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March 29, 2024 8:56 am
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Rumors Fly About Future of Outlying Juvenile Courts

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

A hot button issue in the recent election for Moapa Valley Justice of the Peace suddenly flaired up again last week with a series of communications among former candidates, court and county officials and the general public. Fears in the matter surrounded the future of the juvenile court in the Moapa Valley community.

The problem began on Thursday, September 13, with a statement posted on the social media page of Kyle Waite. Waite ran for the Moapa Valley judgeship against local attorney Gregor Mills in the June election but he lost by a margin of 142 votes.

The online post alleged that the very thing that Waite had predicted during the election was about to take place. It asserted that plans had been made to dismantle the juvenile courts in outlying areas as of December 31 and that all future juvenile matters would be heard in Las Vegas courts.

The post gave no details as to the source of the information. But it set off a firestorm of social media commentary from members of the community who were angry, fearful and concerned about the possible loss of the local juvenile court.

The post, and its resultant commentary, was withdrawn and taken down from the page later in that day.
In addition, the Progress received a call on Thursday afternoon from current Moapa Valley Judge Lanny Waite, father to Kyle Waite. In that interview, Judge Waite added further details as to the source of the information.

Waite said that he had spoken to Judge Victor Miller of Boulder City Justice Court regarding a brief interchange which had occurred in Miller’s courtroom earlier that day. According to Miller, a deputy district attorney had told him that the outlying juvenile courts would not be staffed after the end of this year.

Miller corroborated this in a telephone interview with the Progress on Thursday afternoon. During juvenile court session that day Miller was about to schedule a future status check for a youth subject. At that point, the Deputy District Attorney advised him not to schedule anything after December 31. When asked why, the Deputy DA responded that the decision had been made not to staff the outlying juvenile courts after the end of the year. Instead everything would be sent to juvenile courts in Las Vegas, Miller was told.

“She talked about staffing issues that they had and how they handle much more serious things in Las Vegas than in outlying courts,” Miller said. “She said that what we are doing in outlying areas can probably be handled by some ‘diversion programs’ and things; rather than actual court to enforce those diversion things.”

Alarmed, Miller asked the probation officers, who were present for juvenile court, about the matter. They confirmed to him that this was indeed the word they had received as well.
“I hadn’t been informed of any of this,” Miller said. “It seemed that everybody in the courtroom knew except for the judge.”

Waite said that he had also not been told anything about it.
“This came completely out of left field,” Waite said. “No one had said anything about it to me.”
With the election being so recent, Waite immediately read political foulplay into the situation.

The future of the local juvenile courts had been a chief issue in the election. Both Judge Waite and candidate Kyle Waite had insisted that there was a conflict of interest in Mills serving as juvenile hearing master in the community while continuing to practice family law in the county. They claimed that this conflict of interest would put the local juvenile court in jeopardy.

But Mills had assured voters that there was no ethical conflict and that it would not be a problem. In fact, Mills was so certain it would not become an issue that he made a pledge: if it did become a problem, he would utterly give up his family law practice to save the local juvenile court.

Waite interpreted last week’s hint that outlying juvenile courts would be discontinued as a way of releasing Mills from this pledge.
“We are supposed to believe that this is just coincidental timing that it happens to be on my last day that this takes place,” Waite said. “Anyone can see what is going on here. I will never be able to prove it, but bottom line is that we said all along during the election that they would find a way to do this. We warned that we would lose juvenile court and Gregor would be able to say ‘Ah, it wasn’t me. It was nothing I did.’ And now, here we are.”

Waite claimed it was obvious that the decision was made by Judge Bill Voy, the district court judge who oversees juvenile courts. “It is Judge Voy who makes all those decisions,” Waite said. “And guess who his good friend is: Gregor Mills! I will never be able to prove it. But you can look at the circumstantial evidence and draw your own conclusions.”

But Judge Voy, and all other decision-makers in charge of juvenile courts in the county, flatly denied last week that any final decision on the matter had been made.
“There has been no decision nor action taken at all on that,” Voy said in a Thursday afternoon interview with the Progress.

Voy acknowledged that there had been some dialog about “doing something different” with cases received in outlying communities. The Las Vegas courts had experienced positive results from a technique of “diverting” relatively minor cases away from the formal court process toward other programs that are less punitive but more effective at handling the root cause of the problem, Voy said.

“Instead of putting kids through the system and just loading them up with community service, which has not been shown to be real effective, the idea is to be more constructive,” Voy said. “Let’s talk with the kid and the family and find out how did the kid get to us in the first place. What can we do to divert this kid to a solution: maybe some form of mentoring, drug/alcohol treatment, maybe mixed in some form of accountability like focused community service-type programming. This idea is working well in the urban areas.”

Voy said that the conversation has been mainly about how to bring those types of “diversion” techniques to the outlying courts where the juvenile caseload is relatively light and the offenses are minor compared to urban courts.

But Voy emphasized that, though that conversation has been ongoing for quite some time, no decision has been made to change the current system in the outlying areas.
“Rest assured that any programming change is going to involve input from the local judges,” Voy said. “They are the elected judges out there and would be looked to, and be given complete guidance and input as to what such a program would look like.”

This position was echoed by Chief Deputy District Attorney Brigid Duffy who is in charge of the juvenile division. In an email responding last week to community concerns on the subject, Duffy explained that discussions had been ongoing for several years about the use of “diversionary services” in the rural areas.
“However, no final decision will be made without the input of key community partners and the assurance that appropriate diversionary services are available to the children in those communities,” Duffy’s email stated.

Assistant County Manager Jeff Wells, who oversees budget and staffing for the county court system, emphasized that most of these discussions had centered around marshalling more resources for outlying areas where such resources were scarce.
“There have been concerns with the availability of diversion options in the outlying areas,” Wells said.

“There is no doubt that there is a need to upgrade those options and try to make them equivalent to what is available in the urban areas. But those types of discussions are not the same as cancelling juvenile services in the communities altogether. We would never make that kind of decision without first talking to the judge in those communities.”

Perhaps most surprised by the entire episode was soon-to-be Moapa Valley Justice Court judge Gregor Mills. In a phone interview, Mills said that the whole thing had caught him completely by surprise. The call from the Progress seeking his comment had been the first thing he had heard on the matter, Mills said. He asked for some time to make calls to various stakeholders and become informed on the issue before making comment.

“The outlying courts should maintain its jurisdiction over juvenile matters in the community,” Mills said later upon getting back to the Progress. “I will always fight to continue that. But the fact is that there doesn’t seem to be anything to this. No decision has been made to take it away from us. It seems to be a non-issue at this point.”

By the same token, Mills said that he has been impressed by the “diversion” programs which have succeeded in the urban areas. He would welcome those types of services being brought to the Moapa Valley area, he said.

“Right now there are not really any services available locally,” Mills said. “Judge Waite has been doing all of that himself for many years and has done a good job. I will continue that here. But if the county wants to bring additional resources out here I would support that. I like kids receiving help.”
“But the oversight of those programs has to stay local,” Mills said. “It has to! So if necessary, I will continue the fight to keep it that way going forward.”

Mills added that he was saddened and shocked by the Waites’ assertion that he would somehow be involved in discontinuing juvenile services, or any other services, from the local court for mere political reasons.

“To say that I was somehow conspiring with another judge to deprive services from the children of three different outlying communities, just for my own personal gain; well, I think it is just the worst thing that anyone has ever said about me,” Mills said. “Frankly, I can’t believe that a lawyer and a sitting judge would make such an unfounded and false allegation against an elected judge. It is undermining to the whole legal system and degrading to the community. To hear such a thing being alleged against me just rocked me to the core. I was deeply hurt by it.”

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