We wish to bring to light and gain the people's support and presence in correcting an ongoing, misinterpreted law of Washington State that allowed our court system to sentence children to LWOP (life w/o parole) for the crime of Aggravated first degree murder, before entering the Adult court system.
Though the Legislation attempted to correct this wrong by passing SSB 5064 in 2014, they never took into account that the charge of Aggravated Murder was improper for a child to be declined under from the Juvenile (JRA) system into the Adult (SRA) court system in the first place. Below are some reasons supporting this claim: 

- The Juvenile Justice Act of 1977 allowing declination of children, does so on the premise that all children are able to be rehabilitated.
- A charge of Aggravated murder only carries two sentences: Death penalty, or LWOP.
- The Juvenile (JRA) charging and sentencing grid does not include the charge of Aggravated Murder.
- Both the Juvenile and Adult systems use Washington's Revised Code of Washington (RCW) guidelines as their charging grid for classification of crimes; Aggravated murder RCW 10.95.030 is not included as one of the crimes under the JRA grid, as it is solely used specifically for Adults. 

Knowing this, how were children still under the protection of the JRA system, charged and declined on a crime of Aggravated murder, one solely reserved for the Adult court system? One can surmise that those children where never going to be considered to remain in the juvenile system, because to do so would make it impossible to Charge, Try, and Sentence a child to Aggravated murder under JRA guidelines.
The highest charge a child can receive under JRA is the Crime of Murder in the First Degree, which carries a sentence of 180 weeks up to age 21. In cases of murder, this is not enough time for the act committed, and the child is declined into the Adult system, and rightly so. Every one of the children declined from JRA into the Adult system was 15 years old or younger. Had they been declined on the appropriate charge of First Degree Murder, the sentence they would have received is 26 years 8 months.

The injustice still occurs because, though SSB 5064 set out to remedy this by resentencing those aged 15 years or younger to a sentence of 25 years to Life under the ISRB parole board, the parole board can continue holding them in prison, adding 5 years to their sentence at every hearing and ensuring that they may never be released — and if they are, they are going to be past middle age by then, and most likely would have to rely on the State for support.
Another aspect that is not taken into consideration is that almost every one of the children charged and declined for the crime of Aggravated Murder came from the poorer classes of our society; more so, the majority are of color. These facts unto themselves are sureties almost guaranteeing inadequate legal representation, and harsher penalties than other classes incur for the same type of crimes.

Please join us in fixing this inequality in our system, by signing this petition rightfully requesting that all children declined under the charge of Aggravated First Degree Murder, have their charge Amended to the rightful crime they should have been declined under, which is First Degree Murder – and thus receive a sentence of 26 years 8 months.
I leave you with this parting thought. Why has no child after the Year 2000, been declined for the crime of Aggravated Murder? Did our justice system realize it was wrong, and ignore correcting the charges of those prior, since nobody seemed to notice?