or something. But, you know, like, I would never do that now. Not even. I wouldn't even contemplate that now. Um, I used to be a construction worker when I was 18. I was banging nails. I was a framer. And I could walk on top of walls two stories up. I could. I could be on a roof. I mean, bothered me a little bit, but not really. And recently I tried to do something like that, and it scared the living daylights out of me. I was just like, I can't do this. I got to get off this ladder now. And the only thing that's changed is I'm older and wiser. And by that I mean, uh, my brain's developed. So we treat juveniles differently on purpose. Um, now why do I care about all this? Because your, your question was about bind overs.

Troy Henriksen: Yes. So juveniles originally started in the juvenile system and then I imagine there's some motion where we're bounding them over. We're going to try them as an adult even though they're not 18. Is that what Ohio is? 18? I'm guessing, yeah.

Steve Palmer: You become an adult at 18 and.

Troy Henriksen: Ohio, um, is that universal across the board you think, or is that probably.

Steve Palmer: Yeah, I mean I would think 18 years. Now there's be nuances of juvenile jurisdiction and juvenile rules and procedure in different states. So I'm going to mostly be Ohio, but I'm going to try to be generic too. Um, so in Ohio, generally speaking, if you're under 18 years old, you're charged first in juvenile court. So if you're 16 years old and you commit a juvenile defense or juvenile delinquency violation, you're going to, that case is going to start in juvenile court. There are cases, there are circumstances where you are then bound over, you're moved over and you're treated like an adult. And this sort of came into being, I think in my, maybe when I was a kid, you start hearing about bind overs. Oh, they're going to treat that kid as an adult and it's a big deal because for all the reasons we just said so like how can you treat a kid as an adult when we all know and appreciate that his brain isn't developed? So this is like the tough on crime stance. And you know, people, I'm a political anomaly because, you know, I do what I do defending, uh, people and you know, I get these questions all the Time about how I defend people, uh, or guilty or how I do this or that. And is it liberal, is it conservative? I don't care. I know this is that. I think it's absolutely important that we protect people's rights to a fair trial in the system. Guilty or not guilty, it doesn't matter to me. Um, and with juveniles, if we've acknowledged that kids don't have the same mental capacity as adults, then it's incongruent. It is inconsistent to say then we're going to send that kid over and prosecute him like he's an adult, meaning if it's a murder case, it's life in prison. You know, that's, that's a big harsh decision to make. Knowing and appreciating that we all acknowledge that their brain isn't developed when they committed a crime. Now, am I saying that you should never do that? I'm not taking a position on it, but I'm, um, pointing out that this is a big deal and, you know, so under the guise of being tough on crime, we're going to go treat that kid like an adult. He deserves to be treated like an adult. Because the crime was so harsh would be the sort of dime store justification. But it's a little more detailed than that. Um, in Ohio, we have two types of bind overs. So the first is called a mandatory bind over. There are certain offenses that if the prosecutor, if the State, uh, requests it, you're getting bound over. As long as there's probable cause that the person committed the crime, you're gone. Um, and what are those? Murder, attempted murder, um, versions of that. A conspiracy to commit murder would be.

Troy Henriksen: Like manslaughter and all that falling on that too. Or is that more like.

Steve Palmer: These are category. Ohio would call them category one offenses and I pulled them up. Murder, aggravated murder, or attempts of either of those offenses. Category 2 offenses, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, aggravated robbery, robbery, rape, aggravated arson. Um, the category twos matter because if it's a category one type of offense, 16 years or older, you're gone. Um, uh, or you meet the following requirements. You're 14 or 15, you've got a previous adjudication or conviction in juvenile court, or you've already been to dys category, um, twos, 16 and older. And some of the other requirements change. But those are the big. So the big dog defenses you would say are mandatory. And what that means is the juvenile judge only has to find that there's probable cause. Now what the h*** is probable cause? Well, probable cause basically means that there's a little bit more evidence. If, uh, it's a look at a scale of 1 to 100, it's 50.001, just a little bit more than half. So it's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the kid did it, but just enough to think that he did it and the kid gets bound over and treated like an adult. Um, the other types of bind over is called a discretionary bind over. That's a little more complicated. Um, the kid has to be at least 14 years old and, uh, it's a felony. Um, and the judge has to determine, has to make sort of the hard choice. And the question is this. I'll give it the fancy legal talk, then we'll talk about what it really means, is the kid amenable to rehabilitation in the juvenile justice system? Meaning, can we help him here in juvie court? Um, and if we can help them here in juvy court, then we're going to keep them here. If we can't help them here in juvie court, we're going to send them over there to adult court. And there's like this series of, like, I think, six factors, uh, that can go either way. And the judge is supposed to weigh those factors. Here's the procedure. Like, I've had some very high publicity juvenile bind over cases. And, you know, you bring in experts. There are experts, national, uh, experts that come in and they evaluate a kid and they make a recommendation to the judge that says, look, I've talked to this kid. Um, I've worked with this kid. I've done all the psychological mumbo jumbo and the tests and the standards and the whatever the matrix, and I believe that the kid is amenable to rehabilitation in the juvenile justice system. I call that expert, uh, to the witness stand, I present his or her testimony. Um, we call the parents, we call other witnesses that sort of talk about the kid and say, look, the kid did this horrible thing, but we can help them here, we can rehabilitate them here. And the idea is to protect the kid from the adult system. Um, all too often this becomes political, uh, or maybe, um, the decisions are based on public perception, uh, and it's easy for courts to say, I'm binding them over. It's a horrible offense. And, um, most of the Time, courts of appeal, so these decisions get appealed all the Time. Most of the Time, courts of appeal sort of rubber stamp the juvenile judge's decision to bind the kid over, provided they relied on the right factors, they at least gave some good reasons, um, and bound them over. It's very difficult. My point is not that the juvenile system is corrupt. He's saying judges are corrupt. What I'm saying is once a kid is bound over, it's very difficult to unring that bell. Now people ask me all the Time, what do I think about it. Um, it all depends. I've stood up in juvenile court and there's probably still on YouTube now of me making these arguments like, look, you want to turn a kid into a criminal, send him to adult prison. You want to turn a kid into a racist, send him to adult prison. You want to turn a kid into a, uh, the kind of person that you've accused him of being. And just make sure that even if he is now and you want to make sure that sticks? Send him to adult prison. You know, send him off, because that's where he's going to learn how to do all those things, because that is going to be his survival mechanism. Um, look, I get it. There are certain crimes that are so horrid that we just. The system has to do something. This is why, uh, look, justice is supposed to be blind. Um, but I think it's also important that not, uh. My, uh. One of the old school lawyers in this town used to say, no case has a twin. In other words, we are all unique individuals and judges. I don't envy judges who have to make these decisions. What do I do with this kid? Um, because it's very difficult. It's easy for me. I get to advocate. I get to figure out what's the strongest argument I can make. And to do that, I swim around in the case, and I get to know my client. I get to know my client's Family. I talk to the experts. I do everything I can, and then I get to present that to the judge as compelling as I can. But I don't have to decide. Uh, my job is to make it hard for the judge to decide. And their job is the hard one. They have to decide. They have to figure it out. And, uh, I don't envy the judge because I can certainly come up with scenarios or cases where, man, it makes Sense to send that kid off because he's just no good. Um, on the other hand, if you accept the premise that our brains aren't developed, who's he going to become? You know, you see the movies or you read the stories where, you know, the kid who was this vicious criminal at 17, 18, 19, 20, is now 60 or 50 and is, like this totally different person in prison still. And it's like, where's the fairness there? You know, Because a lot of times adult, uh, you don't get out. So I have juries ask me this all the Time. It's like, what was the sentence? Life. Well, I mean, when's he getting out? Never. And, you know, and I let that sort of hang in the air. Now, sometimes life means 20 to life. Sometimes it means 15 to life. Sometimes it means 30 to life or 25 to life. Um, and sometimes it means life without parole. You never get out. But as a practical matter, if you get 30 to life, that's 30 years. You know, you're getting out at if you're 17 years old. Do the math, man. You know? Do the math. It's, uh, you know, you're, you're, you're an old man. You're not like, are you the same when you went to the mill? How old are you now?

Troy Henriksen: I'm 27.

Steve Palmer: 27. So go back 10 years.

Troy Henriksen: I'm not the same as I was when I was 17.

Steve Palmer: Not even close. No, not even close. I mean, I did stuff at 17, the dumbest stuff you can possibly think about that I wouldn't even consider doing now. And but for the grace of God go I. It's a cliche, but it also, it also has some meaning. You know, if I, if I would have, you know, if there's a little bit of a twist here or a turn there of the steering wheel at the wrong Time. When I'm 17, somebody's dead and I'm going to prison or, you know, uh, how many fights were you in? And look, if you're a boy and you never got in a fight, congrats. But a lot of us did. And you know, I've represented a lot of one punch murders. You know, you hit somebody, they fall wrong their heads on a curb and you're in prison for the rest. You're in prison for 20 years and you know, as in juvenile court, that could be a bind over and you're in adult prison. Like it's very difficult to reconcile. And the only thing I do in these is I, I don't profess to have the Answers. I profess to know all the, I uh, don't even profess to know all the problems, but I try to present both sides of it. And sometimes when I advocate particularly for juveniles, I try to make it really hard for the judge to do this to a kid. And how do I do that? Well, I point all these things out. It's like, look, you don't know little Johnny, you know what he did here. But you weren't there at Christmas Time when even just last year at Christmas when he came down in tears because there was this present or when grandma was here when he wrote this card to his mother. It's like not all kids, you don't always have that, but I always point it out. There's always two sides to people and the system tends to look at one of them. So, um, and they certainly don't teach you that stuff in Law School.

Troy Henriksen: I can teach you one thing here though. You bring up movies a lot. Shot Collar. Have you ever seen it?

Steve Palmer: Shot Collar. I have not seen it.

Troy Henriksen: Okay. It's a conversion like argument you're making here where they send. It's Not a kid. It's an adult White collar crime guy. He accidentally kills his friend while drinking and driving, goes to prison, gets converted into, like, a criminal, pretty much.

Steve Palmer: Oh, shot collar. I have seen that. Yes, I have seen that.

Troy Henriksen: How you're describing. I was thinking of that, like, the whole Time.

Steve Palmer: Yeah, I have seen it. And in the end, he's sitting in a cage next to this other dude, and he's now the shot caller of the, uh, of the pr. Of the sort of the White supremacy prison people.

Troy Henriksen: And, um.

Steve Palmer: Right. He became a. He became a criminal. Look, I. I'm, um. I think it's probably a Bridge too far to say that happens to everybody. And I know that movie, and it was certainly overblown.

Troy Henriksen: Yeah.

Steve Palmer: But for kids, though, it's like if you want to. If you. You know, we. My, my. My dear old dad used to always tell me, I trust you implicitly when you're alone. It couldn't be more opposite when you're with your buddies. And at the same time, I think your buddies are great guys. You're athletes. You're doing this, you're doing that. You're all on the right track, but together you're something worse. And there's a reason for that. We do stupid stuff when we're together. You fall into the herd. Um, there's an age. I can't speak for women because I'm not one, nor will I ever become one. Okay. But there's an age where we shift over as men to, we are now who we are, not who we want. We know what's right, we know what's wrong. We act on those things. That's what you want a man to be. That's how I want my sons to be raised. And as we're learning that process, I am taking in what other people are doing and thinking and saying about me. And there's an age where that crosses over for most of us, not everybody, and that has its own psychological problems, but for most of us, we cross over to that age and we've transcended from the stupidity of our youth. Um, and if you're making that crossover, making that transition, the growth to manhood in prison, think about that. Think about that. So my buddies and I did stupid stuff together, but we always had a limit. We had some limit. Um, if there isn't a limit, then think about how dangerous that is. So anyway, that's just something. It's not an answer. I don't have the Answers. Just something to think about.

Troy Henriksen: Absolutely.

Steve Palmer: So get me started on juvenile Stuff. I mean, I get, uh, I feel strongly about this stuff because it's so significant. These are, you know, this is our future. Um, I think it's important. A couple of things important to note. Juveniles. We have. Juveniles have rights. And there's a great case, Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent School District out in Iowa, where Tinker wore, like, a black armband during the Vietnam War to protest. And the Supreme Court had this great. This great quote that I probably butcher but say a lot. And I said it already, like, the juvenile doesn't. Or the school kid or juvenile doesn't check his constitutional rights at the door when he enters the school building. In other words, we still have a right of free speech, et cetera. And the same is true. You don't check your constitutional rights at the door of the juvenile courthouse. You still have constitutional rights. You still get to defend yourself. They still have to prove it. And then if it's a bind over, um, don't read an article and take it lightly. That's my words of wisdom. I'm not saying that bind overs are never appropriate, but I'm certainly saying they're not always appropriate, even though the crime may feel like it is. So they don't teach you that in Law School.

Troy Henriksen: So they check some of their constitutional rights. You're saying they don't get a jury.

Steve Palmer: Trial, you don't get a trial by jury in juvenile court. That's correct.

Troy Henriksen: I guess they checked one.

Steve Palmer: They checked one, Right.

Troy Henriksen: Okay.

Steve Palmer: So you got a question, you got a comment. If you're a law student and, uh, Troy's not getting it done, send, uh, us a comment. We'll cover a topic that, uh, not that you're not getting it done, but you're not asking the question that you want to ask. Uh, send it to us, and we'll try to cover it right here on Lawyer Talk. They don't teach you that in Law School. Off The Record, on the air, at least until next week.