Largely in response to a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in 2024, the Georgia State Senate approved a measure that would enhance the penalties for children between 13 and 17 who threaten public or private schools.
Senate Bill 61 was pushed by Republicans and passed 33-22 in a party-line vote. It would allow children aged 13 to 17 to be tried as adults for terroristic threatening. They could also land in superior court for attempting to commit, or for conspiracy to commit, terroristic threatening.
The legislation also would allow prosecutors to move other serious crimes into superior court, including aggravated assault with a gun or armed robbery.
The chief sponsor, Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, called it a school safety bill. But Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, said he saw it as criminalizing kids. At a committee hearing, critics said children’s brains are not fully developed and they sometimes do “dumb things.”
Should I Hire a Lawyer or Go with a Court-Appointed Lawyer?
Quite simply, tough laws require a tough Marietta criminal defense lawyer. That’s especially true if a juvenile faces the possibility of a long prison sentence. Regardless of the circumstances, that outcome is about the worst tragedy that could happen to a family.
Sometimes, this tough lawyer is a court-appointed lawyer. Many top-flight Marietta criminal defense lawyers routinely take court appointments, especially in felony cases. Unfortunately, other court-appointed lawyers are absolute neophytes who barely know where the courthouse is located.
Usually, judges randomly assign court-appointed lawyers, and these appointments are usually permanent. As we used to tell our children when they were younger, you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.
So, instead of working with a court-appointed lawyer and hoping for the best, hiring a private Marietta criminal defense lawyer is usually a much better option. Defendants may choose their own lawyers, based on qualities like:
- Accessibility: Professional accessibility usually isn’t a problem in criminal cases. About 90 percent of Marietta criminal defense attorneys belong to firms with fewer than three lawyers. So, for the most part, your lawyer handles your entire case. However, physical accessibility could be an issue. Your lawyer should have an office near your home, workplace, or other stomping ground.
- Dedication: We’ve used the illustration of the late, great Grant Cooper before. Cooper was alleged RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan’s lawyer. Cooper was more of a celebrity lawyer than a criminal lawyer. As a result, he might have missed some potential weaknesses in the state’s case, such as inconsistencies between the official report and witness statements. A dedicated lawyer overturns every stone.
- Experience: Accessibility and dedication are necessary, but there’s no substitute for experience. Generally, law schools teach analytical skills, but they don’t teach procedural or advocacy skills. Only an experienced lawyer not only knows the law, but also knows how to make the law work for defendants.
This issue may be irrelevant. Many defendants aren’t eligible for court-appointed lawyers. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a lawyer, not the right to a free lawyer. As a rule of thumb, if the defendant is out on bail, the defendant probably isn’t “indigent” and eligible for a court-appointed lawyer.
Terroristic Threat: A Closer Look
The experience, dedication, and accessibility combination is especially important in terroristic threat cases, as these matters are very complex.
Under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-37, a terroristic threat is a credible threat to commit a crime of violence, release a hazardous substance, or burn or damage property. These threats must be issued with the purpose of terrorizing another party, to trigger the evacuation of a building, facility, or public transport, and/or to cause serious public inconvenience.
In some contexts, such as search warrants, credibility is an important issue. But in this context, even an idle or “jk” threat could be considered a terroristic threat, if that idle or jk threat causes one of the aforementioned consequences.
The penalties for a conviction vary, based upon whether the charge was filed as a misdemeanor or felony.
An “Ima blow up the school” social media or verbal threat could be a misdemeanor. So is a specific threat against a specific person or institution, at least in most cases.
If the threat includes a death threat, whether or not this portion of the threat names a specific person, terroristic threat is a felony, punishable by fines up to $1,000 and prison time not less than one year, and up to five. If any person was injured as a result of the threat, the fines are increased exponentially, up to $250,000, with a prison term between five and forty years.
Aggressive prosecutors normally charge idle threats as felony cases. “Blowing up the school” implies that someone may be inside the school at the time.
In cases in which a terroristic threat had the purpose of evacuating a building, facility, public transportation or a place of assembly, or with the purpose of causing a serious public inconvenience, the fines will be not less than $50,000, and incarceration for not less than five, and up to forty years, or both.
The Underdeveloped Brain “Defense”
We put “defense” in quotation marks because, in most cases, the underdeveloped brain defense is a mitigating circumstance and not a legal defense.
The underdeveloped brain defense usually focuses on risk/reward analysis. Children sometimes act out dangerous social media stunts because they see the reward of eating a laundry detergent pod (peer accolades and likes on Tik Tok) but not the risk of this behavior (dying).
In the criminal law context, a child or young adult appreciates the reward of a crime like theft (getting what s/he wants) but not the risk (going to jail).
However, this concept is a legal defense if a Marietta criminal defense lawyer proves the defendant’s underdeveloped brain impaired the defendant’s thought process and constitutes a mental defect.
Young adults and children might celebrate a teacher’s grisly death because they think it’s funny. Arguably, therefore, the defendant lacked mens rea (criminal state of mind), and the defendant didn’t commit an offense.
Terroristic threat is one of the most complex criminal offenses in Georgia. For a free consultation with an experienced Marietta criminal defense attorney, contact The Phillips Law Firm, LLC. Convenient payment plans are available.
