Font ResizeA 16-year-old Kearns High School student accused of killing a classmate will be housed in the Salt Lake County jail while he awaits trial for murder, a 3rd District Court judge ruled this week.
Defense attorney Ron Yengich argued last month before Judge Vernice Trease that a Utah law that mandates 16- and 17-year-olds charged with murder must automatically stand trial in adult court does not clearly state whether teenagers must be housed in adult jail.
He said his client, Ricky Angilau, is being held unconstitutionally in the Salt Lake County jail and asked Trease to order that Angilau be held in a juvenile detention facility, where the boy won't be subjected to the "unnecessary rigor" he endures in an adult jail.
Trease denied the request Monday.
"The mere fact that [Angilau] is detained in an adult detention facility, even in maximum detention with adults twice his age who may be more mature and more developed physically and mentally ... does not necessarily translate into treatment that meets the definition of unnecessary rigor," Trease wrote in her order.
Angilau was charged as an adult with first-degree felony murder and other counts in the Jan. 21 shooting death of 16-year-old Esteban Saidi.
Prosecutors told Trease at last month's hearing that because Angilau was charged under Utah's direct-file law, that makes him an adult as far as the law is concerned.
Prosecutor George Vo-Duc argued that it is not up to the court to decide where the Legislature intended to house teens who are charged under the direct-file law. He said lawmakers must clarify that language in the law, which hasn't been done.
Salt Lake County jail Chief Rollin Cook stated in an affidavit presented at last month's hearing that Angilau is not treated differently from other inmates and has not suffered abuse while jailed.
The next hearing for Angilau's murder case has not yet been scheduled.
Ricky Angilau, 16, was charged as an adult with first-degree felony murder and other counts in the Jan. 21 shooting death of 16-year-old Esteban Saidi near Kearns High School.
The shooting occurred after Angilau and another teen agreed to fight off campus, according to charging documents. But when Angilau started to tire, he pulled a gun from his waistband and fired into the air, the documents say. He allegedly fired a second shot into a group of bystanders, striking Saidi in the lower abdomen. Saidi died at a hospital.
Police say the fight was part of an ongoing dispute between two gangs, but Angilau's parents insist he was never in a gang and the rivalry was an ethnic dispute between Polynesians and Latinos. His mother, Teresa Angilau, has said her son claims he was outnumbered and "scared" and used the gun to frighten the others away.
Angilau also is charged with felony counts of obstructing justice and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon and misdemeanor charge of carrying a gun in a school.
