Youth court offers teen drivers a second chance

CHENEY – When you’re new to driving at 16 or 17, the freedom of the open road can come to a screeching halt with that first traffic citation. The city of Cheney plans to help young drivers out of their first jam by sending them to a new youth court where teens will be judged by a jury of their peers and traffic citations can be deferred and kept off of driving records. Under state law, municipal courts can form a youth court to defer any first-time traffic infractions committed by 16- and 17-year-olds, provided that young drivers agree to admit to the offense.

Youth court in Cheney will meet once a month from September to May. It will consist of a judge, a clerk and a jury of five teens selected from among students in the eighth grade through the 12th grade who can apply to hear youth court cases.

“It’s a real peer review,” said Terri Cooper, the administrator of Cheney Municipal Court.

Student jurors can learn about what happens when someone gets a ticket, and the real-life consequences of poor driving judgment. Jurors must follow a list of guidelines when deciding the penalty for the defendant. All penalties will include attending a “Reduce the Risk” traffic class, and most likely some community service at the recycling center.

Depending on the violation, the court may also order the defendant to write a letter of apology or an essay.

“They learn the importance of their responsibility as a driver,” Cooper said.

Students also will learn about how laws are made, how to be impartial and about confidentiality, since the cases they hear will probably involve students who attend their school. They also learn about when to recuse themselves from a case if they know the defendant and have a potential conflict of interest.

There are three adult supervisors of the court, Cooper, Greg Kelso, the deputy court clerk in Cheney, and Paul Simmons of the Cheney Youth Commission.

The youth court also helps the defendant, since they don’t have to pay fines and the traffic ticket stays off their driving records so their insurance doesn’t go up.

For now, the court will hear only cases involving traffic infractions, but Cooper hopes to work with the school district in the future to hear cases involving school violations.

The program is similar to the Lincoln County Student Traffic Court that has been in place for eight years. Tracy Gunning, the youth court coordinator in Lincoln County, said that 60 to 65 percent of defendants make it through the process of deferring their tickets, a process that includes completing 12 months without another traffic citation.

Lincoln County youth court jurors don’t necessarily have clean driving records when they come to serve. Often, the experience of having a traffic ticket in the past offers them some insight as to what the defendant is going through, Gunning said.

Cooper said the students serving on the court in Cheney won’t have to have a perfect driving record, either.

In Cheney, the youth court will meet once a month from September through May. During the summer, teen drivers who get a ticket can still defer their case to the youth court. They will just have to wait until the court resumes to have it heard.

The students who serve the court have been going through training to learn about the court system and their responsibilities to serving on it.

“We were just very impressed with how serious the jurors were,” Cooper said.

The Cheney City Council approved the ordinance creating the court at its meeting Feb. 12. That ordinance will go into effect after 30 days. The Cheney Youth Court has one case so far on the docket for it first session on March 20.