Juvenile Court

A 14-year-old Francis Scott Key High student has been placed on community detention for 30 days for sharing an anti-depressant prescription drug with five other students at school last week, authorities said.The students, who were not named because of privacy laws, all sought medical treatment for an adverse reaction to a generic form of Paxil, authorities said.One student was admitted overnight to Carroll County General Hospital on Tuesday, hospital officials said.The students are OK and have been referred to juvenile authorities for further action, state police said.

The young boys involved in the shooting death of Monae Turnage, whose body they hid under trash bags in an East Baltimore alley, were sentenced in juvenile court Wednesday. The 13-year-old who said he pulled the trigger will be committed indefinitely to a treatment facility; the 12-year-old who helped him move the body will be monitored by the Department of Juvenile Services while living with a relative in Harford County. But the family of Monae — the bubbly 13-year-old who wanted to be a pediatrician — sat outside the downtown Juvenile Justice Center after the hearing, stunned at the outcome.

The men and women sat in the jury room in the Anne Arundel County Courthouse, but they weren't jurors. They were the parents of juvenile court defendants, ordered into a new wake-up program on gangs because of what their children may have done. "They twist their fingers around, like this — I can't get my hands into the shapes they make," said Deputy Sheriff Greg Kies, contorting his hands as his small audience laughed. "But those are hand signals, and that is a way gang members communicate with each other," he said, as the parents' faces turned somber.

The mother of a juvenile suspect who admitted this week to accidentally shooting 13-year-old Monae Turnage is being investigated in connection with circumstances surrounding the killing, the woman's attorney has confirmed. The attorney, Isaac Klein, said a prosecutor told him his client's DNA was found on Monae's bra. Two of Monae's relatives gave a similar account, saying homicide detectives informed them that DNA from the mother of the 13-year-old suspect was found on the girl's body.

WHY DID 18-month-old Alicia Cureton die? So many details of her life in the child welfare system are hidden in juvenile court records, it's hard to even guess. What's clear is that there were plenty of warning signs that might have averted her death - and indications that keeping such secrets could be harming other children, too. Only a relative handful of people know what happens to the 36,000 children passing through the state's juvenile courts each year. Child welfare agencies, caseworkers, lawyers, judges and other court workers are forbidden, by state law and judicial procedure, from telling where these children wind up. That makes it hard to fix a system that produces such deadly results for Alicia and others.

Starting today Baltimore Circuit Judge David B. Mitchell no longer owns the misery in the hallway.Victims next to wrongdoers, children of neglectful parents, bullies and worse who will end up doing life on the installment plan -- they're all in a hallway in the bowels of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, waiting for their moment in juvenile court.For the past 11 years, they have been Judge Mitchell's responsibility as the juvenile court's administrative judge. But today, the 50-year-old judge will settle into the world of adult drug users and sellers, with people old enough to make their own bad decisions.

Torri is 16 years old. Like most 16-year-olds, he has lived all of his life with his parents. Unlike other 16-years-olds, Torri's problems do not involve studying for the SAT exams or who to ask to the prom.Torri has been severely handicapped since birth. He uses a wheelchair and needs constant care and attention. Yet, in many ways, Torri is lucky. Torri's parents have adapted their lives to meet his needs. For 16 years, his mother and father shared the difficult task of caring for their son, helping him bathe, dress, eat, and get in and out of his wheelchair.

Nancy Davis Loomis, an Annapolis lawyer, has been appointed as an Anne Arundel County juvenile court master.A graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law, Ms. Loomis will become one of three masters who decide juvenile cases in Anne Arundel County.Ms. Loomis was appointed by the nine Anne Arundel Circuit Court judges at a meeting Monday, Judge Robert Heller Jr., administrative judge, said yesterday.She was one of 24 lawyers who applied for the position, which was left vacant with the appointment July 22 of Essom V. Ricks as a District judge.

A 16-year-old from Laurel, accused of trying to pull a shotgun on police officers, had his case transferred to juvenile court Monday. After reviewing reports from the state's Department of Juvenile Services and a psychological evaluation, Howard County Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure granted Joshua A. Alvandi's request to have the juvenile justice system handle the gun, attempted assault and reckless endangerment charges. Alvandi's lawyer, Clarke Ahlers of Columbia, argued that his client would be better served with the help of the juvenile system.

A hearing to move the case of a Columbia 16-year-old, accused of fatally shooting another teen during a fight last summer, to juvenile court has been postponed. The Howard County Circuit Court hearing, scheduled Monday, was postponed to April 27 because of a potential conflict of interest involving an investigator from the state's Department of Juvenile Services who was assigned to write a report, according to the postponement request filed by Joseph Murtha, defense attorney for Monti Mantrice Fleming.

Three children - an 8-year-old boy and two 9-year-old girls - who police took out of their elementary school in handcuffs earlier this year had hearings before a juvenile judge on Tuesday. They had been charged with aggravated assault, accused of vicious playground attacks in Southwest Baltimore. But while the allegations were well published, driven by the ages of the children and where they were arrested, at a school in Southwest Baltimore's Morrell Park, what is happening to them now is shrouded in the secrecy of the juvenile justice system.

Two city youths charged with fatally shooting a 13-year-old girl in the chest and then hiding her body under a pile of trash in an East Baltimore alley admitted to their respective roles in the killing Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court. A 13-year-old boy tendered an admission — the juvenile court equivalent of a guilty plea — to a charge of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally shooting Monae Turnage in March. A 12-year-old friend admitted to being an accessory to the crime for helping move her body.

A Bel Air teenager was indicted Tuesday on charges he murdered his father last month. Robert C. Richardson, 16, was indicted by the Harford County Grand Jury on charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder and use of a handgun in a crime of violence in the death of his father, Robert Richardson Jr., Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly announced late Tuesday afternoon. The case was presented to the grand jury and the indictment handed up earlier in the day, according to a new release from Cassilly's office.

An elderly woman who was severely injured by her 14-year-old grandson in an attack with a hammer in March has died from her injuries, police said Thursday.  Shirley Garrett, 67, died over the weekend at Union Memorial Hospital, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. She was repeatedly struck in the head with a hammer on March 31 by her grandson Hassanhii Garrett, who told police that he had become angry at her while getting ready for school.  He called 911, and police responding to the home in the 800 block of E. 34th St. found her face-down on the floor in a pool of blood.  The boy, who had no previous contacts with the juvenile justice system, was charged as an adult with attempted murder, but the case was remanded to juvenile court in August.

The men and women sat in the jury room in the Anne Arundel County Courthouse, but they weren't jurors. They were the parents of juvenile court defendants, ordered into a new wake-up program on gangs because of what their children may have done. "They twist their fingers around, like this — I can't get my hands into the shapes they make," said Deputy Sheriff Greg Kies, contorting his hands as his small audience laughed. "But those are hand signals, and that is a way gang members communicate with each other," he said, as the parents' faces turned somber.

The case of a 14-year-old Baltimore boy, who allegedly confessed to beating his grandmother with a hammer this spring, will be heard in juvenile court. Hassanhii Garrett had been charged as an adult with attempted murder in the attack, which police said occurred after he became enraged while getting ready for school one morning. He was scheduled for trial Monday, but online court records show that the case was remanded to juvenile court on Aug. 1. Under state law, teens 14 and older who are accused of certain violent crimes must be charged as adults from the outset.

When he was 16, Haymond Burton hit a man over the head twice with a bottle. He says it was in self defense, but prosecutors charged him with attempted murder, which meant he would be tried as an adult under state law. He was put in a Baltimore jail, in a separate wing for minor defendants, and waited more than a year for his trial, at which a jury acquitted him of all charges but second-degree assault — a crime that's usually dealt with...

MANY CHILDREN end up in juvenile court through no fault of their own. It's a dismal place. Closed hearings are held in a series of rooms on the first floor of the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse. The corridor provides the only waiting area. Children being fought over in custody battles play on the floor while public defenders who seem too busy to care discuss plea options with teen-agers trying to act tough as they begin careers as felons.But some lawyers do care; so do the judges. A group of them has been working to transform an old office in the courthouse into a more suitable waiting room for children.

The young teen accused of killing a teacher at the troubled Cheltenham juvenile detention facility has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree rape. He was ordered jailed without bond Wednesday. The charges come after Prince George's County Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. ruled that Brian Lee Wonsom, now 14, could be tried as an adult. He was 13 at the time of the attack. Wonsom is charged in the killing of Hannah Wheeling, 65, a teacher from Bel Air whose bludgeoned and partially clothed body was found Feb. 18, 2010, at the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.

The first of two South River High School seniors accused of beating a younger student into unconsciousness in a hallway acknowledged his role Monday and was sent home to await placement in a juvenile facility. Vernon Johnson, who was a football player, made the equivalent of a guilty plea to first-degree assault of Jacob Peters before Anne Arundel County Juvenile Court Master John F. Gunning. He and Jacob Dick agreed last month to admit punching the 15-year-old sophomore, in exchange for having their cases shifted to juvenile court, where they would not have adult criminal records.