Murder case divides community

By Jonathan Martin
Seattle Times staff reporter

AP Evan Savoie, background at left, and Jake Eakin, front, will be tried as adults for the killing of Craig Sorger.

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EPHRATA — One winter day last year, three boys, bundled in sweat shirts and down jackets, set out to build a fort in the park. Just two came back.

Craig Sorger was found crumpled under a willow tree, his 13-year-old body clubbed and covered with three dozen cuts and stab wounds. Prosecutors say the assault stopped only when a knife blade broke off in his skull.

Sorger's playmates in the park, Jake Eakin and Evan Savoie, were the first and only suspects.

In March, a Grant County judge ruled that the case was too serious to be heard in juvenile court, making the two boys — both age 12 years, 4 months at the time of the killing — the youngest murder suspects charged as adults in state history. They face up to 25 years in prison; if convicted as juveniles, the boys would be free at age 21.

This is the type of case that has made nearly every state, including Washington, change laws over the past 12 years to require that more teens be moved out of juvenile court — the legal word is "declined" — and tried as adults.

How old is old enough? State law says a child under 8 is presumed incapable of committing a crime. If a child is between 8 and 12, state law presumes the youngster is incapable of understanding an act was wrong unless prosecutors can clearly prove otherwise.

It also is a rarity. In Washington, just 13 people age 14 or younger at the time of the offense have been convicted as adults of murder since 1987, the state Department of Corrections says.

Juvenile crime, in fact, is at its lowest level in Washington since the early 1980s; nationwide, the rate of juvenile arrests for murder hasn't been this low since 1960, the National Center for Juvenile Justice says.

Eakin and Savoie have maintained their innocence since being arrested in February 2003. Outraged over the boys' upcoming trial as adults, and convinced they're being railroaded by poor police work, their families are soliciting legal and investigative help on national TV shows.

Seattle psychologist Kenneth Muscatel, who has evaluated seven of the state's youngest murder defendants, including Savoie and Eakin, said prison would damage the boys beyond repair.

"We treat children different in every aspect of society because we don't feel they're fully capable of adult decision-making," Muscatel said. "They can't make school or health decisions ... can't buy cigarettes, can't drive, can't make financial decisions. Yet in this declination process, you can treat them as fully formed adults."

The youngest killers Thirteen people age 14 or younger have been convicted as adults of murder in Washington state since 1987. Among the youngest, along with their ages at the time of the crimes: • Willard Jimerson, 13 — Sentenced to 23 years in prison for first-degree murder in King County in 1994 for shooting 14-year-old Jamie Lynn Wilson near Garfield High School. • Lavelle Cotton, 13 — Sentenced to 20 years for first-degree murder in 1995 in King County as an accomplice to the drug-related killing of 7-year-old Angelica Robinson-Hughes. • Michael Humphreys, 13 — Sentenced to 58 years for first-degree murder in 2000 in Clark County for shooting Jay and Kim Kennedy. Jay Kennedy died, and Kim Kennedy was paralyzed. The couple had filed a police report accusing Humphreys of inappropriately touching Kim Kennedy's daughter. • Heather Opel, 13 — Sentenced to 22 years for first-degree murder in Snohomish County in August 2002 for killing her mother's live-in employer in their Everett home. Four other teens also pleaded guilty. • Barry Massey, 13 — Sentenced to life without parole for aggravated first-degree murder in Pierce County in 1988 for robbing and shooting Steilacoom Marina owner Paul Wang, 41. Source: Washington State Department of Corrections

Prosecutors and police in this farming community of 6,800 say they have the right defendants. And all the attention on the boys' ages, said Ephrata Police Chief Joe Varick, obscures the crime itself.

Sorger was slightly autistic and developmentally disabled. He begged his mom for permission when Eakin and Savoie asked him to play.

"They can cry all they want about the age of the defendants, but this was an extremely brutal murder," Varick said. "No one should lose sight of that."

Says victim fell from tree

The two boys, held on $1 million bail each, have spent the last 14 months in adjacent cells in Grant County's Youth Services Center, trading Gameboy cartridges and dog-eared copies of "The Lord of the Rings."

Both weighed less than 100 pounds at their arrests, and their feet didn't reach the floor as they sat in court for their initial appearances. Savoie has since hit puberty, sprouting seven inches.

"The only thing that I could say to people who think I did it is I didn't," Savoie, now 13, said during an interview in jail last week.

So who did?

"Your guess is as good as mine."

According to police reports, the boys first said they saw Sorger walking home from Oasis Park on Feb. 15, 2003. The next day, after Sorger's body had been found, Savoie's mother, Holly Parent, confronted her son about his sneakers being wet. A new story tumbled out, and Parent called police.

Sorger had actually fallen from a tree, Savoie told police. After cradling the boy's bloody head and finding he had no pulse, Savoie said he washed his hands and shoes of Sorger's blood and dumped the boy's bloody sweat shirt in a pond. He said he and Eakin then bolted out of fear of upsetting their mothers.

Questioned separately, Eakin offered an identical version, and it has varied little since.

	AP Craig Sorger

The new story did not explain the knife wounds to Sorger's head and neck, implying someone else was in the park that day. Holly Parent said she now regrets calling police because detectives stopped looking for the real killer.

Defense investigators have prepared a timeline, based on witnesses, that they say shows the boys didn't have enough time to commit the crime and then sprint three-quarters of a mile back to Savoie's house.

"These boys were just tiny little kids, and you're trying to tell me they stabbed Craig so hard they broke a knife?" Parent said. "They couldn't have. They didn't have that kind of strength."

Police found blood on Savoie's tank top, sweat shirt and shoes, as well as a spot on Eakin's jacket. Tests identified Sorger's DNA in some of the samples. Holly Parent said the blood is consistent with the boys' story of checking Sorger's pulse.

No weapon or reasonable motive has been uncovered.

"If there was evidence anyone else was involved, we'd be there in a heartbeat," said Ed Owens, the Grant County deputy prosecutor who will take the case to trial in September. "There's just nothing to say there is anyone else involved."

Treatment vs. public safety

Juvenile courts were created around the turn of the last century by progressives concerned about children forced to share prison cells with adults, said David Tanenhaus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, professor who has written two books on juvenile justice.

A century later, public opinion has swung from empathy to outrage. A spike in juvenile crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s spurred prosecutors to request more power to try kids as adults.

"The original theory of juvenile court was you should focus on the child and what his or her needs are, not the specific offense," Tanenhaus said. "By the late 20th century, that idea was changed to protect the public and not just the child."

Washington lawmakers responded in 1994 by requiring that 16-year-olds accused of murder be automatically tried as adults, although they preserved a judge's discretion on younger cases.

When deciding whether to try a youngster as an adult, judges must weigh, among other factors, whether a defendant could be rehabilitated if convicted.

At a hearing in February, prosecutors tried to portray Savoie and Eakin as having sinister defects, submitting a nearly illegible entry in Eakin's school journal that talked about the Washington, D.C., snipers.

A parade of supporters offered testimonials in response. Savoie's youth pastor, Paul Hargreaves, was among them. "I've been a youth pastor for 20 years and I'm a good judge of character," he said. "To think he did it is baffling."

Brent De Young, Eakin's attorney, said the character attacks don't match the boys' records: No prior arrests or serious school problems. No drug or alcohol use. No mental illness. Eakin's IQ is in the high 70s; Savoie's is 93.

"They're reaching for a smoking gun, looking for dope-smoking, trench-coat-wearing kids who are creepy," De Young said. "They're just not."

Four experts recommended that Grant County Judge John Antosz keep the boys in juvenile court. Psychologist Eric Johnson, the prosecution's expert, said Savoie's clean record and normal temperament suggest he's amenable to treatment, while two decades in adult prison would "do nothing to enhance community protection when he is eventually released."

Antosz' 42-page ruling, however, said adult prisons offer just as much treatment as juvenile-detention centers, and more protection to the public. Keeping the boys in juvenile court just because they were 12 would be "usurping the legislative branch," which has not set a minimum age for declination.

His ruling stunned criminal lawyers around the state. Several offered to help the boys' public defenders to appeal Antosz' ruling. The Court of Appeals has not yet decided if it will hear the case.

State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, chairwoman of the House Juvenile Justice and Family Law committee, said the case shows that judges should be allowed to blend juvenile and adult sentences for children convicted as adults. About 12 states have such laws; Washington isn't among them.

In those states, a judge can impose both a juvenile and an adult sentence. The judge can later waive the adult sentence if the offender shows that, by age 21, he or she has been rehabilitated in the juvenile system.

Tough times in prison

In Washington, juveniles convicted as adults are held in juvenile detention until 18, when they are transferred to adult prison. The hardest task for these young criminals — about 34 currently — is preparing for their future in prison, said David Griffith, a program manager for the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration.

"The gravity of that long sentence is hard for them," Griffith said. "They're very protected in our system, and have to be more wary of people taking advantage of them in the adult system."

Studies have found that juveniles convicted as adults are eight times more likely to commit suicide than other inmates, and five times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Savoie, sitting calmly in his chair at the Grant County juvenile center, said he had prayed daily for police to find the real killer and for his release. But last October, on his 243rd day in custody, Savoie said he gave up on God. "I can't say I lost all hope of getting out, but it's hard," he said.

He's been out of jail twice, once after his great-grandmother died and again when he intentionally hurt his hand, earning a 45-minute visit to a doctor. It's the type of trick more typical of a veteran convict. So is his outlook on the future:

"If I get convicted — if that day comes, which I hope it won't — I'll have to take it that day and the next for the next 25 years."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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