Why Prosecutors Charged Only One Teen in a Killing

Attorney Answer

The prosecutor is not required to charge everyone who was there, and "why wasn't anyone else arrested" is almost never a defense. The fight that decides your son's case is whether the State can prove he shared the shooter's intent.

Charging decisions belong to the district attorney, and they are made on what the prosecutor believes can be proven, not on who was present. Prosecutors routinely charge one person first and hold the others in reserve — sometimes because the evidence against that person is strongest, sometimes because the others are being kept available as witnesses, and sometimes because charging decisions on the rest have simply not been made yet. None of that is unusual, and none of it is by itself grounds to dismiss.

The part that matters legally is this: a person can be convicted of a killing someone else physically committed, but only if the State proves he helped, encouraged, or aided it with the intent that the crime happen. Being the driver is not automatically enough. Mere presence is not enough. What the State will point to instead is conduct before and after — where he drove, what was said in the car, whether he slowed or stopped, what he did in the seconds after the shots, whether he fled, and what he told police. That is where the case will be won or lost, and it is where the defense investigation has to go.

The recanting witnesses cut both ways. The recorded statements those teens gave officers do not disappear because they have stopped talking. If they testify differently at trial, those recordings can be used against them; if they refuse to testify at all, the defense may be able to fight to get the substance in another way. Either way, those recordings need to be locked down now.

What you can do

1. Tell your son to stop discussing the case on the jail phone and on jail video visits. Every one of those calls is recorded, and prosecutors play them at trial. This is the single most common way families damage a case. 2. Ask his lawyer, in writing, to demand and preserve every recorded interview of the other four teens, along with the officers' notes and any body-camera footage from that night. 3. Ask whether an investigator has been retained. Witnesses who talked once and then went quiet are exactly what an investigator is for, and the window closes as memories and phone records age. 4. Ask what has happened procedurally: has there been a preliminary hearing or a grand jury, and has anyone asked the court to review his conditions of release. 5. Preserve anything on your end — phone records, texts, location data, social media posts from that night — before it is deleted. 6. Do not contact the other teens or their families yourself. It can be charged as witness tampering, and it will be used against your son. 7. If you cannot afford private counsel, that does not mean you cannot get an investigator or an expert; appointed counsel can ask the court to fund them.