In the Larosa case, justice is better served in open court, regardless of defendant’s age

The public has a legitimate interest in knowing what happened when one person’s life is cut short by the actions of another.

In a free society, no one should be able to kill with anonymity or without a public legal proceeding to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.

Public court proceedings protect not only the interest of the state in seeking justice, but the interest of the accused. It took a couple of hundred years for the English Parliament to realize that justice was not being served by the secretive Star Chamber. It’s a lesson that shouldn’t have to be relearned.

And yet, even today we find arguments being made that juveniles charged with serious crimes are best served in secret proceedings. The extent to which those arguments prevail differ from case to case, and, as we who live on the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania can see, from state to state.

Here in Ohio, people have watched the case of Jacob Larosa, 15, charged with aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and attempted rape in the March 31 beating death of a neighbor, Marie Belcastro, 94, in her Niles home.

Larosa’s lawyers argued that giving the public access to the county prosecutor’s complaint and other documents “could endanger the fairness of the adjudication process.”

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who has not always agreed that the public’s interest is best served by access to information held by his office in criminal cases, argued that in the Larosa case, Ohio law allows for opening the juvenile court proceedings involving serious youthful offenders. He further argued that openness should apply when the case of a juvenile offender is being transferred to adult court.

Significant victory

The public won a significant victory when Family Court Judge Sandra Stabile Harwood ruled that documents in the Larosa case would be available to the public. But she also ruled that a hearing scheduled for July 8-10 to determine whether Larosa will be tried as an adult will be closed. Her rationale for closing those proceedings is that some of the testimony at what is called an amenability hearing will center on mental health evaluations of Larosa and other confidential material.

We would suggest that even in such a sensitive area, the public’s interest may well outweigh a presumed right to privacy for a young man accused of the brutal murder of an elderly neighbor.

The public already knows that Larosa has a history over a two-year period of run-ins with Niles police for a variety of offenses and that he had contact with the juvenile justice system. The extent to which that system may have failed in addressing Larosa’s behavior should certainly be of interest to the public, which funds that system. And, ironically, Larosa’s lawyers might want to rethink whether their client’s best interests are served in a closed proceeding.

As mentioned earlier, the way legal proceedings involving juveniles are handled in Ohio and Pennsylvania vary dramatically, with Ohio being far more open, thanks, in part, to state Supreme Court rulings in the public’s favor.

In Pennsylvania in 2009, Jordan Brown, then 11 years old, was charged in the shotgun slaying of 26-year-old Kenzie Houk and her unborn son, who died of oxygen deprivation, in their Wampum home. The media were banned from his trial. Reporters weren’t even allowed on the same floor of the Lawrence County Courthouse where the trial was held.

Today, Brown is 17 years old and he and his lawyers are continuing to seek a new trial or to have the charges against him dismissed. Meanwhile, since he was convicted as a juvenile, he can be held only four more years. He will have to be released when he reaches the age of 21.

Rush to judgment?

Thanks to Pennsylvania’s secretive system, the public has no basis on which to gauge Brown’s claim that police rushed to judgment in charging him. Nor does the public have any insight into what may have motivated an 11-year-old to murder his father’s fiancee. And, perhaps most important, the public does not know what, if anything, the state has been doing to prepare Brown for his re-entry into society sometime in 2019.

Whether Larosa, who is only a few months shy of 16, will be tried as an adult will be decided in July. If he is, his trial will be public and philosophic arguments about court secrecy will become moot.

Trying Brown, who was only 11 at the time of the murders as an adult, would have become international news because of his young age. Justice may have been served by treating him as a juvenile, but it was not served by trying him in secret.

Murder is the most-serious offense decided by local courts. When someone is accused of murder, regardless of their age, the proceedings should be open in the interest of assuring the public that justice was served – for the victim, for the accused and for the state.