Should teen accused of shooting detective be prosecuted as adult? A judge has decided

A 16-year-old boy accused of shooting and injuring a Tacoma police detective after running from a stolen car will be prosecuted as an adult for charges of attempted murder, assault and other felonies, a judge ruled Monday.

The decision came after prosecutors argued in Pierce County Superior Court that if Justus Nassir Kent were convicted of those crimes in juvenile court, his punishment would not be lengthy enough to properly rehabilitate him or ensure the safety of the community.

Kent’s defense attorney, Matthew McGowan, told Judge Matthew Thomas that his client was a child by “any human metric,” and he described how he believed the teen would have plenty of opportunity for positive change if he were to be convicted and sentenced in juvenile court. He also disputed prosecutors’ claim that he intended to kill the detective, instead suggesting that Kent was scared and reacted to a perceived threat.

The arguments were presented Monday morning on the fourth day of a hearing to decide whether Kent would be prosecuted as an adult for the Aug. 23, 2023 shooting of detective Jason Brooks.

Brooks is a 28-year veteran of the Tacoma Police Department. Thomas said he was in an unmarked Subaru Forester working a citywide emphasis mission focused on finding and recovering stolen vehicles when the shooting occurred. Brooks was wearing plain clothes and a police ballistics vest that identified him as law enforcement.

Prosecutors said Kent shot Brooks at point-blank range, piercing his arm and shattering his shoulder blade. He suffered a concussion and 50 percent hearing loss. Police said he hasn’t returned to work.

After court adjourned, Tacoma Police Department detective William Muse, a spokesperson for TPD, said the “number one thing” is that this is part of a process and that the accused is presumed innocent.

He said Brooks was a “great guy,” who had served his country in the U.S. Air Force and the state by fighting forest fires for the U.S. Forest Service. Muse said Brooks was also creative as a photographer and a writer who had written for outdoor magazines.

“I hate seeing him going through what he has gone through,” Muse said. “But he is a warrior. He is a fighter. He is going to get through this.”

Kent has yet to enter a plea in the case. According to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, a date for an arraignment hearing won’t be set until the case is opened in adult court. He is charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault, second-degree taking a motor vehicle without permission, first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and obstructing a law enforcement officer.

After court adjourned, Kent’s father, Steven Kent, told The News Tribune he felt that Judge Thomas was under “tremendous political pressure” to transfer his son’s case to adult court. He said he works in the county’s juvenile detention center, Remann Hall, and a child on his caseload got two years in juvenile rehabilitation for shooting a woman during a carjacking.

“I just hope that they consider his age going forward,” the father said.

If Kent is convicted of second-degree attempted murder in adult court, according to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, he would face a standard sentencing range of 0 to 243 months, or just more than 20 years, in the state’s custody. In Washington, young people sentenced for crimes committed before they are 18 go to juvenile rehabilitation in the custody of the Department of Children, Youth and Families until age 25 when they would transfer to the Department of Corrections.

Steven Kent said he wasn’t upset by the judge’s ruling. If his son had remained in juvenile court and was convicted, he would have faced a standard sentencing range of about 2-and-a-half to three years in the state’s custody, 87 weeks of which Justus Kent has already served. The father said he felt his son needed to understand the severity of his actions, and that wasn’t long enough.

“However, I don’t want it to be so long that he comes home institutionalized and suffering from arrested development, unable to learn certain things that you have to be in society to learn,” Steven Kent said.

A second teenager charged in the incident as a juvenile, Kent’s cousin, pleaded guilty Nov. 17 to unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle and obstructing a law enforcement officer. According to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, state law dictated that he receive a deferred sentence, but prosecutors recently filed to revoke the deferred sentence because he pleaded guilty to a Feb. 9 attempted robbery in King County.

His case remained in juvenile court because he was not charged with a serious violent offense, as Kent was. The severity of Kent’s charges and his age at the time, 15, allowed prosecutors to make a motion to transfer the case to adult court.

The judge was required to consider eight elements, known as Kent factors , to make his decision. They stem from a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case and concern the seriousness of the alleged crime, how it was committed, the maturity of the child, the child’s criminal history and how the prospect of adequately protecting the public weighs against the likelihood of rehabilitating the child, among other factors.

Not all of the factors need to be met, according to the King County Department of Public Defense, but the court must find by a preponderance of the evidence that transferring the case to adult court is in the best interest of the youth or the public. Thomas found that prosecutors met all but two factors, one of which did not apply. Thomas said he would rate the factor regarding the sophistication and maturity of Kent as “neutral.”

After issuing his ruling in a courtroom packed with nearly 40 people, including at least five Tacoma police officers and friends and family of Kent, Thomas said one thing he thought a lot about was what would best ensure Kent’s success. He said the teen’s grades had gone up since he’d been in custody.

“My hope is that by — assuming you do, if there is a conviction in this case and that you are sentenced — that being in a structured environment for a longer period of time, that that will allow you to get the education and the treatment that you need,” Thomas said.

Kent and his cousin were 15 when, according to the statements of prosecutors, they allegedly got in a stolen car in Lakewood, drove around Tacoma’s South End and almost hit a woman, attracting the attention of police officers working a citywide emphasis mission focused on finding and recovering stolen vehicles.

After a pursuit, Kent and the driver ran from the car on South Hosmer Street, south of an apartment complex where, according to charging documents, Brooks had been completing paperwork for two stolen vehicles in his unmarked car.

Brooks heard information about the fleeing suspects over the radio, records state. He then went to the rear of the complex and saw the driver run across the roadway in front of him. The boy jumped a fence. Kent wasn’t far behind, and according to charging documents, Brooks tried to cut him off with his car.

Prosecutors said Monday that Kent pulled a revolver from his waistband and sprinted toward the detective’s vehicle. Brooks yelled “please don’t [expletive] shoot me,” and Kent allegedly ran up to the open passenger’s side window and shot him at point-blank range.

Both teenagers were found a few hours later hiding under the deck of a house.

Police recovered the .38-caliber revolver allegedly used in the shooting, and prosecutors said Monday that DNA testing of the firearm matched Kent.

Deputy prosecuting attorney Heather De Maine said in her closing argument that Kent could have run the other direction, dropped his gun or jumped the fence with his cousin. Instead, she said, he went for a “kill shot.”

“He is an extreme danger,” De Maine said. “His exposure to violence is now ingrained in him and dictates how he reacts to adverse situations and how he makes choices.”

Kent’s defense attorney seized on that statement when he began his closings, telling the judge it cuts both ways.

The teenager was surrounded by violence growing up, McGowan said, including being shot at while walking home from the store with his cousin, events that led to drive-by shootings targeting a relative’s house, a car being burned in a family member’s driveway and his cousin getting shot in the head .

“Justus Kent has lived a life that makes him pretty anxious,” McGowan said. “When an unmarked Subaru with dark tinted windows intended to not be recognizable pulls up on you in the middle of what is already a fight or flight situation, I guess, fleeing from the stolen car, what is he supposed to think?”

McGowan said he had a feeling the shooting wouldn’t have happened if Brooks had said something like “Stop, police,” but that’s not what happened. The detective didn’t give Kent any commands, McGowan said, and only said not to shoot him.

The defense attorney went on to call into question inconsistencies between Brooks’ statements to detectives and his testimony in court. In a police report written less than 24 hours after the shooting, McGowan said, a police sergeant, based on information from two detectives who first spoke to Brooks, wrote that Brooks tried to cut off Kent’s path of travel with his car.

In court, McGowan said, Brooks testified that he remained parked on the side of the road in the apartment complex after hearing information over the radio about fleeing suspects. McGowan said police said they found his vehicle slightly askew in the middle of the street.

The defense attorney contended that the state’s pursuit laws didn’t allow Brooks to attempt to arrest Kent the way he did, and that his changing story was designed to paint him as a sitting duck in a situation where it was impossible to defend himself and impossible for him to be at fault.

McGowan said the facts of the case would be up to a trial court to decide, but that this issue was relevant to the “Kent factor” regarding whether the offense was committed in an aggressive, violent, premeditated or willful manner.

“What is aggression?” McGowan said. “Is being afraid and trying to protect yourself, even if you’re wrong, even if it’s an irrational response, even if it’s an uninformed response, is that aggression? Or is that fear?”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the first name of detective Jason Brooks.