The 15-year-old who is accused of gunning down Joel Watkins will be tried as a juvenile.
Watkins’ father says that is an insult added to his injury.
“I’ve lived in D.C. all my life, but I’m really disappointed in this city,” Samuel Stevenson told the Washington Examiner. “I’ve been trying to get somebody involved to get them to change their thinking on this juvenile thing.”
D.C. law allows kids to be tried as adults only if they are 16 or older.
If the child is 15, the D.C. attorney general can petition a court to try him or her as an adult, but it’s a lengthy — and costly — process.
The problem for victims and their survivors is that a child convict can only be kept until he or she is 21.
“This boy, if he gets five years in jail, he probably won’t do any more than two,” Stevenson said of his son’s accused killer.
D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, has oversight of the youth justice agency.
He says he’s willing to think about changing the law to lock up juvenile offenders, but said that recidivism has fallen dramatically under the current system.
“We can’t let individual cases determine policy,” Wells said.
Watkins, also 15, had a long juvenile record himself.
He was assigned to school at Shadd, a tough facility on the Eastern tip of the District for emotionally disturbed children.
But Stevenson said he had hopes for the boy.
“I wanted him to learn a lesson,” Stevenson said of his son. “But I didn’t want him to learn the lesson like this.”
