How Las Vegas Juvenile Detention Centers Work

Juvenile crimes in Las Vegas are handled differently from crimes committed by adults. Like in many other places across the country, Las Vegas juvenile offenders are processed through a juvenile court to have their cases and heard, and may face anything between home detention and a court-mandated community service program to work off their conviction. This is the case with many minor offenses like shoplifting, driving without a license or disturbing the peace.

However, there are situations where a simple house arrest may not be enough. Some juvenile offenders may be found guilty of more serious crimes, like robbery, physical assault or drunk driving. These cases require the attention of specialized facilities aimed at providing more in-depth support to help these wayward youths turn their lives around. Let’s take a closer look at how Las Vegas juvenile correctional centers work.

What Are Juvenile Detention Centers?

Adult offenders often have to serve their sentence wholly or partly within the confines of a prison facility. By law, juvenile offenders charged with serious crimes are not allowed to be detained in similar locations unless they are tried as adults. Instead, they are held at juvenile detention centers, either as temporary lodgements prior to a final judgement or as permanent holdings until the sentence has been completely served. This follows the principle of parens patriae, where the state has a duty to guide juvenile offenders and help them get back on the right track.

Juvenile detention centers have a variety of features and services designed to provide a rehabilitative rather than punitive program for underage offenders. Besides the presence of monitoring equipment and inidividual holding facilities, individuals have access to competent educational services, physical and mental health professionals, and vocational training programs that aim to give them an alternative to a life of crime. Note that these educational programs are not uniform and may vary from state to state. Additionally, some juvenile detention centers may also provide specialized facilities and personnel for handling juvenile delinquents with special needs.

Tenets of Juvenile Detention Centers

Juvenile detention centers were established based on tenets revolving around juvenile youth rehabilitation. These tenets include:

• Temporary custody, providing short-term incarceration for wayward youths to give them ample time to rehabilitate and quickly reintegrate back into society.
• Safe custody to keep the youth safe. The youth should feel safe from harm or possible retribution for his or her crime while in custody.
• A restricted environment that limits the youth’s movement while still providing ample space to take action towards rehabilitation. Restriction depends on the level of the youth’s crime.
• Community safety, or preventing the youth from causing further trouble towards other people.
• The center will be a place where the youth can be properly detained pending legal action regarding his case.
• Helpful resources should be available to provide detained youths with alternative methods of learning and livelihood.
• Clinical sevices are provided to monitor a detained youth’s physical and mental well-being.

Juvenile Detention Centers in Las Vegas

Las Vegas does not have its own juvenile detention center per se. Instead, it has the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center, a juvenile correctional facility that provides services for all the locations within the county. It is a 192-bed facility with a mixed staff of correctionals officials, educators, medical professionals and vocational instructors.

This particular youth detention center offers traditional rehabilitory services like education programs, arts & crafts, and seminars on self-esteem and crime awareness. Detained youths can also sign up for yoga classes, listen to discussions regarding gang intervention and life skills, and delve into culture studies. Medical professionals care for the detained youths’ well-being, while correctional officials provide security and conduct risk assessment to determine if youths are free to go before or during their juvenile court hearing. 

Juvenile detention centers in Las Vegas are a vital part of the legal justice system in the city, providing a positive path for delinquent youths to turn away from their wayward actions and become productive members of society. If you still have questions regarding how juvenile detention centers operate, consult your local criminal defense attorney for more.

Five Bizarre Criminal Defenses That Worked in Court

Criminal defense can be a complex matter to people. In order to reach an acquittal for their clients, criminal defense attorneys have to painstakingly shuffle through files upon files of evidence for and against them, finding inconsistencies they can exploit or identifying key statements that can help prove their client’s innocence. In many cases, lawyers have to fall back on legal precedents or landmark judgements in the past to argue for their client’s acquittal.

However, there are some instances where the defense utilizes some unusual methods to attain a charge dismissal. These methods ranged from claims of witchcraft or spiritual possession in the past to odd but technically legal circumstances in the present. Listed below are a few of the more bizarre criminal defense that worked in a competent court of law.

Afflicted with the Richness

One of the more common tropes in many forms of fiction is the rich and loaded defendant--a person who can literally pay off any judge or jury that tries to indict him for any wrongdoing. This particular case involving a Texas teenager from back in 2012 is a different take on the whole scenario, and has made waves in the news for how ridiculous the outcome was. Ethan Couch was involved in a fatal DUI-induced crash, which left four other people dead. The prosecution had rock-solid evidence that would put the teenager away for life on multiple counts, but he managed to walk away with only a rehab order. His defense team successfully argued that he was suffering from ‘affluenza’, a pseudoscientific disorder that claims spoiled rich children lose any form of self-judgement and are prone to make fatal mistakes. This bizarre argument somehow secured a reduction in his conviction and has kept him from more severe penalties, and has earned the ire and ridicule of legal professionals everywhere. These days, couch has been in and out of jail due to his drinking problems, and was last arrested in January from violating his probation dues.

Just Like the Simulations

The Matrix is one of the more seminal films of the turn of the millenium, lauded as the hallmark in movie effects and style. It has also led to a brief period where people were interested in the idea that this reality is merely a simulation controlled by some unknown entity. While many people think of this idea as merely a starting point for either a deep discussion on existentialism or a fountain of internet jokes, there have been some individuals who have taken this idea to heart and used it to justify their crimes. One of the first and most popular instances of this defense was with Ohio woman Tonda Lynn Ansley who shot and killed her landlady in 2002. She succesfully achieved a dismissal due to insanity thanks to her defense lawyers’ claim that she perceived this reality as being a virtual simulation in the Matrix, and even her actions aren’t real.This defense has surprisingly held up for a while, with related cases reaching the same verdicts for nearly a decade.

Sleeping on a Conviction

Sleepwalking is a serious condition that involves a person doing a complex action despite having minimal or no level of consciousness. While common among children, it is also prevalent in adults who suffer from heavy sleep deprivation. The lack of sleep and associated effects may be a reason why some people have claimed that they have no memory of committing severe crimes. Take Arizona native Steven Steinberg as an example. Steinberg stood trial for allegedly killing his wife in cold blood one night in 1981. Nonetheless, his  case was dismissed with no additional issues to worry about. The reason? His defense convinced the court that the act was committed in a state of intermittent sleepwalking as a result of stress caused by his wife. The case was not the first recorded instance of the sleepwalking defense in American court, but the factors around it helped it stand out among other similar instances.

Metered for Death

Fiction has been a major source of inspiration for many criminals over the years, with many ‘copycat’ cases following the precise steps undertaken in crime dramas, pulp novels and movies. Many cases go way beyond the Matrix case mentioned earlier, with suspects going as far as embodying the fictional characters themselves. Probably one of the most famous of these types of criminals is John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He claimed to have watched the classic psychological thriller Taxi Driver repeatedly, believed that he resonated with Robert de Niro’s character, and formed a stalker-like obsession with Jodie Foster. The assassination attempt was his idea of impressing Foster and getting her attention on the mistaken belief that he was becoming De Niro’s character brought to life. His testimony helped him secure a dismissal via insanity.

Brainstormed

This particular incident stands out from the previous cases because its circumstances would eventually be related to modern accepted legal precedents. In 1907, railroad coal business heir Harry Thaw stood trial for the murder of prominent architect Stanford White in 1906. Thaw shot White due to a sexual affair the latter had with his wife before they were married. Thaw was known for his severe mental episodes (dubbed ‘brain storms’ during the time) and overall unstable demeanor, but this was used by his defense to secure a dismissal for an otherwise solid murder conviction. The defense dubbed it dementia americana, ‘a species of insanity which makes every American believe his home to be sacred… [and] makes him believe his wife to be sacred’. Thaw’s lawyers argued that White trespassed on Mrs. Thaw’s purity, and Thaw had gone temporarily insane in a bid to defend what he believed to be his. While seemingly outrageous, the reasoning behind their dementia americana defense--about Thaw defending his property from unauthorized and provocative trespassing--would eventually apply to modern-day castle doctrine and stand-your-ground laws in many states across the country.

These are just a handful of unique criminal defense incidents that have resulted in dismissals for their defendants, which should not work under regular circumstances. These, however, are by no means a guideline on what to do if ever you have to face a major criminal charge. Always consult with your defense attorney before committing to any kind of plea or defense plan.

Explaining the Motion to Suppress Evidence

The guilt or innocence of a defendant in a criminal trial is dependent on several factors. However, one of the key items that can never be ignored is the evidence. Many classic criminal trials were decided on a single piece of evidence found at the scene of the crime, in an unexpected area far from the scene of the crime, or even in possession of the defendant. Such cases are prominent in both legal fiction and real-world newspaper stories about sensational crimes.

While evidence can play a huge part in deciding the outcome of a trial, there are many cases where such material may actually have no bearing on the case, or the evidence may actually not be admissible for use in the trial due to certain circumstances but the prosecution still insists on using it. In such situations, your criminal defense attorney will opt to file a motion to suppress evidence to protect you from being incriminated by such evidence.

What is a Motion to Suppress Evidence?

In US Law, a motion to suppress evidence is a legal motion filed by the defense requesting a court judge or jury to exclude certain pieces of evidence entered into the case’s legal record. The defense files this motion in the belief that some of the evidence against their client actually has no bearing on the crime they are charged with, was obtained in an extralegal manner, or that the process undertaken to obtain the evidence was unfair to the defense.

Note that a motion to supress evidence on extralegal grounds is not always granted by courts. There are instances where evidence obtained through illegal means may still be admitted for use in a trial under certain circumstances. These circumstances may include:

• the defendant’s legal standing was not violated when the evidence was obtained
• the discovery of the evidence was inevitable, thereby ruling its legality or illegality out of the question
• the level of illegality was of marginal importance
• the concerned law enforcer who obtained the evidence acted on good faith and was not in any way informed that the evidence would not hold on legal grounds otherwise

When is This Motion Applicable?

The most common cases where the motion to suppress evidence is filed usually involve unreasonable search and seizure situations. The Constitution protects individuals from such search and seizure situations as stipulated in the Fourth Amendment. However, the defendant must be able to prove that it was their rights that were violated and not someone else’s if they want to get their motion approved.

The motion is of course not just limited to Fourth Amendment-related complaints. Other situations where this motion is applicable may include:

• Illegal traffic stops
• entrapment operations for crimes like drug use and prostitution
• eyewitness identification
• law enforcement acting without legal grounds to do so
• Miranda rights violations

In general, the motion to suppress evidence is only valid and grantable if the situation satisfies the requirements of the Exclusionary Rule.

Why This Applies to You

Defending against severe criminal charges is hard, and your situation would just get worse if you have illegal evidence stacked against you. You have an inviolable right to a fair trial; using improper evidence is a major violation of that right.

The motion to suppress evidence is your first line of defense against a possible mistrial or wrongful conviction. It helps defendants deal with officers overstepping their authority, making it clear that their case was not properly processed. In the end, the primary purpose of a motion to suppress evidence is to ensure that you obtain a better chance at gaining an acquittal or dismissal by proving that the evidence against you should not be used in trial.

The motion to suppress evidence may be a potent tool against unlawful convictions, but it is not an end-all-be-all legal motion. There are still many factors that can lead to a failed motion, which can put you in an even worse legal situation. In the end, it is important that you communicate and work closely with your criminal defense attorney so he can guide you better through the legal proceedings.