Man, 52, convicted as juvenile in 1976 murder
December 22, 2012
But this 52-year-old man, now soft around the middle and wrinkled along the brow, was 15 at the time of the murder. And so, in a twist the judge called “extraordinary,” Carlton Franklin was tried as a juvenile.
His case was heard here this month in family, not criminal, court. And Thursday, after Judge Robert Kirsch found that he had killed Lena Triano — bludgeoning, raping, and stabbing — Mr. Franklin was not technically declared guilty, but rather, as “adjudicated delinquent.”
Now comes the tricky issue of how to punish him, which the judge will decide in January: Will he be sentenced according to a juvenile code that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment, focusing on “wholesome mental and physical development”? Or will the judge look at Mr. Franklin’s life in the intervening decades, which have included 17 years in prison, but also a steady job and no criminal record in the 14 years since he was released?
Will the length of his sentence — or disposition, as it is called in juvenile matters — be dictated by laws in place in 1976, the year of the crime, or by current laws? Tried in a juvenile court, can he be held in a grown-up prison?
Even lawyers handling the case are unsure. “I don’t even think I can answer, because it’s so unusual,” said Mr. Franklin’s lawyer, Edward P. Bisichio. “I’ve never seen it before.”
The nation is in the midst of a robust debate about how to handle juveniles accused of serious crimes. Since the 1970s, states have increasingly allowed or even required trying juveniles accused of murder in adult court, though recent court decisions have shifted away from that direction. New Jersey, for instance, changed its laws two years after Ms. Triano’s murder to allow murder suspects older than 13 to be moved to criminal court.
About the opposite, however — transferring adults from juvenile court — there is little debate, perhaps because it is extremely rare to have a defendant, or rather, “respondent,” as he is called in juvenile court, so far past childhood.
Many legal experts say he is the oldest juvenile defender they can recall. Lawyers following the case compared it to that of Michael Skakel, a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy who was charged at age 40 with killing his neighbor in Connecticut when he was 15. But Mr. Skakel’s case was heard in criminal court, as the law in that state allowed.
Ms. Triano’s murder had gone unsolved for nearly four decades without any real suspects. She was a 57-year-old legal secretary who lived alone in Westfield, a well-off bedroom community, and was found dead on March 15, 1976, after her office called the police to report that she had not shown up to work.
It was, Judge Kirsch found, “an indisputably depraved and horrific scene.” She lay on a bed soaked with blood, a smashed bottle propped up against her head, cords from an electric blender and the blinds binding her arms and legs. She had been beaten, raped, strangled and repeatedly stabbed.
But the name of Mr. Franklin, whose backyard abutted hers, did not come up until about two years ago, when a cold case investigator decided to test DNA samples on evidence the Westfield police had saved, and run it against the federal database of prisoner DNA.
He came up with Mr. Franklin, who had served 17 years for robbery and kidnapping in a home invasion when he was around 18.
“It was like winning the Super Bowl,” the investigator, Vinnie Byron, said.
Had the murder happened two years later, or had Mr. Franklin been six months older at the time, he would have been tried in criminal court. Instead, prosecutors had to try him as juvenile according to the laws in effect in 1976. (One of prosecutors, Jeremiah Linehan, was not born then.)
