Protecting the Identity of a Child Criminal

Factual Questions
1

Can someone explain why we can’t know the name of a child murderer? I can see why we might want to protect the identity of a child victim, but why protect a perpetrator? What are we protecting that child from? If the case is heard in adult court does that change anything?

(CNN)A South Carolina teen suspected of killing his father before shooting and injuring children and a teacher at a school playground was charged in the case Friday, as one of the wounded students fought for his life.

The 14-year-old suspect was charged in family court in Anderson with murder and three counts of attempted murder. CNN is not naming him because he is a minor, and it is not yet clear whether the case will be heard in adult court.

Emphasis mine.

2

Because he’s not a criminal until he’s convicted. Until that has been proven in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt, he’s still a kid, and we need to consider what effect being named as accused of this crime might have on him if he is found not guilty.

3

Except that everyone in the neighborhood, and certainly from the school, knows who the kid is. It’s not really a secret is it?

4

These habits come from an earlier era where two things were true:

  1. All news about ordinary citizens was local.

  2. Children were assumed to be rehabilitatable as they grew up. Or that a child offender was allowed, at least in principle, “one free bite”. If they emerged as an adult with a clean record they could go on to be a productive citizen. And if they offended as an adult it’d be legally as well as morally their first offense as a should-be responsible adult citizen.

Both these assumptions break down in the world of planet-wide sensationalist personal news and a violence fetish (and it’s converse, a safety fetish) bordering on the pornographic amongst the citizenry.

5

The world is a small place. After the trial, he may move somewhere else in the country, where people don’t know who he is, and it would be a bad thing to have his name out there and well known (if the story picks up national news, which there’s no way to tell if it will or not.)

6

Is this a federal law (protecting the id of a minor charged with a crime)?

7

There is no specific federal law that protects the ID of a minor accused of a crime, AFAIK. However, federal and state courts have their own redaction rules on what information must be kept out of court documents, largely because court proceedings are meant to be public and, as a matter of policy, we don’t want all pieces of information floating out there in public. For example, federal and state court rules often require that certain info, such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, and names of minors, must be redacted in court briefs and other filings. Courts in your own State, Montana, require that the names of minors are not be used in court documents. Why? It’s just a matter of public policy – minors are viewed as being more vulnerable, and the potential impact of being accused of a crime is deemed more harmful to them than it is to an adult.

As to the case here, if the CNN article states that they are not naming the suspect because he is a minor, it is possible this is simply an editorial rule at CNN. But looking around the web for this story, it appears that all news sources have also not named the suspect – in which case, it is likely that South Carolina law, or a specific police department policy, prohibits the release of the minor suspect’s name.

8

Because in this case he’s only accused of being a murderer and has yet to be convicted. He’s presumed innocent until proven guilty.

9

Even after conviction some protection may ensue. Depends upon where you are.

The most notorious example is that of the James Bulger murderers. Convicted, now back in the community, and now well into adulthood, their names are protected, as are their current identities. The UK deeming them to have been too young at the time to fully understand what they did. But they will almost certainly be at risk of reprisal if their identities ever became known. The UK gutter press would love to plaster their photos and information on the front page, and you could be sure they would become instantly unemployable, and very likely subject to violent attack. The sheer horror of their crime makes it difficult to reason with any clarity about their protection. Which is why we have laws.

In general no good is served by making the identity of children known. There is obviously a murky area between childhood innocence and adult culpability, and you might argue the point for a 14 year old - but it would depend upon the child. We don’t charge toddlers that accidentally kill family members with gun they find left about. We protect children with age of consent laws, deeming any child younger than this to lack the capacity to understand the ramifications and thus be legally incapable of giving consent. If you deem sex with a 14 year old as statutory rape, you are going to have a hard time arguing that the same 14 year old does have the full capacity to be treated as an adult for murder. Things are murkier were the age of majority and age of consent differ. Eventually you are going to need the wisdom of Solomon to get it right.

10

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. Their names and identities are not secrets and have been published many times in the UK and around the world. A quick Google will find you photos too.

Here is a full 45 minute BBC documentary from 2011 called Jon Venables - What Went Wrong?

11

:smack: Quite right, I recognised the names as soon as a saw them. Non-the-less the principle remains.

12

Their current identities are protected though, under what is colloquially known as a Mary Bell order. One adult in the UK has been granted similar protection - Maxine Carr.

13

IIRC my local paper decided to name a child accused in a prominent case a few years ago, and there was a pretty severe backlash.

14

In Canada it has been the case for decades that young offenders cannot be named in the press so as not to tarnish their reputation when they become adults.

A relatively recent revision of the law went further, and made it so the accused and the victims cannot be named in the press.

This has resulted in nonsense like newspapers and TV stations in Quebec being charged with contempt of court for naming three people killed by a couple of teenagers.
We also had the whole Reteah Parsons hullabaloo. She was known nationwide as a bullying victim after she killed herself when boys shared photos of her having sex while drunk. But when the boys who took those photos and shared them online were charged (and later convicted), not a single newspaper in the country could name her, and a case that would normally have had nationwide attention got largely ignored. (Ultimately in that case the Crown said it would not prosecute anyone who named her)

15

At least one other adult has been granted a Mary Bell order :- Mary Bell herself. She’s alive, so far as we know,and obviously an adult. (It was granted originally when she was a teenager, but it was renewed in the 90s to include her, and her daughter).

Francis Vaughan, it’s probably inaccurate to say the UK deemed Thompson and Venables too young to understand what they were doing. They were tried as adults, and there was evidence adduced at the trial to show that they understand what they were doing and the nature of their acts.

And as noted, there was never any secrecy about their original identities, the judge at the end of their trial explicitly allowed their names to be released. There are childhood photographs of them freely available. It’s their post release, officially faked identities that are protected.

16

I think this really summarizes the whole thing.

The OP has written at least three times that he assumes the suspect is guilty. As long as many people persist in this profoundly UnAmerican and anti-freedom behavior we’ll need smarter legal & media processes to protect society from itself.

17

The law in Canada, and presumably in many US states and many other countries, presumes that young people are not as aware of the consequences of their actions and especially of either legal or long term consequences. This is particularly true nowadays. Much older friends of mine tell me about the 1950’s, the cops picking them up and taking them home, where the consequences were much more painful than the system.

The thought was that records of charges for youthful crimes - vandalism, shoplifting, trespassing, drug possession, etc. - would have an impact on their life that did not reflect their adult character.

When I think on some of the really stupid (but not horrible) things I did as a kid, having that follow me around as an adult would be severely career-limiting. Note this applies to below age 18 - in Canada, below 14 (or is it 12?) you cannot be considered to have criminal intent - don’t understand well enough consequences to realize what you are doing is extremely bad. The Juvenile laws protect those over that age but under 18, where you may understand the criminal intent, may have criminal intent, but are still not developed enough to appreciate the long-term consequences.

As for victims - children can be mean and pick on anyone. Peers may be cruel about something that happened to the victim. Society is still not above blaming the victim, especially for sexual crimes. There may even be a disagreement over the circumstances of the case, and some blame the victim. The presumption is that a victim would want the details left behind and not be the continuous center of attention - basically, a celebrity (in a negative way) by chance. It’s been tradition - and law - not to name the victim of sexual assault cases no matter what their age, for roughly the same reason.

In many cases, naming the perp or victim gives obvious clues to the identity of the others; in a situation where two adults are found dead in a home and a child is charged, the obvious implication (usually true?) is that the child killed his parents. Naming the victims but not perp makes it rather obvious.

There was a case in Canada (Winnipeg? or Regina?) where the accused wanted all the details including names kept confidential, arguing that was the law. There may be many cases where the whole community knows, but in a number of other cases, it’s all behind closed doors. The stepfather was a college professor and nobody knew at work; without official confirmation, his job was safe. The victim (it happened when she was 14) and her lawyer had to actually argue for a “non-publication” ban.

18

I recall a recent study of charges laid in Canada - in almost half the cases in Ontario, charges were either stayed or the person was found not guilty. The rate in the rest of Canada was about 25%. So arrests and charges does not by any means imply any certainty of guilt.

19

The suspect’s name has been reported in the local SC press. No law against it, just an editorial decision.

20

Although many (most?) news media will withhold the name of a minor accused of a crime, those media will publish that name if the accused minor is charged as an adult.