MIDDLEBURY — An attorney for a 14-year-old boy charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a peer has filed a motion to transfer the case from adult court to juvenile court, drawing objections from the victim’s family.
Deputy Defender General Marshall Pahl, who is representing the teen, alerted Judge David Fenster to the motion during a status hearing in the case in Addison County Superior criminal court in Middlebury on Monday.
Speaking outside the courtroom after the brief hearing, relatives of 14-year-old Shelburne resident Madden Gouveia, who was killed in the shooting in Bristol last October, said moving the case out of adult court would not serve justice.
“I feel like it’s just being pushed under the rug,” Kelly Gouveia, Madden’s mother, told reporters through tears.
Should the case be moved to family court, the defendant would be treated as a juvenile and the proceedings would be closed to the public. Second-degree murder carries a penalty of 20 years to life in prison.
VTDigger generally does not identify juvenile defendants and is not doing so in this case at this time.
Gouveia’s family members on Monday also expressed concern about the lead prosecutor in the case, Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos, who was charged Thursday night with drunken driving.
“I hope it doesn’t hurt my case,” Kelly Gouveia said. “I pray (to) the Lord because it seems like everything is going against it.”
Vekos left the courtroom without responding to questions from reporters on her arrest Thursday night or the defense’s attempt to move the murder case to juvenile court. Vekos walked briskly away from members of the press and into her office on the same floor of the courtroom.
Asked if she had any comment on her recent arrest, she replied, “I don’t,” without turning around.
Vekos was arrested Thursday night after police said she showed up at the scene of a suspicious death investigation in Bridport smelling of alcohol and appearing impaired. Police said Vekos refused to undergo sobriety tests and was arrested for drunken driving, refusal.
Vekos is set to be arraigned in that case next month.
Pahl’s motion to transfer the murder case to Addison County Superior family court in Middlebury, which hears juvenile cases, is one page and calls for a hearing on the matter.
However, during the brief court proceeding Monday, the defense attorney told Fenster that he was still awaiting an expert’s evaluation of his client.
Vekos told the judge that she wanted to find out the results of that evaluation before deciding whether a contested hearing would be needed or if she would agree to the juvenile court transfer.
Speaking after a hearing in early November, Vekos called the adult murder charge a “starting point.”
“Being charged as an adult doesn’t mean he’s necessarily going to be convicted as an adult, but it’s a starting point,” Vekos said at that time.
“This was a loaded weapon,” she said then, “and the behavior as far as we’re concerned was so, you know, reckless to an extreme where somebody’s dead because of it.”
The 14-year-old defendant is accused of fatally shooting his peer on the night of Oct. 30 when a gun discharged as the defendant was waving it around in a car, according to charging documents.
Vekos’ decision to file the adult murder charge against the 14-year-old boy, who is Black, as an adult drew opposition from civil rights and social justice advocates, including the Rutland-area branch of the NAACP.
Monday’s hearing lasted less than 10 minutes. The defendant and his attorney appeared by video.
Gouveia’s family walked into the courtroom near the end of the proceeding.
Kelly Gouveia said she didn’t even know that a hearing had been scheduled in the case until Friday — and only then because she had called a victim’s advocate. She also said that Vekos, the prosecutor, hasn’t spoken to her about the case since it was filed in late October.
“This is more hurtful than a lot of things,” Gouveia said. “It’s like nobody cares.”
Gouveia also decried the lack of a secure juvenile facility in Vermont to house youth charged with violent offenses, a situation that has led to the defendant being free on conditions.
Initially, Vekos had sought to have the teen held in custody, but after learning in testimony shortly after the shooting that he would be held in an adult prison due to the lack of a secure juvenile facility, she dropped the request.
Kelly Gouveia and other family members wore T-shirts to the court hearing Monday with an image of Madden Gouveia on them.
She described her son as a bright teen who was quick with a smile. She said he “fell in with the wrong crowd,” ultimately resulting in his death.
“He deserves justice, he really does,” Kelly Gouveia said.
She added of the teen charged with killing her son, “I just want him to take responsibility.”
