Teen's Case To Stay In Adult Court
By Rachel Gottlieb
Originally published in The Hartford Courant, July 21, 2001
Hartford prosecutors decided Friday to try 14-year-old Gregory Wright Jr. as an adult in the killing of his father rather than ask a judge to move his case to a juvenile court—a move sought by advocates for victims of domestic violence.
The decision, made by Hartford State's Attorney James Thomas, means the teen faces 25 to 60 years in prison, rather than a maximum of four years at a juvenile detention center.
"I agree with his decision," said Assistant State's Attorney Robin Cutuli, who will try the case. "The case is a murder case, so it has to stay in adult court."
State law requires that defendants charged with Class A felonies—murder falls into this category—who are 14 or older be tried as adults. To move the case to juvenile court, prosecutors would have to reduce Wright's charge to something less serious, such as manslaughter.
"The decision was this was the appropriate charge for the crime," Cutuli said. During trial, a judge could, at the request of the prosecutor or public defender, instruct the jury to consider lesser charges.
Other teenagers charged with murder have been tried as adults in this state.
In 1996, a 14-year-old girl was charged with murder and eventually convicted in the fatal stabbing of a cab driver in Hartford; she is serving 50 years, and an accomplice, 16 at the time of the slaying, is serving 37 years.
As city residents and top political and law enforcement officials grow increasingly alarmed by a tide of homicides in Hartford, the shooting death of 37-year-old Gregory Wright Sr. in front of his Maple Avenue home on July 8 has sparked a wave of sympathy for the boy.
Wright's mother told police her son was trying to protect her after her husband hit her in the face so hard that she fell down and slammed her head on the family's front steps. The youth reportedly raced upstairs, grabbed a gun that his father had given him to protect himself from neighborhood bullies, and returned to point it at his father.
The encounter turned deadly, police said, when the father challenged the boy to pull the trigger "or I'll get you later."
The teen pulled the trigger twice, hitting his father in his face and chest, police said.
As the deadline neared for prosecutors to decide whether to request a transfer to juvenile court, advocates for victims of domestic violence rallied around Wright. Through letters to the editor and calls to Cutuli and the chief state's attorney's office, sympathizers argued that the case should be heard in juvenile court.
David Mandel, co-founder of the Middletown-based Non-Violence Alliance and Domestic Violence Intervention Training Institute, is among those advocating for the boy.
Mandel, who called Cutuli on Friday, said the case should be in juvenile court because children are different from adults developmentally, and those differences should be considered while judging their actions.
Also, Mandel said, it may not be appropriate to charge the boy with murder because murder implies intent to kill. In this case, he said, the boy's intent may have been to scare his father.
When the boy confronted his father with the gun, Mandel said, he did not kill him immediately. "There was a period of time," he said, in which the father reportedly challenged his son to shoot. The situation, he said, escalated into an immediate threat to the boy's life.
It is not yet clear whether Wright's public defender, Dave Smith, will claim self-defense or use another defense such as extreme emotional disturbance or mental illness, Cutuli said.
Smith was out of town Friday and could not be reached for comment.
Mandel complained that the state statute on self-defense as a legal defense is written more for "people in a bar fight," and does not consider the circumstances of "ongoing dependency, hostage family-type situations.
"How many times do you need to see somebody you love close to death or being hurt badly before you believe it could be you next time or it could be them?" he asked. "The laws are not sensitive to people being battered by somebody in an ongoing way."
Wright is being held in juvenile detention, with bail set at $350,000. He is scheduled to appear Tuesday in Hartford Superior Court.
