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State v. Green7/30/1998
nion, the Kent Court was merely exercising its supervisory role over the inferior court created by Congress for the District of Columbia. Thus, the factors in the Appendix to Kent have no binding effect on this Court.
Moreover, examination of section 7A-610 in conjunction with the statutes in pari materia reveals that substantially all of the factors enunciated by the Supreme Court in Kent are already subjects of consideration by our juvenile court Judges in transfer determinations. Specifically appending the factors set forth in Kent to a statutory scheme already protective of due process considerations would be needlessly duplicative. In fact, doing so might in the future unintentionally serve to limit the universe of possible factors considered by juvenile court Judges in making a decision that, of necessity, requires discretionary balancing of innumerable weights, including those that are presently unforeseeable to this or any other court.
We now must decide whether the juvenile court Judge in the case sub judice acted within the above statutory guidelines. Any order of transfer must contain the reasons underlying the decision to transfer. N.C.G.S. ยง 7A-610(c). However, the decision to transfer a juvenile's case to superior court lies solely within the sound discretion of the hearing Judge. In re Bunn, 34 N.C. App. at 615-16, 239 S.E.2d at 484. Here, the juvenile court Judge included in her transfer order the following bases for her decision: the seriousness of the offenses, the fact that the victim was a stranger to the juvenile, the community's need to be aware of and protected from such serious crimes, defendant's history of assaultive behavior, defendant's acknowledgment of difficulty controlling his temper, and the strong evidence of defendant's guilt considering his confession. These findings are supported by evidence on the record from the transfer hearing. This serves as sufficient support for the juvenile court Judge's discretionary transfer decision within the adequate due process guidelines of this state's statutory framework. Moreover, even if this Court were to adopt the Kent factors, which it does not, the juvenile court Judge's decision substantially includes consideration of all the Kent factors relevant to this case. This assignment of error is overruled.
In a related assignment of error, defendant maintains that section 7A-610 violates equal protection of the law in a racially discriminatory manner because it operates to transfer disproportionate numbers of black juvenile offenders to the superior court. Defendant makes no argument that the statute, as applied, operated to discriminate against him on a racial basis. Defendant merely presents statistics showing that a significant portion of the juveniles transferred to superior court are black. Defendant does not, however, present any statistics showing how this relates to the percentage of crimes committed by black juveniles as a whole, or the seriousness of those crimes as compared to those attributable to individuals of other racial groups. Without such comparison, defendant's statistics are meaningless. Defendant presents no other evidence suggesting that section 7A-610 is discriminatory. As such, defendant has failed to establish a prima facie showing of discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause, either on its face or as it is applied, and this assignment of error is overruled.
II. Cruel and Unusual Punishment
In his next assignment of error, defendant contends that committing a thirteen-year-old defendant to a term of life imprisonment for first-degree sexual offense constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for purposes of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United
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