Georgia can prosecute a child as young as thirteen as an adult for the most serious felonies, while most juvenile cases stay in juvenile court. The dividing lines are set by statute. The minimum age for any criminal responsibility is thirteen, since a younger child is deemed incapable of forming criminal intent.
Three routes send a young person to adult court:
- For a group of grave felonies often called the seven deadly sins, including murder, rape, armed robbery with a firearm, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sexual battery, and voluntary manslaughter, the superior court has exclusive jurisdiction over juveniles aged thirteen to seventeen.
- For other serious felonies, a juvenile court judge can order a discretionary transfer to adult court after a hearing, generally for older juveniles.
- At seventeen, a person is treated as an adult for all offenses, since that is the age of adult criminal responsibility in Georgia.
Transfer decisions and their reversals turn on the case. A judge weighing a discretionary transfer considers the seriousness of the offense, the juvenile’s prior record, the prospects for rehabilitation, and community safety. Even in a seven deadly sins case, the district attorney may decline adult prosecution before indictment and send the matter to juvenile court, and a reverse transfer can return certain cases as well.
The consequences of adult prosecution are lasting. A child convicted in superior court faces the same sentencing exposure as an adult and a public record that follows them, so the transfer question, and the narrow windows to move a case back to juvenile court, often shape the entire defense.