Police and juvenile court in Virginia: calling a parent, transfer to adult court, and clearing records

Virginia's juvenile law defines a child, juvenile, or minor as a person younger than 18. Cases start in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court (J&DR court), the court for young people and families.

A case can move to circuit court, where adults are tried, only in limited ways. If a juvenile was 14 or older at the time of an alleged felony, the prosecutor can ask for a transfer hearing. The judge must find probable cause (a good reason to believe the act happened), find the youth competent to stand trial, and weigh factors such as age, the seriousness of the charge, school record, and maturity. For certain charges, such as murder, the court must hold a preliminary hearing when the youth is 16 or older.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the floor in In re Gault (1967): a young person facing delinquency charges has the right to a lawyer, appointed free if the family cannot pay, and the right not to incriminate himself.

Before police conduct a custodial interrogation (questioning while you are under arrest) of a child, Virginia law says the child's parent, guardian, or legal custodian must be told about the arrest, and the child must have contact with that adult. The contact can be in person, by phone, or by video.

There are exceptions: if the parent is a codefendant, is accused of a crime against the child, cannot be found after every reasonable effort, or refuses contact, or if there is an imminent danger to life or property.

Virginia also bars officers from knowingly lying to a child about a material fact during an interrogation, including with fake documents. If an officer knowingly breaks either rule, the child's statements generally cannot be used against him unless the prosecutor proves they were made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily.

Each year, the J&DR court clerk destroys a juvenile's court records once the person has turned 19 and five years have passed since the last hearing. Two big exceptions: records of a delinquent act that would be a felony for an adult are kept, and certain traffic offenses reported to the DMV are kept until age 29. If a charge ended in a finding of not guilty or was dismissed, you can ask the court to destroy those records, and the court must agree unless there is good cause not to. Once records are destroyed, the law treats the matter as if it never happened.

Curfews in Virginia are local. State law lets each city or county pass a curfew ordinance for unattended minors, set somewhere between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. That is why Norfolk's rule and Fairfax County's rule can be different.