Joseph Ramos is learning how tough on crime Bucks County can be.
Last Labor Day weekend, he and a buddy entered a neighborhood friend's unlocked townhouse when no one was there. Trading cards, a video game, a game controller, and $340 in cash were reported missing by the homeowner.
A month later, Ramos was charged with first-degree felony burglary. The Plumstead Township resident admits trespassing but denies taking anything. He faces an April 3 court date.
It might be just another incident buried in the local police blotter. Except that Joe Ramos is an 80-pound fifth grader who was 10 years old at the time of the alleged crime. And the aggrieved homeowner, T. Gary Gambardella, is a high-ranking prosecutor in the Bucks County District Attorney's Office.
Because the court system throws a protective cloak of secrecy over minors, few juvenile-justice experts have heard of Joe Ramos' case. But the reactions of those who learned about it from an Inquirer reporter have ranged from puzzlement to consternation.
Filing felony charges against a 10-year-old with no prior legal run-ins, they point out, is rare - and rarer still in a matter more typically settled among neighbors.
Of 45,504 juvenile cases reported in Pennsylvania in 2005 (the latest data available), only 26 involved felony charges against 10-year-olds. Eight of them were burglary cases, according to the Center for Juvenile Justice and Research at Shippensburg University.
Under state law, 10 is the earliest age at which a juvenile can be charged.
"This is not the sort of case that normally would get to juvenile court," said Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit child-advocacy group in Philadelphia. "Kids from Tom Sawyer's day have gone where they shouldn't, but don't get charged."
Bucks County District Attorney Diane E. Gibbons is buying none of that.
"Maybe that's what's gone wrong in society," she said in an interview last week. "You can't ignore this conduct."
Age isn't the only thorny issue in the prosecution of Joe Ramos.
Despite the conflict of interest presented by Gambardella's position, the Bucks District Attorney's Office reviewed the charges and approved a warrant for Joe's arrest in October, juvenile court records show. It took three more months before Gibbons, citing that conflict, asked the state Attorney General's Office to assign an independent prosecutor.
