No federal charges in US shootout case

The Department had weighed bringing such charges for several days after four children and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Arkansas, middle school were shot down.

Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters on Thursday that the two boys arrested in the shooting could be charged as juveniles under federal law and officials were studying whether the older one could be tried as an adult.

One reason for considering federal charges was that they might bring longer sentences than State laws.

The question arose in part because Arkansas law forbids trying children 13 and under as adults while federal law allows adult trials for defendants as young as 13.

Although Arkansas law lets youth convicted under State juvenile law be held up to age 21, noone has ever been held past 18, the State’s legal age of adulthood. The reason is that Arkansas law requires that 18-to-21-year-olds convicted as juveniles cannot be housed in juvenile facilities, and, in adult prisons, must be separated from adult inmates. However, the State has no adult prison with such separate facilities.

US President Bill Clinton said any federal review of the shootings would wait until the Jonesboro community has had “a chance to grieve.”

“Then, after a decent period, after I return home, the Attorney General, I and others have got to compare this incident with the other two that have occurred in the last few months … To try and determine what they have in common and whether there are other things we should do to prevent this kind of thing,” Clinton said yesterday from Cape Town, South Africa.