MUNCIE, Ind. — Delaware County Prosecutor Eric Hoffman told FOX59/CBS4: “You cannot hug the crime out of a juvenile delinquent.”
Hoffman’s comment came in the wake of his successful effort to have a 14-year-old boy waived over to Circuit Court to face a murder charge for the killing of another teenager last month at a Muncie apartment complex.
”I’m a believer in terms of violent crime that you need adult time for adult crime,” said Hoffman. “When you’re talking about taking a human’s life intentionally, that’s serious stuff.”
Latajohne Phillips, 15, was shot to death when investigators claim he was set upon by a group of teenagers who intended to rob him of two guns he brought in a backpack to either sell or trade.
A 17-year-old reportedly admitted shooting Phillips in the head while the younger teen is accused of wounding the boy in the leg.
During the waiver hearing, the Delaware County Juvenile magistrate noted the younger boy struggled with officers when he was discovered with a gun at the county fair in 2023.
”In some of these juvenile cases you can see a progression of crime and it gets progressively worse,” said Hoffman, who had a list of dozens of juvenile cases he collected over the last year, many of them serious felonies, that magistrates turned down for filing.
”Some of those are what I think are serious: arson, there were gun cases in there, intimidation, battery resulting in bodily injury, resisting law enforcement.”
State guidelines force prosecutors to seek the approval of juvenile probation officers before locking up a minor for a criminal offense and the permission of juvenile court magistrates to file charges.
”Those are cases that we’re asking the juvenile court here and get treatment for the kids, not waiving them into adult court, but yet we’re denied permission to file that petition to start the process,” said Hoffman. ”I think we ought to be able to file juvenile charges the way we do adult cases in that we review the paperwork, we review the case, the intel from the police, the prior history, and then make our discretion in the same way I do as an adult.”
Hoffman said prosecutors have unsuccessfully lobbied state lawmakers to give them more leeway in filing cases.
”We’re in a better position to know the facts. All they have is the petition and a little background inquiry whereas we may have the whole case file.”
The State typically errs on the side of caution when it comes to charging juveniles, citing their immaturity or inability to understand the seriousness of the consequences of committing an offense, or, the potential for worsening behavior as a result of being locked up or the option of family support upon a return home.
On the other hand, Hoffman said leniency often breeds contempt for the juvenile criminal justice system.
”Some of the kids will brag about it,” he said. “They did this or that and nothing happened. I know there were several offenses where a juvenile will beat up their mother and we were denied the ability to file a charge. That just emboldened them.”
This month, Greenwood Police arrested three children, one of them a girl, ages 14 and 16, for separate gun store burglaries.
IMPD arrested a 16-year-old on a charge of possession of a machine gun last week while Beech Grove Police arrested a 15-year-old this month for the shooting of a 16-year-old.
“I am disturbed at how available guns are, how readily available they are to juveniles, here and everywhere else,” said Hoffman, frustrated by his inability to file firearms felony charges. ”Indiana is what I call a, ‘Mother, may I?’ state.”
As of mid-summer, the Indiana Department of Correction housed approximately 350 juveniles convicted of felonies.
That statistic does not take into account the number of juveniles housed at the county level.
