SAN DIEGO — Fourteen-year-old Tony Hicks is too young for a driver's license, too young to view an R-rated movie by himself, but now he's facing a 25-years-to-life sentence if convicted in the ambush slaying of a pizza deliveryman.
Hicks, who has admitted shooting his victim with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, has become the youngest defendant in California history to be looking at hard-core prison time.
A new state law went into effect in January that lowered from 16 to 14 the age at which boys and girls can be prosecuted and sentenced as adults for violent crimes such as murder, rape and armed robbery.
Some juvenile-crime experts believe 14- and 15-year-olds are simply too young to face adult consequences for their actions, no matter how serious.
The prosecutor in San Diego disagrees.
"His age doesn't make the victim any less dead," Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Deddeh said of Hicks, who did not look a day older than his 14 years when he was arraigned this week. "His age doesn't make the crime any less serious. This was a senseless and callous murder of a real nice college kid who did nothing to provoke the attack and was just trying to earn a living."
San Diego County Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst said, "No community can celebrate prosecuting 14-year-olds as adults for murder, but it's something we have to do because of the types of crimes they're committing. I don't know that there's an alternative but to hold them responsible by adult standards."
Hicks' attorney, saying he is going to challenge the constitutionality of the new law, refused to enter a plea for his client at the arraignment. Municipal Court Judge Frank Brown entered a not-guilty plea on Hicks' behalf and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 12.
During an earlier hearing to determine whether Hicks would be tried as an adult, the youth admitted firing the gun, but said he was acting under the influence of an 18-year-old accomplice.
The new state law's only concessions to teen-age murderers allows convicted youths to spend the first years of their incarceration in the California Youth Authority before being transferred to prison. In addition, they cannot be prosecuted on capital charges--even if, as in Hicks' case of allegedly lying in wait, the charge could bring the death penalty to an adult.
