Second in a two-part series
SALT LAKE CITY — Aza Vidinhar was just 15 years old when he violently stabbed his two younger brothers to death. In the wake of the shocking crime, prosecutors were left to grapple with a daunting question.
Should the teen's case be kept in the juvenile system, where Vidinhar could be housed in a youth facility equipped to treat young offenders, but where the courts would only have jurisdiction over him until he turned 21? Or should they push to transfer the case, as was possible under Utah law, to the adult system where he would be housed in the county jail to await trial and where he would face a potential prison sentence before he was old enough to legally drive?
Utah law leaves little room to cross the stark line between juvenile and district courts, making each case a question of one system or the other.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys struggling with the right solution in Vidinhar's case — and in the case of another Utah 15-year-old charged with murder — negotiated unique resolutions that aren't spelled out in Utah law. They found compromises that allowed the teens to receive continued benefits in the juvenile system while also spending time in the adult system after turning 21.
But when it comes to sentencing serious juvenile offenders, is that "blended" approach something that Utah should formalize on its books?
Experts are divided over such blended sentencing models, which could create alternatives to utilize both the age-appropriate programs in the juvenile system, as well as the adult system's ability to detain offenders after they have matured.
Blended sentencing on trial
The practice of using Utah's Serious Youth Offender Act to charge juveniles as adults and impose adult sentences in serious and violent cases has slowed in recent years, taking a sharp decline since 2013, according to Utah State Courts records.
Recent court decisions and legal strategies to curb juvenile crime tend to favor the importance of rehabilitation.
• Just last year, the Utah Legislature amended the Serious Youth Offender Act to make it possible for teenage offenders certified as adults to remain in juvenile detention facilities until their 18th birthday. Even certified teens awaiting trial or those already sentenced as adults can now stay in a juvenile facility until they reach the legal age of adulthood.
• A Utah lawmaker is proposing a bill that would eliminate life sentences for juvenile offenders altogether, saying people should be allowed chances to reform themselves.
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles are unconstitutional and last month ruled that decision should be retroactive.
Blended sentences can allow for young offenders to resolve their cases in juvenile court and receive more rehabilitation treatment but face the same criminal penalties as adults do. In another form, blended sentences can make it possible for juveniles to be tried and convicted in court as adults but remain eligible for confinement and treatment in a youth facility rather than in prison, where it may take years for them to qualify for treatment programs.
When it comes to sentencing juveniles, Utah — like more than 30 other states — has no blended sentencing laws, and none are currently being considered.
Utah's Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice has discussed blended sentencing options in the past, director Ron Gordon said, but concerns were raised that changing the law could possibly send an increased number of juveniles into the adult system.
"My office has studied (blended sentencing) and, thus far, has not recommended it," Gordon said. "We wanted to make sure that we did not inadvertently end up transferring more kids into the adult system, and there is some fear that with a blended sentencing format, that could happen."
The commission favors leaving discretion with juvenile judges and prosecutors to weigh each case, Gordon said, rather than trying to spell out each issue under the law. The inclination currently is to pursue every option to process young offenders in the juvenile system, and if it is determined there are no additional options for them there, then transfer them to district court, he said.
Defense attorney Bill Russell also has concerns about blended sentencings. He sees a potential pitfall if young offenders were to spend time in the juvenile system, benefitting from age-appropriate treatment and programs, only to hit a point where they are dropped into the adult system where the rehabilitative efforts that have been made could potentially be undone.
"We've just wasted all this money and wasted a kid's life," Russell said. "If all we do is end up feeding them to the wolves, putting them back in a general population situation in the adult system, then I think we're at least diminishing the return, if not negating it."
Instead, Russell believes the jurisdiction of juvenile courts should extend until offenders turn 23 or even 25, giving juvenile programs more time to work with them. If blended sentencings were enacted, anyone moving into the adult correctional system would require different treatment than a traditional inmate, and likely should be segregated from the rest of the prison population, Russell added.
However, extending the age range of offenders that may be adjudicated in juvenile courts raises a new set of issues, Gordon says.
"That presents some pretty significant complications and challenges as well, when you have individuals in the system who are that much older than some of the others," he said.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, a longtime force behind criminal justice reform, supports blended sentencing options as part of his overall opinion that the system as a whole should be evaluated.
Gill emphasized that he is not bound by traditional blended sentencing formats or the sometimes negative opinions associated with them, but is in favor of any option to assess how and why juveniles are being moved into the adult system and what happens to them once they get there in order to ensure the greatest variety of treatment options.
"Once we've made that public policy decision to move them into the adult system for the purposes of accountability, then for the purposes of rehabilitation I want to provide my district court judges with the greatest number of practical options that they have that can help create sentences that tailor-fit the needs of each individual person who is going through it," Gill said, "and that is both age appropriate or flexible enough to bring somebody to maturity before we transfer them into the adult system for continuity of punishment."
During his time on the bench, retired 3rd District Juvenile Judge Andrew Valdez saw a number of cases where he believes blended sentencing laws could have been helpful and effective. One example, he said, was the case of Antonie Hunter Farani, who was 14 years old when he shot and killed 18-year-old JoJo Brandstatt.
Farani pleaded guilty to murder in 2012 when he was 17. Had that plea been made in the juvenile system, the court would have been able to detain him only until he turned 21.
"Sometimes the time isn't enough," Valdez said. "Four years in the juvenile court system is not enough time for a murder, and he ended up going to the adult system because I actually did transfer him. It would have been nice to have a blended sentence and review it again periodically, not just in four years but two years and three years, and see how's he doing."
More than just answering questions of incarceration, blended sentencings would also create options to evaluate and respond to whether a young offender is doing well in the juvenile system, taking advantage of "this chance at life."
"The issue wasn't just how much time (Farani) would do, but what he would do with that time," Valdez said. "If you know you're going to get out when you're 21, you don't have to do anything if you don't want to. … With a blended sentence, it gives them an incentive to work hard for four years or whatever time they're there, because they know they're going to see a judge."
For other teens, chances for rehabilitation during a prison sentence could be eclipsed by the issue of simple survival, Valdez said. The former defense attorney will never forget a conversation he had with a 16-year-old client after the young man was convicted and was preparing to be sent to prison.
"I tried to talk to him about how to do his time, take advantage of the programs the prison has to offer, get himself in isolation to protect himself, and in the meantime, he's pumping up," Valdez recalled. "He said, 'You know Andy, I'm going to gladiator school, I've got to get ready for what's going to happen to me in there.' I mean, he was 16. Do you think he had his mind on rehabilitation? No way, he was in survival mode."
'Creative' plea deals
In the absence of blended sentencing laws, a few attorneys considering the cases of juveniles charged with violent homicides have come up with a unique work-around in the past year and a half: splitting the charges between juvenile and district courts while coordinating a plea and a sentence in each.
In June 2014, Vidinhar pleaded guilty to one count of murder in juvenile court and another count of murder in adult court for stabbing and killing his two brothers, 10-year-old Alex and 4-year-old Benjie Vidinhar, when he was 15 years old. The idea was to sentence Vidinhar to a juvenile facility until he turned 21 for one murder, then assess his progress before handing down an anticipated sentence of 15 years to life in prison for the second killing.
Vidinhar's plea deal was believed to be the first time in Utah that a defendant pleaded guilty in a murder case in both juvenile and adult courts.
Todd Utzinger, Vidinhar's attorney at the time, said the collaborative sentence would allow greater opportunity for rehabilitation and prevent sending the then 16-year-old boy to prison.
"It's an attempt to give a balance to a system that makes it hard to do that," Utzinger said at the time. "Frankly, the bottom line is it would be inhumane for any 16- or 17-year-old child to go straight to the prison without first having an opportunity for treatment and rehabilitation."
But Vidinar did end up in prison. Just five months after making the deal, he attacked another juvenile at the detention facility with a broom and was charged with assault by a prisoner. Because he had already been certified as an adult in his murder case, the assault charge was automatically filed in district court under the state's "once an adult, always an adult" statute.
In March of last year, Vidinhar was sentenced to zero to five years in prison for the assault charge, and the sentence of 15 years to life for the remaining murder charge in his previous case was later ordered to run concurrently.
A similar plea agreement was negotiated in October for Marqus Paul James, a Magna boy who shot and killed Marcos Cardenas, 22, in a gang-related argument when he was just 15.
Originally charged with murder and three counts of felony discharge of a firearm, James pleaded guilty in juvenile court to firing a weapon at another person, a third-degree felony. The teen then waived a certification hearing before moving to an adult courtroom to plead guilty the same day to manslaughter with a gang enhancement, making it a first-degree felony.
James was sentenced to confinement in a juvenile facility — potentially until he turns 21, which is three years longer than even the most recent statute allows — for the weapons charge. The manslaughter charge, which carries a potential sentence of five years to life in prison, will be considered later. A review date in the case was set for Oct. 21, 2016.
Discussing James' plea deal, Gill said the case represents the kind of "creative approach" his prosecutors are looking for as they seek age-appropriate answers to serious crimes and in the absence of blended sentencing laws.
"Some people will call that a blended sentencing approach. To me, it's just common sense and creating more practical options that are age appropriate and also are … sensitive to where services are," the district attorney said, noting that sentencing must provide a balance between public safety and connecting offenders to appropriate resources.
"We have really had to be very creative. And I guess what I'm saying is, that's fine as long as I have creative prosecutors, but justice should not be the accident of the prosecutors I sent to court," Gill said.
The model has been used in the past for cases other than homicide, according to Valdez, who was the attorney for a teenager who pleaded guilty in both juvenile and district courts in a rape case years ago. As part of that plea, the district court judge suspended a prison sentence and ordered the teen to successfully complete his juvenile sentence as a term of probation.
Like Vidinhar, that case ended with a prison sentence anyway after the young man's behavior in the juvenile facility violated the terms of his parole.
Valdez applauded prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Vidinhar and James cases for the extensive work that undoubtedly went into the unique deals creating an alternative to a straight prison sentence for the two teens.
However, he believes the same level of complicated and time-intensive "problem-solving" likely isn't possible in every juvenile case and is not an alternative to blended sentencing laws.
"I think that's good lawyering. … What it did is it gave the child, the young offender a chance," Valdez said. "But it takes a lot of work, and not all prosecutors are willing to do that, and not all defense attorneys have that kind of working relationship with prosecutors, and of course you have to get two judges involved as well."
Life without parole?
Meagan Grunwald, who was 17 at the time that she acted as the getaway driver for her older boyfriend, 27-year-old Jose Angel Garcia-Juaregui, was later charged with aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, respectively, of the two men Garcia shot: Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Cory Wride and deputy Greg Sherwood.
Garcia died in a shootout with police that ended the Jan. 30, 2014, crime spree.
Eleven months after her arrest, Grunwald turned down a plea deal that would have carried a minimum prison sentence of 15 years, choosing instead to face a jury.
Jurors found Grunwald guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and nine other charges in May 2015, leaving 4th District Judge Darold McDade with a choice between prison sentences: life without parole or 25 years to life for each of the two most egregious charges.
Ultimately, and at the urging of Wride's family, McDade chose to grant Grunwald the option of parole one day. The judge opted to run the two 25-year sentences consecutively, followed by a five-years-to-life sentence for aggravated burglary.
Grunwald's first chance at parole won't happen until a hearing scheduled for July 1, 2042.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that its 2012 decision barring mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles is retroactive. Over the next 60 days, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole will be checking every existing sentence of life without parole to see who in the state is eligible for review under the ruling, spokesman Greg Johnson said.
There aren't many cases of juveniles sentenced to life in prison in Utah, Johnson said, but until the review is complete, he declined to say just how many people may be impacted by that decision.
"We want to be careful and make sure anyone that fits that criteria is appropriately reviewed," Johnson said. "We're going back through all of our files, everyone who has a life without parole sentence, just to make sure that (the crime) wasn't committed when they were a juvenile."
It will be up to the board to decide the order and timing for all applicable review hearings, considering factors like the nature of the crime, how much time has been served so far, and the inmate's behavior while in prison, he said.
Meanwhile, Rep. V. Lowry Snow, R-St. George, is preparing a bill for the Utah Legislature that would do away with life sentences for juveniles in the state, chipping away another piece of the Serious Youth Offender Act. Snow had the bill in the works before the Supreme Court's decision came down last month, noting that the two fall under the same philosophy.
"(The Supreme Court decision) supports what I think should be the policy of our state," Snow said. "By changing this part of the law, at least we've opened the possibility upon a proper and ongoing review to see whether that individual is capable, at some point in their natural life, before they're dead, of obtaining a release."
Though he doesn't dispute that a court may ultimately decide that a juvenile's crimes warrant a lifetime in prison, Snow believes the individual's progress should be reviewed through the years. Not doing so, he said, implies that society is incapable of providing rehabilitative help, and that juvenile offenders are unable to reform themselves over time.
Snow did not specify when his bill will be filed, noting that it is still being drafted.
Since his 2012 election, Snow, a practicing attorney, has sponsored juvenile justice reform including last year's amendments to the Serious Youth Offender Act allowing juvenile offenders to stay in youth facilities until they turn 18, whether they're awaiting trial or have been convicted. The amendments also increased the criteria for allowing a juvenile to waive legal representation and specified that juveniles are not to be shackled when appearing in court unless specifically ordered.
Juvenile justice, he says, is an issue that must be continually addressed in Utah.
"We are fortunate in this state to have really good juvenile court judges, and I mean that," Snow said. "We also have a system that is really interested in trying to do the right thing for offenders and also be sensitive to victims. I am interested in furthering that process."
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