June 20, 2006
RiShawn Biddle
Expresso, June 20, 2006
Why won't the juvenile court proceed with Samuel's trial? Or release him
from detention? Those were the questions, posed to the state Supreme Court in
November of 1998 by his public defender, Daniel Schroeder, which would show how
for children in
Three months earlier, the then-16-year-old Delaware native -- the Star
doesn't identify accused juveniles -- who according to a report obtained by the
Star Editorial Board, essentially ran away from home to Indianapolis that
January so he could live with 21-year-old woman he met online, when he was
arrested and brought to the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center for driving
without a drivers license and under-aged drinking. A month later, the case was
bargained down. All that was needed was for Magistrate Geoffrey Gaither to
either accept the deal or toss it out a month later.
Then the waiting game began. Gaither, who may or may not have allegedly
accepted the deal in September, according to a brief obtained by the Star
Editorial Board, issued continuances five different times. None of them were
requested by the prosecution or by Schroeder. By November, Gaither rejected the
plea and set the case for a pretrial hearing to take place a month later, in
December.
By that time, Samuel had been detained for 70 days. Under state law, a
juvenile cannot be held for more than 24 hours on an offense that would
otherwise be legal as a minor and cannot be held for that long on a misdemeanor
unless he is a danger to himself or the community. Meanwhile a juvenile court
trial is supposed to be held within 20 days.
When Schroeder asked Gaither to release Samuel, Gaither rejected it, then recused himself from the
case, handing it over to another magistrate, Clark Rogers (now a Superior Court
judge). Schroeder then filed a motion with then-Superior Court Judge James
Payne, the overlord of the juvenile court, demanding Samuel's release. Not only
did Payne reject that first motion, but then rejected Schroeder's demand for
Payne to reconsider without explanation. When Schroeder filed
a petition for writ of habeas corpus, that is, to demand a decision whether
Samuel was imprisoned unlawfully by the juvenile court, neither Judge Payne nor
Gaither bothered to schedule a hearing as required under law.
That's what led Schroeder to petition the five wise men for either Payne to
give Samuel his trial or release him from the detention center.
Why did Payne and the court delay hearing the case? Blame it on Samuel was
the answer Payne supplied in response to Schroeder's brief. Since the phone
number Samuel supplied to probation officers so they could locate his mother in
But what about the continuances? Payne claimed in
the brief the delays came up in part because probation officials -- who work
for the juvenile court -- hadn't prepared a pre-dispositional report neeed to proceed with the case. All of that, along with the
juvenile court's mandate to "engage in a process that strengthens family
relations," meant that "no solution was in sight." So the court
had to continue detaining Samuel.
None of those arguments explained why the court, having
rejected the plea bargain, proceed with Samuel's trial. Which at the
end, was what Justice Brent Dickson (then acting as chief justice in the place
of Randall Shepard), and his three colleagues were
really concerned about. On November 24, the state high court, in a 3-1 ruling,
ordered Payne to either hold the trial by December 4 or release Samuel. He was
ultimately released and charges were dropped in exchange for him returning to
Payne shouldn't have been surprised by the ruling. Earlier that year, the
state Supreme Court unanimously found in the case
of W.A. that the juvenile court wrongly denied that juvenile's request for a
speedy trial under state law; the juvenile court was ordered to get to stepping
on the matter.