Requiring Judges To Consider Past Trauma Of Youth Offenders Aim Of New Hawaii Law

Hawaiʻi is poised to become one of the first states in the nation to require a judge to consider a child’s exposure to trauma before charging the youth as an adult.

Senate Bill 2108, which would also bar minor victims of trafficking or sexual assault from being charged as adults for going after their abuser, is the state’s latest juvenile justice reform.

The move reflects research that shows most youth in the criminal justice system have experienced significant trauma – something experts, judges and even wardens say can be better addressed through a more rehabilitative approach on the juvenile side rather than a punitive one on the adult side. Experts say that incarceration at restrictive facilities meant for adults and for lengthy sentences is rarely effective.

“We send young people to adult court because we think it’s going to make us safer. In fact, it is probably making us less safe,” Jessica Feierman, chief legal officer at the Juvenile Law Center, a national group working on youth justice issues, said. “The adult court is not set up to provide the kinds of services and supports that will help young people to thrive.”

It’s rare for juveniles to be charged as adults in Hawaiʻi. Between 2014 and 2023, only 36 cases were moved from family court to adult criminal court through a process known as a waiver, according to the Attorney General’s Office. In 2022, the number was zero.

In the last three years, there have been a smattering of cases. Shaedan-Styles McEnroe-Keaulii, now 19, is facing murder charges related to a shooting at a cockfight in Māʻili two years ago. Branston Medeiros pleaded guilty in 2025 to killing another teenager in Mākaha in 2023 when he was 16. Chantston Pila Kekawa was 17 when he allegedly shot a rancher in 2024, landing him in lockup facing second-degree murder and weapons charges.

It’s unclear whether this bill would have changed anything in those cases or what impact it will have on future cases. Aside from specific cases involving a victim of trafficking or sexual abuse, the bill doesn’t require judges to keep teens in the family court, but rather leaves judges with the discretion about when to transfer the case to adult court.

Only minors facing extreme charges can be tried in adult court, and it depends on factors like their age and the severity of the crime. In many felony cases, a youth has to be 16 or older before they can be transferred to adult criminal court. That drops to 14 for crimes like kidnapping or first-degree sexual assault, or if the child caused serious bodily injury or has a history of prior serious crimes. There’s no minimum age when it comes to murder and attempted murder.

Charging minors as adults is only supposed to happen when the court determines that they cannot be served by the more rehabilitative approach in the juvenile system. Adult sentences are magnitudes longer and a matter of public record, which means they can have lasting effects after someone is released from jail. Youth sentenced as adults could also miss out on rehabilitative services like mental health treatment and education that are in juvenile correctional facilities.

Mark Browning, a former family court senior judge, said sending a child to be tried as an adult is one of the most difficult decisions a judge has to make.

“You’re essentially saying we’ve given up on this child,” he said.

Accounting For Trauma

Hawaiʻi judges are already required to weigh a variety of factors before transferring a minor’s case to adult court, including the likelihood that the child can be rehabilitated with access to available services. That, plus the youth’s environment and maturity, is weighed against factors like the seriousness of the crime, whether it was violent or premeditated and whether adult co-defendants played a role.

Proponents of SB 2108 want a minor’s history of trauma to be front and center in that calculation. The proposal comes from a national juvenile justice group called Human Rights for Kids, which has pushed for similar legislation in a handful of other states. The bill has passed both chambers of the Legislature and now awaits a decision by the governor who has until June 30 to notify lawmakers if he intends to veto it.

Research shows that the vast majority of youths involved in the justice system have been through some sort of traumatic experience, such as abuse or neglect, community or domestic violence or substance use in their family.

A 2014 study looking at more than 64,000 juvenile offenders in Florida found that about 80% of children had experienced family violence and about 65% had an incarcerated household member. Only about 3.1% of boys and 1.8% of girls reported having no exposure to traumatic experiences, often referred to by practitioners and judges as adverse childhood experiences.

The more exposure children have to abuse or neglect, domestic violence or substance use in the family, the higher the risk they’ll be involved in the justice system.

“Children are just developmentally different from adults, and their criminal justice system really needs to respond to that accordingly,” Teresa Kominos, an attorney working on legislative issues for Human Rights for Kids, which spearheaded SB 2108, said.

The bill passed without opposition. But the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office did raise concerns that the causal relationship between trauma and “diagnosed antisocial behavior” isn’t clear.

“Most abused children do not commit crimes, and defendants may misrepresent their histories to avoid accountability,” the office’s testimony to lawmakers states.

Proponents say that SB 2108 doesn’t mean teens will be off the hook just because they’ve had a rough life. Rather, it requires judges to weigh whether a child’s history of trauma played a role in getting the child to the point where they committed a serious offense.

When it comes to cases of trafficking, sexual abuse or rape, the proposed law explicitly states that children cannot be charged as adults for crimes in which their abuser was the victim. California is the only other state with such a law, according to Kominos.

“It’s very clear,” said Feierman of the Juvenile Law Center. “If you have had these experiences, then we have decided as a state that we owe you the protection and support of staying out of the adult system.”

For other types of adverse childhood experiences, the bill doesn’t lay out how judges should weigh a child’s trauma against other factors, like the seriousness of the crime – something some experts like Feierman think is missing. She wants more clarity on how judges should consider a child’s history of trauma and what they should do with that information. She’s wary of judges doing the opposite of the intent of the law and deciding that a more restrictive environment is necessary.

“I would look for whatever language is possible to say, you’ve had this negative experience. What can we as the adults in your life provide to allow you to be safer and to grow and develop and heal?” she said.

Browning, the former family court judge, isn’t worried about the bill’s language. He says judges here are already considering the child’s home life, their environment and history of mental health challenges.

“It’s not like family court judges haven’t been trained about trauma,” he said. “We get tons of training about trauma, tons of training about sexual abuse, tons of training about domestic violence, tons of training about child abuse cases.”

Plus, he said, Hawaiʻi’s family court is at the forefront of trauma-informed care. The state has dramatically reduced the number of children behind bars by redirecting resources to mental health and substance use treatment and culturally centered community-based programs.

Other Proposed Changes

The bill includes other changes regarding when to move children to adult court.

Under the existing law, there was “almost a presumption that if there was an adult co-defendant, then the case should move to adult court,” Kominos said. The new law asks judges to determine whether an adult co-defendant exerted any pressure on the child that led to their involvement in the crime.

The bill would also remove a clause from the existing law that requires any subsequent charges facing a child who had been waived to adult criminal court to also be handled in adult court — essentially, once an adult, always an adult in the eyes of the law. Around 30 states have such a provision, according to Feierman.

Along with SB 2108, Human Rights for Kids also pressed for Senate Bill 2325, which would have allowed for incarcerated offenders who were charged as adults for crimes they committed as youth to ask for their sentences to be revisited. That bill failed.

Mark Patterson, the former administrator of the Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility, sees these changes to the waiver system as part of Hawaiʻi’s progress toward a more rehabilitative juvenile justice system.

When he was the warden at the Hawai‘i Youth Correctional Facility, he tried hard to keep youth in his custody rather than allowing them to go to adult prison, even if they were charged as adults. That way, his team could make sure the child was getting treatment to address the underlying trauma that drove them to get involved with criminal behavior.

“If we don’t recognize what it is and not resolve it, it continues, and so does the behavior,” he said. “We want to be able to understand what he went through. It’s one of those simple statements we always say … whatever happened to you happened to you, not because of who you are.”

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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.