“Jerry” was a slender, nice looking boy of fourteen when I met him. His parents had divorced some years earlier after his mother left. His father had been given sole custody by agreement, and Jerry and his father lived in a small but comfortable house near the State Police substation in Brunswick. Jerry was a good student.
Although father and son got along probably as well as most do, Jerry’s father, of Italian descent, was “old school” and strongly believed in the adage “spare the rod and spoil the child”. Thus, Jerry’s occasional misbehavior was corrected by a spanking, and sometimes by a whipping with a strap.
I met Jerry on a Monday morning when I was called to Family Court and assigned to be his law guardian by Judge Mark Filley. He had been charged with juvenile delinquency, technically a civil charge for the commission of what would be considered a crime if committed by an adult. In this case, the crime was manslaughter.
On Sunday morning Jerry’s father had slept late. When he woke, Jerry went into his father’s bedroom and sat on the bed. They had a pleasant discussion about some professional sports teams that they both followed, goings-on in school, and the like. They were planning to watch a game on television together that afternoon. Jerry had something to get off his chest and decided that it was a good time to do it. He told his father that on Saturday he had been walking down Route 7 with a friend, and his friend starting throwing pebbles at passing automobiles. Jerry said that he didn’t throw any pebbles, but he thought that he recognized the driver of one of the cars that were hit, and the driver probably knew him. Jerry wanted his father to know that while he was there, he didn’t throw the pebbles.
Jerry’s father was furious. He reached over to a chair next to the bed where he had left his trousers when he undressed the previous evening and took the leather belt out to punish his son for being involved. Jerry knew what was coming, as it had happened several times before. In the blur of the moment, Jerry saw the revolver Jerry’s father always kept on the nightstand. He grabbed it, aimed it at his father, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud explosion, and Jerry saw blood pouring from his father’s head. He jumped off the bed and ran down the road to the State Police substation, bursting in and telling the officer at the desk that he had shot his father. A trooper went to the house and confirmed that Jerry’s father was dead.
Although Judge Filley could have immediately had Jerry confined to a juvenile detention center until the matter was adjudicated, he instead put Jerry in the temporary custody of his paternal grandmother, with whom Jerry had always been close, especially since his mother had left. Although the grandmother must have had very mixed feelings, she knew that her son had a bad temper and never approved of his method of discipline.
Judge Filley recused himself from further proceedings because he knew the family, being a lifelong resident of the same town as Jerry’s father’s family. A judge from another county was assigned to hear and determine the case.
Juvenile delinquency cases are processed in two phases. The first phase is the fact-finding hearing in which the allegations of the juvenile delinquency petition are determined in a fact-finding hearing, similar to a non-jury trial of an adult charged with a crime. If the allegations are established to the satisfaction of the court, the juvenile is adjudicated to be a juvenile delinquent, and a dispositional hearing is scheduled to determine the best remedy for the delinquent conduct.
Jerry’s adjudication hearing was quite brief. Since all juvenile delinquency cases are civil, rather than criminal in nature, the County Attorney, rather than the District Attorney, prosecutes the case. I had discussed the case with Jim Canfield, the Assistant County Attorney (who recently retired as a state Supreme Court justice) who handled juvenile delinquency cases, and I knew that there was no question but that Jerry had shot his father and had admitted doing so. At the hearing, I admitted the allegations of the petition, and Jerry was adjudicated a juvenile delinquent. A dispositional hearing was set.
At that time I was representing a somewhat eccentric psychiatrist (aren’t they all?) in a matrimonial action. I retained him to become an expert witness on Jerry’s behalf. He read the police report of the shooting and met once with Jerry and his grandmother. At the hearing, Mr. Canfield advised the Court that the county had no strong recommendation about the disposition. Jerry told the judge what had happened. The psychiatrist testified that in his opinion the only person that Jerry had been a danger to was his father, and with his father now deceased, he did not feel that Jerry was of any danger to others. The assigned judge agreed. He put Jerry on probation and placed him in the permanent custody of his grandmother.
Several years later Jerry telephone me to say hello and thank me for representing him. He had graduated high school, made a career in the Air Force, and was married with two children. He had never been in trouble again.
