Attorney Challenges Adult Trial of Teen

An attorney for one of three teenagers accused in the stabbing death of a Glendale high school student is challenging the constitutionality of prosecutors’ efforts to try the juveniles as adults.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos represents 17-year-old Karen Terteryan. Terteryan, Rafael Gevorgyan, 15, and Anait Msryan, 14, are charged with first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Raul Aguirre, attempted murder and street terrorism.

If convicted, the youths face possible life sentences.

Terteryan allegedly clubbed Aguirre in the face with a tire iron while Gevorgyan allegedly stabbed him in the heart with a pocketknife. The incident took place in front of Hoover High School mid-afternoon as a crowd of about 50 students watched.

Police suspect Msryan, girlfriend of Terteryan, drove the two boys to the crime scene and tried to help one of them escape after the killing.

Aguirre was attacked after he tried to break up a fight between the two boys, both members of an Armenian American street gang, and a Latino boy, according to authorities. Aguirre was not a gang member.

Voters approved Proposition 21 in March, authorizing juveniles age 14 and older to be tried in adult court for serious crimes, such as murder.

Geragos argued Tuesday that Proposition 21 violates the California Constitution by shifting the power of who decides whether a juvenile is to be tried as an adult from an impartial judge to a prosecutor.

“Someone’s gotta make a decision about whether we’re going to abdicate the juvenile system . . . to prosecutors who are supposed to be an advocate,” Geragos said. “Taking it out of the judges’ hands into the D.A.’s is just not how the system is supposed to work.”

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a civil lawsuit in San Francisco seeking an injunction to halt enforcement of the proposition.