Browning Law News Blog

52 year old James Shields and his girlfriend, 59 year old Brenda Reichel, were driving to the beach when the got the warning on their phones that a missile was on its way to Hawaii in January 2018. Shields suffered from a heart attack shortly after. Now he is suing the state citing that the alert triggered his medical emergency. 38 minutes after the alert went out, the alert was retracted after admitting that it was sent on accident. However, Shields and Reichel believed it to be true. They had decided that there wasn't much they could do to protect themselves, so they went to die at the beach. The couple called their children for their final goodbyes. Reichel's son is a member of the Army National Guard, and he said the threat was real, so it confirmed their belief that the threat was real. Shortly after, Shields started feeling severe pain in his chest. He tried to cool down by going into the water, but when that didn't help, they went to the hospital. After they

California legislature is putting forth a bill in 2020 that would bar the juvenile justice system from hearing most cases of children younger than 12 similar to legislation that was just passed in Massachusetts this year. It has caused backlash from district attorneys. California currently has no minimum age that would prevent courts from hearing cases of children charged with criminal offenses. It would require counties in the state to develop the "least restrictive" alternatives to the juvenile justice system.  This could mean a heavier reliance on the dependency court system, where child protective agencies with providing service to vulnerable children. The bill asserts that children younger than 12 are too young to enter the justice system. All states have an established age of jurisdiction, which is the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction(usually 18 years old). It is the age where a young person stops being eligible for the rehabilitative services in