“This is the case that has no solution.”

In an anguished ruling, 12th District Court Judge John Sheldon wrote of 14-year-old Sheri Johnson, who stabbed her aunt 106 times in 1993. His words could just as easily apply to Maine’s entire juvenile court system.

Two years after Sheldon decided not to try Johnson as an adult, his ruling has become a reference point for state legislators as they ponder the most sweeping attempt to reform juvenile laws in decades.

For prosecutors, the case shows the maddening complexity of the system: If Johnson’s case were not serious enough to merit her being tried as an adult, what case could be?

For defense attorneys, civil rights advocates and corrections officials, the eloquent ruling — which makes references to Lincoln and Churchill, “The Merchant of Venice” and “Lord of the Flies” — is required reading. In no-nonsense English, the judge explains the difficulty of meting out justice to predatory juveniles.

The prosecution’s case, Sheldon says, is “a slam dunk.” The crime is one of “hideous brutality.” The killer, he says, is “amoral to the point of savagery.”

Nonetheless, when it came to imposing justice, Sheldon was stymied.

“The dispositional alternatives available to me read like a list of the walking wounded,” he writes. “The [Maine] Youth Center doesn’t have the funds to offer adequate violent offender intervention; the Department of Human Services might not be able to find, let alone afford, an out-of-state violent offender program for Sheri; the Maine Correctional Center, for Sheri, is the inside track to violent offender training.”

He concludes: “It is the lack of a satisfactory placement that reinforces the unsolved riddle of Sheri’s psyche and renders this the case that has no solution.”

Unsolved riddles

The solution to reforming the state’s juvenile criminal code is not coming any easier.

Judges in Maine are inclined to see juveniles as children — more open to rehabilitation than the hardened criminals locked up in adult prisons. The procedure to “bind over” juveniles, in which a judge decides whether a suspect acted as an adult or a minor, sets a very difficult standard for attorneys.

Prosecutors say they must fight two battles: one against the suspect, another against the system. More often than not, they say, protection of the juvenile outweighs protection of the community.

A bill submitted to the Legislature, LD 915, has become the vehicle for more than 18 juvenile crime initiatives before the Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice. Due to the scope of the proposed reforms, the committee chose to hold the bill until the next session.

Prosecutors want to lower the minimum adult age from 18 to 17. They want to reverse the burden of proof in serious crimes, allowing prosecutors to bind juveniles over to the adult system at their discretion; the juvenile would have to prove he should not be tried as an adult. And, in their most controversial move, prosecutors propose suspending juvenile Miranda rights, allowing officers to question minors without their parents or an attorney present.

So far, LD 915 has received expected opposition from the Maine Civil Liberties Union and the Maine Council of Churches, but also from a would-be ally: the state attorney general.

By lowering the adult age to 17, prosecutors go too far, according to the Attorney General’s Office. And by suspending Miranda rights, they say prosecutors are opening the door to inadmissible confessions and other legal headaches.

Same questions, same answers

R. Christopher Almy, who serves as president of the Maine Prosecutors Association, said the legislative process has proved almost as cumbersome as the juvenile code. In between prosecuting cases in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, the district attorney has traveled to Augusta four times in recent months, “answering the same questions and giving the same answers.”

“It’s frustrating,” Almy said. “I don’t think the committee as a group is prepared to do anything significant on juvenile crime.”

For the time being, Almy would like to speed up the time it takes to get from an arrest to court.

The current law requires a complex series of interactions between police, juvenile intake worker, court and the District Attorney’s Office. It’s a process that sometimes takes six months. The end result — usually probation — encourages many youths to thumb their noses at the system.

“You can’t do that with kids!” Almy said, pressing his index finger into his desk for emphasis. “Otherwise they commit crimes and start saying `Hey, that’s cool.”‘

The push for reform is occurring against a backdrop of intense national scrutiny of juvenile crime.

Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill designed to get tough on juveniles at the federal level.

In addition to federal penalties, the bill offers states $1.5 billion in incentive grants to persuade them to reform their own juvenile codes. To be eligible for the money, states would have to, among other things, try 15-year-olds as adults for the more serious violent crimes, require that open criminal records be established for minors after a second offense, and ensure there are escalating penalties for every juvenile crime.

The lotus-eaters

Reforming the code is difficult because it raises thorny social questions that don’t lend themselves to easy answers. Should the chief goal of the prison system be rehabilitation of the criminal or protection of the community?

How early is one’s personality formed? When is a child no longer a child?

“It’s not supposed to be easy to change someone from a child into an adult,” said Dale Thistle, a Newport attorney who represents the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It takes most of us a good, long while to get there.”

Coincidentally, Thistle served as Johnson’s defense attorney in the case that, perhaps more than any other, speaks to the larger issues now facing the system.

In a letter submitted to the court during her trial, Johnson, now 17, describes a youth subculture that seems to be growing.

“They are the misfits of society,” she writes. “Nobody wants or loves them. … I understand that I am slowly, but surely ruining my life, but I’m having fun doing it. Nobody knows how I feel. I like doing drugs. I like sleeping around. And I love my freedom.”

Judge Sheldon speaks directly to the multitudes who fear “the fabric of our society is being torn apart … by many of the things that attracted Sheri.

“Leniency in the face of such a threat seems lily-livered, a feeble retreat from an opportunity to throttle one of the lotus-eaters whose self-gratification rots the moral framework of our nation,” the judge wrote.

Of guns and `gangstas’

Who are these young predators? And where do they come from?

Almost uniformly, they are the children of absent or dysfunctional families. They often live with friends, ranging in age from 13 to 25. While not gangs in the typical sense, the groups form casual allegiances linked by drugs and petty crime, a fascination with inner city “gangstas” and, increasingly, the use of guns.

“What’s scary is the violence that’s starting to be more prevalent,” said Lt. Don Winslow of the Bangor Police Department. “A large number of youths aren’t being held accountable.”

“In juvenile cases, judges ask again and again, `How do you support yourself?”‘ said James Aucoin, the Penobscot County assistant district attorney in charge of juvenile crime. “Money doesn’t grow on trees. … They’ve got to shoplift, deal drugs, prostitute.”

It’s a subterranean world alien to most of Maine, but one that has risen to the surface recently in a spate of violent crime.

It’s the world of Michael Chasse, shot twice in February during a botched robbery at the Brewer home of Robert Cohen, brother of Secretary of Defense William Cohen. At age 23, Chasse has moved frequently in and around Bangor, partying with young girls from the Shaw House and young men from Job Corps and the Greater Bangor Area Shelter, according to his friends.

For months, Chasse reportedly tried to enlist acquaintances in an attempt to “bum-rush” Cohen and collect his “loot.” One accomplice was 16-year-old Kim “Randy” Snow, who pleaded guilty last month. Chasse’s case is pending.

His crowd mingled with friends of 19-year-old Jonathan Burgess, killed by a shotgun blast in March after a late-night party at the Bangor apartment of Aaron Yuen.

Police searching the apartment the next day found four guns, including one with a laser-guided sight. Authorities are still trying to determine if 19-year-old Yuen killed Burgess in self-defense.

Present at the party where Burgess was killed was Norman Hightower, 15, no stranger to the juvenile system.

According to court documents, Hightower told police that he had bought marijuana from Yuen in the past and was playing with a gun in Yuen’s bedroom the night of the shooting. Hightower was at the party until 2 a.m., in violation of a court-imposed curfew.

`A lot of hooey’

Perhaps no recent incident shocked local authorities more than the brazen shooting of a 61-year-old Clifton store owner in March.

Police say 17-year-old Cote Choneska entered the Clifton Variety Store, shot James Hodgins four times at close range with a .380-caliber handgun, then leaned over the counter where the man lay bleeding and unloaded two final shots. Hodgins remains in fair condition at Eastern Maine Medical Center, Bangor.

As a juvenile, the stiffest penalty Choneska could receive would be four years at the Maine Youth Center in South Portland. If tried as an adult, the maximum sentence would increase exponentially: 40 years on each count of robbery and attempted murder.

“You can’t take a Cote Choneska who shot someone in the brutal fashion he did and expect that he’s going to get significant treatment between now and the age of 21,” Almy said. “That’s a lot of hooey.”

Aware of the bill’s enormous ramifications, legislators are reluctant to move quickly.

“We’ve been served quite a plateful on this,” said Sen. Robert Murray, D-Bangor, the Senate chairman of the joint committee.

The committee’s staff will examine the issue over the summer. The Criminal Law Advisory Commission — a panel of judges, lawyers and others in the criminal justice system charged with reviewing changes to Maine’s criminal code — will provide recommendations before the committee addresses the issue again next year.

On the streets, in judge’s chambers and courtrooms, emotions are running high. The juvenile problem appears out of control. Reform efforts seem to be moving at a glacial pace.

“Everyone’s frustrations are spilling out,” said Mary Ann Saar, associate commissioner of the Department of Corrections.

She notes that peers across the country agree that get-tough measures on juveniles are not decreasing recidivism, the criminal justice word for repeat offenders.

Nonetheless, the DOC has submitted its own bill to ease the bind-over process. Less draconian than the prosecutor’s bill, the DOC proposal calls for automatic bind-overs in the most violent crimes: murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape and aggravated assault.

Money matters

An important factor not yet addressed by the committee is the fiscal impact of the proposals. A legislative analysis cavalierly limits economic predictions to one sentence: “The fiscal impact of these bills has not yet been determined.”

The difference between punishment and rehabilitation often comes down to a matter of dollars and cents. A state-run youth center costs about $25,000 a year per child. Residential treatment centers for violent teen-agers, which exist solely out of state, can cost between $80,000 and $100,000 a year per child. It costs about $30,000 to house an adult in state prison.

While the state awaits the opening of a long-delayed juvenile holding facility in Charleston, law enforcement officials complain bitterly that halfway houses such as Bangor’s Shaw House are being used as detention centers, without rules or regulations.

Only one thing is certain: The debate about juvenile crime is unlikely to end soon.

“As long as there’s hope for juveniles, we should help them,” said Saar. “Let’s face it, wherever we put them, someday they’re coming out.”