Could Houston County shooting death spur another look at juvenile laws?

As a light mist falls, young singers practice outside St. Patrick Catholic Church in the community of Kathleen, near Perry.

People begin to gather at a fire pit for a candlelight vigil.

They've come to remember 16-year-old Ryan Skeen, who was shot to death in late October.

But there's more to the community gathering.

"There are two young lives taken," said Frank Bulin, a Skeen family friend. "One is buried, one is put away."

The one put away is 13-year-old Kaden Barefoot, who is charged with Skeen's slaying.

Barefoot faces a murder charge in an adult court. That's due to Georgia's "seven deadly sins" law, which is shorthand for the seven charges that vault juveniles to adult court.

More than 100 Georgia youths younger than 18 are in adult prisons. Most of them, however, are not accused killers. A third of them committed armed robbery, according to Department of Corrections figures.

This tough-on-crime law dates back decades.

It was the late 1980s when Aakeem Woodard, then 15 years old, and an accomplice held up a store. The clerk was shot and killed. Woodard was arrested and charged with murder as an adult.

"The next day, the magnitude of what I'd done ... hadn't even registered with me yet," Woodard said recently from his home about 30 miles east of Atlanta.

He remembered how the court proceedings confused him -- and how the adult prison experience hardened him.

"If you lock a kid up young and you charge him as an adult, he's young enough that he's eventually going to get out," Woodard said. "The issue is, what are you going to bring home?"

Woodard admits that he's the rare juvenile who straightened out his life. He was released four years ago, works with young offenders and has a child of his own.

There's no telling what will happen to Kaden Barefoot or other teenagers charged with serious offenses that have landed them in adult court.

The approach was meant to deal with youths who were becoming "superpredators."

Melissa Carter, who leads Emory University's Child Law and Policy Center, said time has shown that young offenders can rehabilitate.

"If we don't have a class of kids who we're scared of, who are remorseless offenders," she said. "Then, in fact, what we have are individuals who are involved in acts that were, perhaps, intentional but need to be understood at an individual level."

Carter said with a mentality of reform sweeping through the Georgia statehouse -- and parts of the country -- now could be the time to revisit the get-tough-on-young-offenders laws.

Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke isn't as sure.

Cooke said prosecutors could choose not to try juveniles in adult court. But he said most of such cases that come his way are "very cold-blooded situations."

Cooke is fine with looking at the disparity of juveniles in adult prison. Nearly nine out of 10 now housed there are black.

"But as far as being tough on violent crime that endangers our families, we need to be smart about that and not throw out something that has made us safer," he said.

At the candlelight vigil, the Rev. Eric Filmer tried to help those gathered deal with the death of Ryan Skeen.

"We know that many things happen in this world that tell us it's not the way it's supposed to be," Filmer said.

While the four dozen or so people prayed for the families of both the victim and the 13-year-old accused of murder, Ryan Skeen's friend, Frank Bulin, hesitated when it came to leniency.

"Yes, the child was only 13," Bulin said. "But at that age you still know what you are doing."

Whether a second wave of juvenile justice reform happens will depend on legislative action next year.

This story was originally published November 12, 2015 at 10:01 PM with the headline "Could Houston County shooting death spur another look at juvenile laws? ."