Teens 16 and older charged with murder or attempted murder in Tennessee will now face life in prison due to a new “mandatory transfer” rule pushed through alongside the state’s blended sentencing law. The rule, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires older teens charged with murder to be transferred to the criminal justice system and tried as adults, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism reports. The policy is a first for Tennessee. Until recently, youths under 18 stayed in the juvenile justice system unless prosecutors asked a juvenile judge to transfer them to the adult system, said Jasmine Miller of the Youth Law Center. Having a judge review and approve transfers “ensures that every person who is considered for transfer to adult court has an individualized finding about whether or not they should be transferred,” said Miller. The legislators who passed the law want to reduce the discretion of Tennessee’s juvenile judges, who they say haven’t cracked down on youth crime. In reality, juvenile crime has been declining in the state for at least a decade. Before the law went into effect, juvenile judges approved most transfers of youths charged with murder in Tennessee, said Miller. Judges sometimes blocked transfers of children in “extraordinary circumstances,” she said.
Those “extraordinary circumstances” include cases where children have been trafficked or abused, like Cyntoia Brown. Brown, who was trafficked in Tennessee as a teen, killed a man who abused her. She was charged with murder at 16, tried as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison. “Every few years, a case comes along with someone like Cyntoia,” said Miller. “Yes, she did kill somebody, but she was trying to escape from someone who was trafficking her and raping her.” Brown’s case isn’t unusual; several studies indicate that a majority of incarcerated women and girls have been sexually abused at some point. In 2022, lawmakers required juvenile judges to consider whether a youth had been trafficked or abused before approving a transfer to the adult system. The state’s mandatory transfer rule means that judges cannot stop the transfers of children who have been trafficked or abused in murder cases. It's possible to charge kids with murder even if they haven’t actually killed anyone. In the past, a juvenile judge would have been able to stop these children from being tried as adults. Now, they can’t. For example, teens in Tennessee can be charged with murder if they share drugs with a friend who then dies of an overdose. A second-degree murder charge for “facilitating an overdose death” carries a minimum sentence of 25 to 40 years, said Miller, “And they have to serve 100% of that time.” Similarly, Tennessee’s “felony murder” rule allows prosecutors to bring first-degree murder charges against anyone who participates in a felony that results in someone’s death — even if they did not personally kill that person or were not physically present during the killing, said Dawn Harrington of Free Hearts, which works with incarcerated women and children in Tennessee.
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