DATE: Sunday, May 25, 1997                  TAG: 9705250105

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:  129 lines

A FACE-TO-FACE TALK ON TEENS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

On Tuesday, 18-year-old Chauncey Jackson was sentenced to death for murdering Ronald G. Bonney Jr. in 1994 in Norfolk's Diggs Town.

Jackson - barely 16 when he shot Bonney with a .25-caliber handgun - is only the fourth juvenile in Virginia to receive the death sentence since 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate the death penalty.

About 3,200 people are on death row in the United States. Jackson will be one of 12 who were 16 when the crime was committed. There is no one younger than 16 on death row.

Late last week, in an interview with Virginian-Pilot staff writer Larry W. Brown, Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Charles D. Griffith Jr. talked about how his office handled the Jackson case and shared his views on punishing teenagers who commit violent crimes.

Q: With the Jackson case, what is the message coming out of your office directly to the public?

Griffith: The message is designed to, one, teach those individuals lessons. Two, protect the public. But the third one, and I'm thinking in the

long term the most important because I've said it many times . . . is that we're dealing with a generational problem.

We have taught an entire generation of people that we don't mean business in our court system. So while I'm punishing those ones and teaching them a lesson and providing for public safety . . . I also hope we're sending a message to the newborns, the 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-year-olds, that . . . they need to focus on their opportunities for education and to not get involved with crime when they become 12- to 15-year-olds.

I don't believe it's a message that gets sent and received overnight.

Q: What has shaped your thinking on the standards for punishing teenagers who commit serious crimes: religion, ethics, past experience, public pressure, fear of crime?

Griffith: I don't think parents do their kids favors when they let their kids break home rules and not suffer some consequence for it. Anybody that goes back to their own experience or they have kids . . . knows that different parents raise their kids different ways.

But the key component to kids who are raised to be productive, law-abiding citizens are kids who understand limits in their own household and understand there are consequences for stepping outside the limits. That same attitude, that same way to approach problems, I think can be taken and put into our court building.

We fall under this incorrect view of thinking if you punish somebody that you are being mean to them, that you want to hurt them. That's not why you punish somebody. You punish somebody because you want to correct their behavior. You want to teach them a lesson.

Q: How did you decide to seek the death penalty for Chauncey Jackson?

Griffith: When we have a case that is a capital offense (a crime punishable by the death penalty), there are two basic criteria: future dangerousness and violence.

We don't commit ourselves when the charges are first filed. Everybody needs to go under the basic assumption that this is a case where we may seek the death penalty. I'm not going to make an immediate decision not to seek the death penalty. I want to make sure we've gotten everything ironed out.

Chauncey Jackson had the additional factor. When he got (released on bond), he committed a whole series of violent offenses. That gave us a whole new perspective on it.

The goal is: As long as the death penalty is the law, we think it's appropriate that juries will to be the ones to make the ultimate decision as long as there's evidence to support that particular penalty.

Q: Who makes the decision to seek the death penalty, you or the prosecutor who handles the case?

Griffith: In the end, whether or not we're going to pursue the death penalty is a decision I do make, but I don't make it in a vacuum. Nobody in the office is going to say `I'm going to do this, I'm going to pursue the death penalty in this case,' without having discussed it with me.

We do discuss these things in depth. It's not something that if . . . we make a preliminary decision that we are going to seek the death penalty that our minds can't be changed as things develop.

Somebody who won't accept responsibility (for their crimes) will get less leniency from us than someone who will accept responsibility.

Q: Should a 16-year-old be held to the same moral standards as an adult? The same legal standards?

Griffith: I'm very comfortable professionally and personally that juveniles charged with certain offenses at certain ages ought to be tried as adults. I (would not be) at all uncomfortable with the age of 14 being the cutoff (for juveniles) where they should be tried as adults. I'm not uncomfortable with the age of 16.

Q: Do the standards in your office for seeking the death penalty for a juvenile differ from the standards for adults?

Griffith: When you're looking at a juvenile, I think it is important that it be a juvenile who either commits an act that clearly fits into the violence, depravity of mind, torture category and/or one where you have pretty strong evidence of future dangerousness.

The Chauncey Jackson case does not fall under the violence standard. He falls under the future dangerousness standard, and that is clearly where we were going and what we pursued it on.

It's just coincidental that you caught them at a young age, because sooner or later something like this is going to happen in their life. Do you wait until they do it again later in life? No, because the Supreme Court has given us that really clear line.

If you're under 16, you're not eligible.

Q: When Chauncey Jackson goes to death row, he will be one of only 12 death-row inmates in America who were 16 when they committed their crimes. Did this enter into your thinking before you sought the death penalty?

Griffith: We became aware of that fact after we were pursuing the death penalty. It had nothing to do with the decision.

It's not tough for me to make a decision.

Once I realize we're dealing with the facts that were created by the defendant and apply them to the law, I don't have any personal struggle with it. I didn't put them in this position. They have to be the ones who accept responsibility.

Q: Have your attitudes on the death penalty changed over the years? How so?

Griffith: I think the death penalty is an appropriate penalty, personally and professionally.

As far as my election is concerned, I made a promise that we would give the community these decisions and we've done it. If we had given the community the opportunity to impose the death penalty in a dozen appropriate cases that fit the statutory criteria and in a dozen cases they'd given life (in prison), I would have simply said, you know, that's the community's view. MEMO: Related article on page B6. ILLUSTRATION: Color file photo

``Somebody who won't accept responsibility (for their crimes) will

get less leniency from us than someone who will accept

responsibility.'' - CHARLES D. GRIFFITH JR. KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT JUVENILE CRIMINAL MURDER

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu