What is happening in Shelby County Juvenile Court? Judge outlines persistent issues

Youth who have been charged with multiple offenses sometimes do not appear before a Shelby County Juvenile Court judge for months because the court has not received a copy of the summons issued to the child, and because those summonses do not have a court date assigned to them, Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon told the Memphis City Council Tuesday.

Sugarmon, who spoke to the council alongside Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, said this has been a problem the court has talked about, and worked on, since he was sworn into office in 2022.

"A child can have a series of offenses before they first appear before the court," Sugarmon said. "Sometimes it can be months before we find out. We've heard about some cases on the news, when it's worth reporting, because those summons have not made it or they were diverted and we never found out about the prior infractions."

Mulroy, speaking with reporters outside Memphis City Hall Tuesday, said the problem of not setting court dates when a summons is issued needs to be solved quickly, and that it will take a joint effort from multiple parties in the criminal justice system.

"It's going to require some coordination among law enforcement, the court, our office and the [public defender's] office, and we are all working on it," he said. "In the adult system, when you get a ticket, you get a court date. It's not impossible. In the adult system, if you are [released on your own recognizance], you nonetheless need to return. There's no reason we can't do that."

First Deputy DA Chris Lareau, the third in command at the DA's office, said delays in assigning a court date in juvenile court can lead to kids committing additional crimes.

"First, you steal a car and you get a summons, or an A bond (the juvenile court version of released on your own recognizance), and no court date," Lareau said. "I'm not pointing fingers, because it goes through a lot of people. It sits on a desk for a court date to be assigned. When 25 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days go by, the kid is like, 'I'm gonna go steal another car.' We have data for this. Then, they're emboldened and then carjack. We have carjackings where they have had pending auto thefts that have never even had court dates yet.

"When you're dealing with young people, the intervention has to be swift and immediate. I'm not saying [the consequences] have to be penal and jail time, but the rehabilitative efforts have to kick in immediately. Not when they have two pending burglaries and then they do their first carjacking."

Mulroy talks common juvenile crimes, adult transfers

Of all the crimes committed in Shelby County, data Mulroy presented indicated that about 20% is committed by kids under the age of 18. Most of those charges, Mulroy said, come from vehicle-related crimes, with car theft and theft from vehicles being the most common charges.

In 2023, there were 1,392 vehicle-related juvenile charges filed against 642 juvenile defendants. Of all those offenses, 549 charges were for theft of a vehicle valued between $10,000 and $59,999.

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The DA's office, in 2023, requested 84 transfers from juvenile court to adult court. Mulroy said this is lower than it was under Weirich's administration, but still "a significant number" of transfer requests. More than half of those cases are still pending in criminal court.

"We're limiting our transfer requests to violent crimes, and violent crimes where the defendant himself — usually it's a male — was the trigger puller," Mulroy said. "If four people are in the car, and there's a robbery and one person pulls the trigger, we're not going to transfer everybody. But the people that are actually responsible for the violent crime, if they're repeat offenders, and we have tried rehabilitative interventions and they don't seem to be working, then as a last resort we do need to ensure accountability by transferring over to adult court. And we are doing that."

Tuesday's committee meeting marked the second time this year that Mulroy spoke to the Memphis City Council. The meeting was cut short, but council members were active in the discussion and said they plan to have more conversations with elected officials from the county side in the future.

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, or (901)208-3922, and followed on X, formerly known as Twitter, @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Shelby County DA: Juvenile crime primarily related to car thefts