The young girl who allegedly threatened to bomb Enumclaw High School on Valentines Day recently pled not guilty — but that is likely to change in the near future, as it seems guaranteed she will seek a deferred, and ultimately dismissed, sentence.

“There’s very little drama that might be associated with this case… the only drama would be if she denies [the charges], or wants to exercise her constitutional right to a trial,” said Jimmy Hung, Chief Deputy Prosecutor with King County’s Juvenile Division. “But if she decides she just wants to come in and accept responsibility, then I would say it’s a 100 percent chance that’s the way it’s going to go, even if the prosecutor came in pounding our fists, objecting.”

The case originated from a threat made two months ago.

Late on February 13, an Instagram account “ehsvdayshooting” posted that three freshman were going to “shoot up” the school the next day, followed by the detonating of “highly dangerous bombs” by two sophomores. This prompted EHS to close.

Additionally, similar threats were made to Enumclaw Middle School, so EMS and Thunder Mountain Middle School went into modified lockdown.

Police were able to identify the device used to post the threat, which led to the 16 year-old’s arrest a month later. The investigation is ongoing to identify who threatened the middle school.

The girl — who the Courier-Herald has not named, because she is a minor — officially pled not guilty to the charge of threats to bomb or injure property, a Class B felony, on March 23. She was released back to her parents under the condition of 24/7 supervision. Police determined she had no ability to carry out her threat.

King County has decided to charge her as a juvenile, although “decided” isn’t quite accurate; state law is extremely strict about when a child can be charged as an adult.

“The only kind of crime that can get a kid tried as an adult are really the most serious crimes you can think of … We’re talking about kids who murder people,” Hung said. “If you’re under 16 … that’s not an automatic go-to-adult-court if the prosecutor decides to prosecute you with murder… it means that you have to go in front of a judge and petition a judge to get the kid transferred. … It’s a very involved process that is not often sought, and very hard to achieve.”

Take for example the young girl who allegedly hit and killed Maple Valley resident Greg Moore with her car (and another person before that, though non-fatally) in July 2021; many community members, and even King County Council member and former federal prosecutor Reagan Dunn, called for King County Prosecutor Dan Satterburg to charge her as an adult.

But she was 15 at the time, and “given the facts of this investigation and the circumstances of this case, the law does not support transferring this case to adult court,” Prosecuting Attorney Office spokesperson Casey McNerthney told the Kent Reporter. “Fifteen year olds accused of murder are presumed to be subject to juvenile court jurisdiction.”

If the girl in the Enumclaw High School case were an adult, she would face up to 10 years in prison and/or a $20,000 fine. But as a juvenile, the maximum sentence she could receive is 30 days incarceration and a year probation. She may not see any time incarcerated.

“Because of the nature of the crime, the seriousness level, and her lack of any history, she is statutorily … eligible to ask the judge for something called a ‘deferred disposition’,” Hung said in a recent interview. “That is a formal legal process that, in general, first time offenders can ask the judge for. And how the law is written, the judge has very little discretion to deny it.”

That legal outcome would involve the girl admitting to the crime and, in turn, have her sentence deferred for a period of time.

“For most cases, it’s six months,” Hung said. “And if she stays out of trouble, if she complies with the condition of probation, then the [sentence] is dismissed.”

The girl could also petition to have the case sealed when she turns 18, meaning the felony charge wouldn’t follow her for the rest of her life.

THE CRIMINOGENIC EFFECT

The Enumclaw community — or, at least those who commented on Facebook about this incident — appears split on whether this girl should face harsh consequences like prison time or be dealt a lighter sentence, like community service.

Hung, who has studied the history of juvenile punishment in King County and the country more broadly, is familiar with debates like these.

“There was a time, going back in the late 80s, early 90s, where — not just around juvenile crime, across the board — it was very much [a] tough on crime era,” he said. “Regardless of what political party you were with, it was a winning political strategy.”

According to Hung, the county prosecuting office fielded more than 16,000 juvenile case referrals on average in the mid-1990s, the vast majority of which were some of the lowest-level offenses on the books, such as possession of tobacco by a minor. In 2021, that number has been reduced to just 1,100.

Filed legal cases and detentions have also fallen to historic lows.

In 1995, more than 8,000 juvenile cases were filed with the King County Superior Court, making up 12 percent of all filed cases that year (criminal cases made up another 13 percent), historic court reports show. This shrank to less than 800 in 2020, making up just 2 percent of all cases filed.

And in 1990, roughly 4,000 juveniles were sentenced to some jail time. In 2020, that number has dropped to just 500.

These numbers have tanked at least in part because of evidence that shows kids are actually more likely to continue criminal behavior if they’re incarcerated, convincing some prosecutors to find alternatives for achieving justice.

“There’s quite a body of research that talks about when you prosecute children in the formal court system, they oftentimes can end up worse than when they entered the system. It’s rooted in this concept called ‘criminogenic effect’, and that’s a really fancy word for really what’s common sense,” Hung said. “I understand the legal process and the due process aspects of our justice system and how important that is, but sometimes when I think about child development and the end goal of having a kid understand what they did was wrong so that they don’t do it again, some of the stuff we do actually, I think, kind of reinforce that bad behavior.”

For both children and adults, incarceration can have far-reaching effects on their lives that can make it more difficult to re-enter society, including a lack of health and mental health care and decreased educational and employment opportunities — and that’s just when someone is currently serving hard time, since the stigma of being a felon can follow someone throughout their life.

Hence, King County’s focus on various programs that aim to tackle and combat the reasons some kids turn to crime — poor mental health, unsupportive/dysfunctional families, and lack of access to basic needs like food and housing — to keep communities safe. These programs include Family Intervention and Restorative Services (FIRS) and the FIRS Center, the goals of which is to improve home life for children; Step-Up, an international family violence intervention program; and diversion services, where kid offenders meet with the Partnership for Youth Justice program or the Diversion Community Accountability Board in order to determine how they can make amends in their communities rather than spending time in jail, and more.

“Not every time a kid does something wrong does accountability have to include a court room and a jail cell,” Hung said. “Kids can be held accountable in a lot of different ways that don’t involve having to threaten to take their liberty away.”

That said, Hung added that he recognizes there remains a strong need for juvenile detention, and doesn’t support abolishing these sorts of facilities in King County.

“I’m not the prosecutor here saying that we need to shut down all of our juvenile detention facilities and prisons — I know that there is a county executive call for zero youth detention, I’ll say that’s very ambitions and aspirational — but the sad truth is that our young people live in an environment right now where they’re out there shooting each other, and we have very, very serious cases where unfortunately we still have to lock kids up,” he said.

CASE BY CASE

Hung said he wants King County residents, especially those who advocate for harsh sentences for child offenders, to know that his office gives extreme thought to when a child should be diverted or actually charged with a crime.

“We in King County treat these cases so seriously that the chief prosecutor, me, I review every single one of them,” he said. “Even though I have a team of prosecutors who handle all of the cases, it’s the only category of cases that we insist, as part of our procedure, that I have eyes on them and decide what happens with the cases, simply because of how serious all these cases are.”

Hung and his team specifically decided to charge the Enumclaw High School girl with a Class B felony, rather than offer her diversion services.

“Our standards on threats to bomb a school settings leave it to our discretion to refer on a case by case basis. Some of the things we consider are whether there is any evidence of intent to carry out or ability to carry out. The other consideration is the level of disruption the threat caused to the community,” Hung said. “In this case, given the large emergency response and school closures, I decided it warranted filing.”

Still, he believes a deferred disposition is “a very logical response.”

“This is a child who clearly did something that was very poor judgement and caused a great deal of disruption in her community, and there needs to be some accountability to that, but do I think we’re better off for her to end up with some felony record where it’s going to impact her ability to have a job, impact her ability to find housing in the future, impact her ability to even get into college,” he added. “I am convinced that is not the best thing for her, and our community.”