Belated Props to Washington Supreme Court, Seattle Lawyer

Until last month, seventeen Washington counties didn’t require that juvenile defendants meet with an attorney before waiving their right to the same. This meant that in many cases, kids would accept plea bargains without being aware of the alternatives or consequences, and without having an attorney to consult or to dispute law enforcement’s version of events. (Full disclosure: my girlfriend is a juvenile public defender.)

“The juvenile would come in, the prosecutor would have an offer ready, and the judge would say ‘Do you want to take care of this now?’” explains George Yeannakis, a lawyer with TeamChild, an organization that seeks to divert kids from the criminal justice system and help them obtain needed services. Few kids ever want to return to court, so most accepted the plea. (There were 1,000 such pleas in 2007, says Yeannakis.) The Olympian rightly identified this problem in an April editorial.

With previous attempts at a legislative remedy having gone nowhere, Yeannakis drafted a court rule requiring that juveniles meet with an attorney and be clear on the consequences before deciding to waive counsel. The state Supreme Court eventually approved the rule in June; it went into effect last month. Kudos to Yeannakis and the Supreme Court for helping ensure kids' access to their right to counsel.