Scenario 9:

Question : Defendant, 14 years old, is charged with arson in the first degree as a juvenile offender. Prior to trial the prosecutor offers to dispose of the case by a plea to attempted arson in the first degree, a class B felony, and to consent to the replacement of that conviction by a youthful offender finding with a recommended sentence of one to three years imprisonment. Should the Court approve this disposition?

Answer : No.

A juvenile offender includes a person 14 years old who is criminally responsible for acts constituting the crime of arson in the first degree. A juvenile may also be criminally responsible for certain attempted offenses (murder, kidnapping) specified in CPL 1.20(42). Attempted arson is not among the attempted crimes specified. Consequently, attempted arson is not a crime for which a 14 year old may be held criminally responsible as a juvenile offender. Defendant is not old enough to be treated as a youthful offender unless first charged as a juvenile offender. Therefore, even though the proposed sentence is one that is authorized for a juvenile offender found criminally responsible for a class B felony, in the event such a plea were entered, there is no legal criminal sentence that could be imposed (see, People v Jeffery B., 176 Misc2d 483).

GungaWeb handles the question like this:

Click on Article 150, then PL 150.20 to retrieve the charge. Scroll down to the Sentences function area, and use the drop-down list control to select Attempted Offense as follows:

Next observe that Juvenile Offender is not a category of offender that may be held criminally responsible for this attempted offense:

This alone should give you sufficient cause for inquiry, and highlighted references to the definitions of "juvenile offender" and "youthful offender" point the way to the solution, which is to refer the reduced plea to family court for juvenile deliquency adjudication.

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