A.F.-C., A Juvenile v. Commonwealth, SJC-12790
The Youth Advocacy Division (YAD) and the Alternative Commitment and Registration Support Unit jointly sought permission to file an amicus brief in the above case, in which the Single Justice reserved and reported the issue of whether any juvenile should be required to register as a sex offender with the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB). The Supreme Judicial Court issued the following amicus solicitation:
As applied to a juvenile who has been adjudicated delinquent by reason of a sex offense in the Juvenile Court, whether the obligation to register as a sex offender under G.L. c.6, § 178E(f), violates due process considerations or constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Commonwealth v. L.J., a Juvenile, SJC-12752
The case addresses procedural issues of transferring the case from juvenile court to adult court under G.L. c. 119, § 72A. Section 72A applies when a person is alleged to have committed an offense before their eighteenth birthday but is not apprehended until after their nineteenth birthday. It provides a process by which a Juvenile Court judge determines whether the individual should be prosecuted in adult court or not at all.
The amicus brief would argue the following: 1) that a Juvenile Court judge has the discretion to decide a motion to dismiss in the context of a 72A proceeding before arraignment and 2) a juvenile must be afforded interlocutory review under G.L. c.211, §3 from the denial of a motion to dismiss based on prosecutorial delay.