“To keep that information from the public, that’s concerning to me,” he said. During legislative hearings on the bill last spring, the provision barring the release of identifying information when juveniles are arrested and charged didn’t get much attention. Much of HB 17-1204 creates a process for the expungement of juvenile delinquency records, a goal of reform advocates concerned about the collateral consequences of criminal prosecutions on minors. But the juvenile’s identity will remain confidential. It can know which criminal justice agency made the arrest and the nature of the charges. The public will still be able to find out that an arrest took place on a particular date at a particular place. In the case of the accused teenage shooter, he said, “if the law contemplated treating his information in the same manner as an adult who committed a crime like that – making it a public record – we should do the same.”Ī provision in House Bill 17-1204, signed by the governor in May, will prohibit the public disclosure of a juvenile’s name, birth date or photograph if he or she is charged with a serious crime. While some news organizations rarely name juvenile offenders unless they are charged in adult court, Wiggins said he evaluates the seriousness of each crime in making the decision. The statute also opened the records of juveniles charged with offenses that “would constitute any crime that involves the use or possession of a weapon if such act were committed by an adult.” The stories let readers know that Colorado law allowed public access to arrest and criminal records of juveniles charged with crimes that would be class 1, 2, 3 or 4 felonies if committed by adults. “We believed that not only general information, but the name of the juvenile accused in that crime, should be made available to the public.” “It may not have been an intentional act, but it involved a violent crime and the use of a firearm that was illegal for the juvenile to possess,” said Mike Wiggins, who has led the Sentinel’s newsroom for the past four years. When a Grand Junction boy was accused of shooting another teenager in August 2016, the managing editor of The Daily Sentinel decided to identify the 15-year-old in newspaper stories about the incident.
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