Juvenile Justice
Lawyers Seek Dismissal of Charges in Playground Assault
Posted Apr 10, 2008, 01:11 pm CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Lawyers for two girls ages 10 and 11 say they will ask a Pennsylvania court to dismiss charges against them for a playground assault because they are too young to understand the charges.
Chief Erie County Public Defender Tony Logue said he will ask a juvenile court to dismiss the charges against his 10-year-old client, the Erie Times-News reports. He says his client "is too emotionally young to know what is going on.” Logue says the crime should be treated as a "dependency matter rather than a delinquency matter."
Lawyer Bruce Sandmeyer, who represents the 11-year-old, said he will file a similar motion, the Associated Press reported.
The two children are accused of assaulting 10-year-old Rikki Triana on the playground and shattering her hip. Surgeons had to insert three pins to repair the break. Triana said the girls pulled her off the monkey bars and attacked her when she told them to stop splashing water on her sister.
Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk has said he views the age of the alleged perpetrators as alarming. "If the allegations are true, this is perhaps the worst or one of the worst assaults perpetrated by a juvenile that we've seen in a long time," he told the Associated Press.
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Posted by Mary - 4 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 40 minutes ago
Help me out here, folks, and please educate me. How is a 10 or 11 year old (that would be about 5th or 6th grade) “to young to understand” that it is wrong to engage in behaviour that she knows or has reason to know will result in physical harm to another person?
There are consequences to our actions. A three-year-old knows that if she pulls the kitty’s tail, the kitty will likely scratch or bite her because she hurt the kitty.
Or maybe the children in this instance are “differently abled” and unable to understand the concept of consequences?
I don’t get it.