A Killer at 16, and Still in California’s Juvenile Justice System Decades Later
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Except for one detail and one horrifying crime, Donald Schmidt is a run-of-the-mill juvenile offender. He watches television, does chores, talks to his lawyer and waits for his release.
The detail is his age: Mr. Schmidt is 37, the oldest defendant ever in California’s juvenile justice system. Just 16 when he molested and drowned a 3-year-old girl while high on methamphetamine, he has been in juvenile facilities for two decades, sometimes alongside teenagers who were not yet born when he was convicted.
Under California law, juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes can be kept in the system until they are 25. Mr. Schmidt’s detention, though, has been extended under a rarely invoked state code that allows continued detention if a jury finds the inmate has a “mental disorder, defect or abnormality that causes the person to have serious difficulty controlling his or her dangerous behavior.”
Because Mr. Schmidt was convicted as a juvenile and continued to be held under the mental health code, he cannot be transferred to an adult facility.
The code requires such petitions for extended detention to be renewed or rejected every two years. On Tuesday, prosecutors will again go to trial to argue that Mr. Schmidt should remain in juvenile custody, an argument they have made repeatedly, and successfully, since 1997, when he was first eligible for release.
“We believe he’s a psychopath,” said Bob Lee, the district attorney in Santa Cruz County. “And we believe has he has no regrets or remorse for his conduct.”
Since 1999, Mr. Schmidt has served time with other extended-term detainees at the Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino. His longtime public defender, Bill Weigel, said staff members at the facility had said that Mr. Schmidt had excelled in treatment. He has a full-time job on the facility’s paint crew, has earned a high school diploma and serves as a grief counselor for his much younger fellow detainees.
“Anyone that has had any actual contact with him will have nothing but positive things to say about him, from his behavior issues to his progress in treatment,” said Mr. Weigel, who added that Mr. Schmidt’s seven-person treatment team would testify on his behalf Monday. “They’ve worked very hard with Don.”
For its part, the California Corrections and Rehabilitation Department seems conflicted. In December, the department’s Division of Juvenile Justice, formerly the California Youth Authority, said Mr. Schmidt did not qualify for more detention, but two months later, the same department’s Juvenile Parole Board disagreed and asked Mr. Lee to pursue another two-year extension.
A psychologist asked in February by the parole board to evaluate Mr. Schmidt found that he was “a moderate risk” to public safety but that further detention was not warranted. And at a preliminary hearing on April 17, another clinical psychologist, Richard A. Starrett, told Judge Robert B. Atack of Santa Cruz County Court that while Mr. Schmidt was still a danger, he was not a psychopath.
“Over all,” Dr. Starrett testified, “he seems to be in the high to high-moderate range in propensity for future violence.”
Experts in juvenile justice say that the case is an anomaly but that it highlights the somewhat foggy terrain of so-called civil commitments as applied to juvenile sex offenders. At least 20 states have laws allowing adult sex offenders to be confined beyond their prison terms, but such rules for juveniles are much rarer, said Melissa Sickmund, the chief of systems research for the National Center for Juvenile Justice, a nonprofit research organization in Pittsburgh.
Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, in Oakland, Calif., called Mr. Schmidt’s situation “one in a million.”
“You have somebody who is absolutely in legal limbo,” Mr. Krisberg said. “On one hand you’re saying he’s doing everything that’s being requested of him, but there are no new treatments for him to cure him. So how does he ever get out?”
Mr. Krisberg, who has often criticized the treatment of minors in custody, also questioned why a lay jury — and not mental health experts — was being asked to evaluate Mr. Schmidt.
Through his lawyer, Mr. Schmidt declined to be interviewed. In December 1988, Mr. Schmidt, a runaway with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, went to the home of Leslie Silvola with Ms. Silvola’s 17-year-old daughter, Lisa, an acquaintance. Ms. Silvola, a disabled construction worker, lived in the secluded mountain town of Lompico, about 55 miles south of San Francisco.
At some point Mr. Schmidt was apparently left alone in a bathroom with Lisa’s 3-year-old sister, Marihia, who was found a short while later unconscious in the tub. She died two days later. An autopsy revealed that she had been sodomized.
After a judge determined that his limited intelligence and maturity prevented Mr. Schmidt’s being tried as an adult, he was convicted as a juvenile of murder and sexual assault, though the sexual assault verdict was later dismissed.
Leslie Silvola, now 54, had pleaded no contest to furnishing drugs to a minor and child endangerment, in exchange for her testimony against Mr. Schmidt.
In an interview on Friday, Ms. Silvola — who has changed her last name and lives in Michigan — disputed much of the public record of Mr. Schmidt’s trial, including testimony that she had given him methamphetamine, although he tested positive for the drug upon his arrest.
Ms. Silvola, who served less than a year in county jail, said she never recovered from her daughter’s death. “I pray to God that he doesn’t get out,” she said.
But Mr. Weigel says Mr. Schmidt himself was sexually abused as a child, a fact that contributed to his attack on Marihia, which he deeply regrets.
“He’s not a danger, he’s done his time, he’s safe,” he said. “But they are using these procedural mechanisms to keep him.”
Mr. Lee, the Santa Cruz district attorney, said he had no doubts that Mr. Schmidt continued to be a threat to society.
“We are absolutely convinced that Donald Schmidt is a danger to not only our community but every community he’s released into,” Mr. Lee said. “And we will continue to try Donald Schmidt until some jury tells us not to.”
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