The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Joplin Metro

Discussion

May 23, 2008

Evaluation sought in school-gun case

By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

An attorney for 15-year-old Thomas White announced Friday that she will be asking a Jasper County judge to send her client to a state mental health center for evaluation of his mental competency to assist in his own defense.

White is accused of taking an assault rifle to Memorial Middle School in Joplin on Oct. 9, 2006, when he was 13, pointing it at some students and teachers, and then at an assistant superintendent, firing it once into a ceiling, and then trying to shoot the principal as he was ushering him out of the building. He has been certified to stand trial as an adult on five felony counts related to the incident.

Public defender Brett Meeker informed Circuit Judge David Mouton and Assistant Prosecutor John Nicholas of her intention to file a motion seeking a mental-health evaluation of White during a private conference in the judge’s chambers before a scheduled hearing in the case Friday in Jasper County Circuit Court.

The judge made the defense’s intention known in open court after the conference in chambers, and set June 13 as the date for hearing arguments on the issue. The judge also expressed a desire to propel the case forward and set temporary dates in December and January for a trial.

“It has been the court’s concern for a long time that this case needs to move ahead,” Mouton said.

The judge set Dec. 8-10 and Jan. 5-7 as possible trial dates in the case.

White has been kept in administrative, segregated confinement at the Jasper County Jail since being certified to stand trail as an adult in December 2006. The teen recently received the court’s approval of educational tutoring while he remains held at the jail on $250,000 bond.

Meeker submitted reports to the judge from a doctor and psychologist who have recently examined White. She is asking that he be transferred to the Western Missouri Mental Health Center in Kansas City for an evaluation on the question of competency to assist in his own defense.

Meeker said after the hearing that, in her opinion, her client’s mental clarity has deteriorated during the course of his incarceration.

“I have concerns about that,” Meeker said. “But, I’ll leave it up to the medical experts whether or not he meets the statutory requirements for assisting in his own defense.”

The defendant’s mother, Norma White, said after the hearing that she supports the request for a mental-health evaluation of her son.

“It’s probably needed at this time,” she said. “Because even an adult would be hard put in a situation like that — a year and a half in solitary confinement. I really believe putting a kid in a situation like that is simply not right. You don’t do that to children.”

She remains convinced that her son is being prosecuted as an adult primarily to set an example of him to others of his age group who might contemplate similar behaviors. She believes that impulse to set an example, and state law on the matter, do not take into full account the differences between juvenile and adult defendants.

“They’re not even looking at the psychological maturity level,” she said “They’re just saying: ‘We want vengeance.’”







‘Not enough’

Norma White, mother of 15-year-old Thomas White, said that the 15 minutes a week she is allowed to visit with her son at the jail is not enough for her to be able to judge his mental state.

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