Over 700 incarcerated people in Washington state prisons are serving additional time for crimes they committed as minors. If a new bill introduced in the Legislature last week passes, they could be eligible for a sentence rehearing.
These inmates were “left behind” by the 2023 bill that eliminated juvenile felonies from being automatically tacked on to adult felony sentences, said Rep. Chris Stearns, D-Auburn. Those felonies, called adjudications, later became points in an offender score that increased their sentence term as an adult. The controversial bill passed by a slim margin and excluded currently incarcerated people. It also excludes any reductions for murder or a serious sex offense.
Stearns, the prime sponsor of House Bill 1274 and a member of the Navajo Nation, said the bill creates an opportunity, not a guarantee. Of Native Americans who are incarcerated in Washington, 41% have one or more juvenile felonies on their criminal record, the highest percentage for any race in state prisons, according to data shared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
“The use of juvenile points in sentencing results in unjust sentences and is not necessary for the preservation of public safety,” Stearns said at a public hearing held by the House Community Safety Committee on Jan. 28. “We left a lot of people behind. In doing so, we also failed to address the historic disproportionalities of this system.”
The committee passed the bill on Feb. 6 and can be moved on to either another House committee or the entire House chamber.
Advocates for the retroactive elimination of juvenile points say it's a commonsense law that addresses institutionalized injustice and would save the state money on incarceration. Those in opposition say it's a burden for victims and would strain the courts because of the state’s shortage of prosecutors.
Jacob Schmitt, formerly incarcerated director of Just Us Solutions, a consultancy nonprofit for those in criminal court, said research shows that brains aren’t fully developed until age 25. And he notes that minors in Washington, unlike some states, are not given a jury a trial unless they are tried as an adult.
“You go to juvenile hall and you’re a kid, and your attorney says, ‘Hey, look if you plead guilty, this is your first offense, we’re gonna get you probation, and you’re gonna be out of here tomorrow,’” Schmitt said. “And now all of a sudden, you don’t understand what that portends for you if you get in trouble when you’re 22 years old.”
Tiffany Attrill, former victim advocate who ran for election in the House last year, said she appreciates the bill’s resources for victims but couldn’t imagine telling her former client that the person who brutally murdered her daughter would be receiving less time.
“Resentencing reopens a wound and is re-traumatizing,” Attrill said.
Last year, a similar bill was passed in the House but died in a Senate committee. The number of people it would have impacted wasn’t clear, and there was concern it would cost the state too much, Stearns said. In response to the confusion, the Senate passed a budget commissioning a study from the Office of Public Defense.
The study found that between 702 and 856 people in the state’s prison population would be affected by the retroactive removal of juvenile points and that it would have a greater impact on non-white individuals.
The projected sentence reduction was the highest for Asian American and Pacific Islanders at nearly 15 years on average. Native Americans were second-highest at just over nine years, then Black people and Hispanics at 8½ years, and white people at 5½ years, according to the study.
Debating sentencing guidelines
Redhawk Monte is part of the 41% of Native American convicts in the state prisons who have one or more juvenile felonies. He was sentenced to prison in 2019 carrying an offender score of 19. Five points are from his juvenile record.
Monte is in prison for his third time as an adult. He said he grew up with alcoholic parents and no role model. He said he was abused while he was in one of the state’s juvenile detention homes. At 12 years old, his first juvenile charge was for stealing from a store.
“Every other time I got in trouble, I paid by doing more time for that crime,” Monte said. “It continually punished me for the rest of my life.”
He’s currently in prison after being convicted of two counts of domestic violence, assault and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm. Monte was suicidal in the summer of 2017 and his wife, Kristel Monte, alerted the state’s Department of Corrections that he had the gun. The Seattle Police Department contacted him days later. Court documents said he fired one shot at police. Police shot Monte seven times. Two years later, he was given an “exceptional sentence” of 45 years, namely because he had committed another serious crime before he was sentenced.
“I don’t think juvie points should be used against a person that already took the punishment for what he did as a child,” Kristel Monte said. “It’s not really relevant.”
A grid system determines sentences in Washington courts, similar to other states that followed suit with a national trend in the ’80s.
The grid recognizes an offender score from the number of felonies in a criminal history. The score and the severity of crimes being tried make up a standard sentencing range. The higher the offender score, the longer the sentence, but the grid only goes up to nine points.
Before July 2023, juvenile felonies were included in offender scores and, on average, extended a sentence by nine years, even though those felonies had already been reconciled through juvenile detention or some other punishment. But even then, each juvenile point only counted for half a point and was always rounded down.
If eliminating juvenile points would not reduce an offender score to nine or lower, like in Monte’s case, it’s likely the sentence would remain the same. That doesn’t change Kristel Monte’s support of the bill.
“If it doesn’t help him, it will still hopefully help a lot of other people,” she said.
Some House Republicans, like Jenny Graham of Spokane, a ranking Republican member of the community safety committee, argue that those with juvenile points show consistent criminal behavior.
“If they won’t change, it is our responsibility to make sure that they are managed in a way where they don’t continue to keep harming other people,” Graham said.
If the bill passed the Legislature, the hundreds of incarcerated individuals eligible for a resentencing would first petition for a hearing. The individual must have had significant rehabilitation without a weighty disciplinary record while in prison. The court would then determine if it’s safe to let the person back into the community. If these bars are passed, a resentencing hearing would be scheduled sometime after Jan. 1, 2026.
During the public hearing, James McMahan, policy director for the state Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, said that prosecutors already lack the time to charge serious offenses that happen everyday.
“We certainly don’t want to see precious court and prosecutor time taken up on resentences from people who have proven multiple times to be violent in our community,” McMahan said.
Rep. Stearns heard this concern last year and said he fashioned the bill in a way to not overburden the courts by staggering the hearings over a five-year period.
“Administrative concerns should not and simply cannot outweigh the demonstrated racial injustice which this bill directly addresses,” said San Juan County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Loring.
The bill also provides counsel for the incarcerated individuals if they cannot afford it themselves.
Victim rights
The bill provides several avenues of relief for victims of perpetrators who would be eligible for early release.
Victims would be notified of the sentence rehearing and allowed to make a statement.
The state Office of Crime Victims Advocacy would be contracted to offer free psychotherapy, travel expenses to and from court, and moving assistance once the perpetrator is released.
It would also provide consultation, safety planning and the option of a restorative justice program between the victim and perpetrator.
“As a survivor of violence myself, I know that my healing and the accountability of the person who harmed me are not tied up in his punishment, even all these years later,” said Cassandra Butler, operations manager at Collective Justice, a Seattle nonprofit that helps victims and perpetrators repair past harms. “Punishing people twice for crimes committed as children does not make us safer.”
InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Aspen Ford, a Roy W. Howard fellow, can be reached at aspen@investigatewest.org.
