Is this a ‘juvenile’ crime?

Nevada state law says juveniles 14 and older are presumed eligible for prosecution as adults if their alleged offense involved use of a deadly weapon.

Take the current Las Vegas cases involving William Molina and Marques Butler, both of whom were 17 at the time they were accused of robbery.

Molina, who professes his innocence, is charged with the 2006 armed robbery of a Las Vegas taco shop. Butler is charged with several crimes arising from the armed robbery of two men in a local park in 2006.

Both young men are represented by Las Vegas attorney Kristina Wildeveld, who has filed briefs that raise constitutional issues.

To stay out of adult court, state law allows juveniles to present evidence that emotional, behavioral or substance abuse problems led to the commission of their crimes.

(By definition, it would seem that committing an armed robbery is pretty good evidence of a "behavioral problem." But we'll leave a more detailed dissection of this psychological lingo for another day.)

Note what's missing from the list above. Juveniles accused of committing a crime with a deadly weapon cannot avoid trial in adult court -- where the penalties can be far more severe -- by arguing that they simply weren't there and didn't do it.

Molina, for instance, faces up to 36 years in prison if convicted as an adult. He would face far milder consequences in juvenile court.

In essence, the brief by Ms. Wildeveld argues, in order to undergo the psychological evaluations and other testing that might allow them to stay in juvenile court, her clients would have had to plead guilty.

When he pleaded "not guilty" to his charge, Williams was automatically transferred to adult court, the brief says.

What's more, once the determination has been made whether to prosecute in juvenile or adult court, any information presented while seeking to keep the case in juvenile court can be used against the youth in further proceedings -- a violation of due process rights, Ms. Wildeveld argues.

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center and the ACLU of Nevada have filed friend-of-the-court briefs, pointing out that in other states, information gathered during the evaluation process which decides whether to retain the case in juvenile court cannot be used in a subsequent prosecution.

Now, common sense has to ask, if the defendant didn't do it, why would he want a chance to argue he did it because of drugs or because his father beat him? Attorneys should not be urging innocent people to plead guilty just to get a better deal.

But Ms. Wildeveld and the "friends of the court" make a good point. To hold the threat of harsher punishment over a defendant's head in an effort to extract a de facto guilty plea comes very close to coercion in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

On the other hand, adult court is precisely where many such offenders belong. Much of our juvenile justice system comes down to us from the days when the typical offenses of "juvenile delinquents" involved theft of lawn ornaments or stealing apples from a fruit stand -- when it could sensibly be argued these were "good kids at heart" who might well be reformed by spending a few months on a farm, somewhere.

Few who have ever looked down the barrel of a loaded handgun brandished by a 17-year-old during an armed robbery would agree with Ms. Wildeveld that these are mere "children."

The plaintiffs have a point, even if they may not like the obvious two-part solution.

Yes, any information the defendant volunteers during the well-defined process of deciding court jurisdiction (but not, for instance, at the time of his arrest) should be confidential, to preserve the accused's vital Fifth Amendment rights.

But the Legislature also needs to considerably narrow any loopholes that allow armed 16- and 17-year-old thugs to avoid serious punishment for their serious crimes merely by pleading that they smoke dope or had a tough childhood.

People don't commit armed robbery by accident. Nor does it qualify as a "childhood prank."