Wisconsin Supreme Court opens term with case of child charged in adult court

Entry to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the Capitol in Madison. Photograph by Margo Kirchner.

By Alexandria Staubach
 
The Wisconsin Supreme Court opens its session with oral arguments next week, including a case concerning the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s reverse waiver statute.
 
“Reverse waiver” is used to describe a case that begins in adult court but is later transferred to juvenile court. Under the pertinent statute, adult circuit courts exercise original jurisdiction over various homicide charges for any child alleged to have committed the crime “on or after the juvenile’s 10th birthday.” That jurisdiction can only be transferred to juvenile court through the reverse waiver process.
 
Noah Mann-Tate was charged with intentional first-degree homicide, a Class A felony (the most serious), for shooting his mother in November 2022. He was 10 years old at the time.
 
Charges were brought in early 2023 after Mann-Tate made conflicting statements to police about what happened, including an admission that he was angry with his mother, stole and hid the key to her gun safe the night before, accessed a gun, and shot her in the morning.
 
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Jane Carroll denied Mann-Tate’s motion for reverse waiver. She said that “the most compelling reason to keep Mann-Tate in the juvenile system was his age” and that a 10-year-old did not belong in the adult court system. However, she found she was required to consider only the factors listed in the statute, which do not include age.
 
The reverse waiver statute defines three factors that must be considered by the adult court when considering transfer: whether the juvenile can receive adequate treatment in the adult criminal justice system, the seriousness of the offense, and the effect on general deterrence. The burden is on the child to establish that statutory requirements for reverse waiver are met.
 
In Mann-Tate’s appeal from Carroll’s decision, Wisconsin Court of Appeals District 1 found Wisconsin’s reverse-waiver law unconstitutional. Judge Sara Geenen wrote the decision for the appeals court panel.
 
Geenen wrote that a decade after Wisconsin enacted its reverse waiver statute, the U.S. Supreme Court “fundamentally altered the way in which juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system.” Based on the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the high court distinguished juveniles for the purposes of sentencing.
 
The Court of Appeals found that the distinction is not limited to Eighth Amendment issues. It said that additional factors discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court should be considered during reverse waiver proceedings. Those factors include the child’s chronological age related to maturity and impulsiveness, the child’s ability to appreciate risk and consequences, family and home life and the circumstances of the crime, impact on family, peer pressure, the effect of age on the child’s ability to navigate the criminal justice process, and the possibility of rehabilitation.
  
Mann-Tate argued, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the statutory factors set out in Wisconsin law are “unconstitutionally incomplete” because they fail to include the “unique attributes of youth” as identified and required by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
Geenen noted that the circuit court could not find whether adult court treatment services were sufficient because although Mann-Tate had “below-normal-intelligence,” there was no medical diagnosis in the record, despite the child telling officers that he has five imaginary people who talk to him. Because Mann-Tate’s mental health needs were unknown, he could not prove that the adult system could not provide adequate treatment.
 
The state asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review the case, leading to next week’s argument date.
 
Of note, Bryan Stevenson, the acclaimed attorney and executive director of Equal Justice Initiative (a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama), has entered an appearance on Mann-Tate’s behalf for purposes of the Supreme Court proceedings.