Prosecutors push to charge teens as adults in double-homicide case

Prosecutors have filed motions to try in adult court a 16-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl being held in connection with the deaths of two people found outside of Oakridge.

No date has yet been scheduled for any such waiver hearings and no judge has been chosen, Chief Juvenile Judge Valeri Love said in court Friday.

“That’s Judge McAlpin’s decision,” Love said, referring to Jay McAlpin, the presiding judge for Lane County Circuit Court, which is where the cases could end up rather than in juvenile court. Such waiver hearings will take place in juvenile court, but not with a juvenile court judge.

Before the teen defendants can be charged as adults, state law says the court must conclude that “[t]he youth at the time of the alleged offense was of sufficient sophistication and maturity to appreciate the nature and quality of the conduct involved.”

Court documents have identified the victims as 17-year-old Maleah Michael Lewis and 21-year-old Noah Christopher Wall, with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office stating only that both died from “homicidal violence.” An obituary for Lewis states her “legacy is one of love, passion, and unwavering strength,” and lists May 17 as the date she died.

Each teen defendant on Friday morning appeared separately in back-to-back court hearings that, combined, lasted a total of about 15 minutes. Seated next to each were their mothers, with both taking the opportunity for a long embrace at the conclusion of each hearing before the defendants returned to detention.

The Lane County Sheriff’s Office on May 21 announced the teens’ arrest, as well as that of 19-year-old Hunter Jesse Kipp Barnett, who has been indicted on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of abusing a corpse. Barnett has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Lane County Circuit Court and is being held in Lane County Jail.

Brad Bills, director of Hosea Youth Services, a nonprofit organization in Eugene helping homeless and at-risk youth, has described the loss of life as deeply felt among those in the community.

“Many of the young people we serve are significantly impacted by this incident, and we’re doing all we can to provide support, love and care,” Bills said earlier this month.

The two youth in court Friday face different charges, with the 16-year-old boy, listed on a court register as a Eugene resident, facing three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree abuse of a corpse. 

But despite there being three murder charges, “there is not a third victim,” Miles Rowe Pendleton, a spokesman for the Lane County District Attorney’s Office, said in a statement.

“The charges filed in this case are reflective of the fact that multiple separate legal theories can be applied to the same crime,” he said, stating that the district attorney’s office had no additional information to provide.

Under state law, one rationale for a first-degree murder charge can be that “[t]here was more than one murder victim in the same criminal episode,” but it’s unclear how that portion of the law relates to the charges filed in this case.

The other defendant in juvenile court, the 15-year-old girl, faces one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree abuse of a corpse. She is listed as a Eugene resident.

Under state law, the minimum sentence for a juvenile waived to adult court and convicted of first-degree murder is 30 years.

While in Oregon there are often limits on the amount of time a juvenile defendant can be held in detention, no such limit on detention exists in cases where there is an allegation of murder.

Attorneys for the defendants as well as a prosecuting attorney spoke of attempting to schedule evaluations for the defendants, with such an evaluation possibly as much as five months away, one attorney told the court.