Colorado law required the transfer of a teenage murder suspect from youth detention to the county jail when he turned 18, the state Supreme Court ruled last week.

Prosecutors have accused Issac James Lawrence of killing a younger boy and attempting to kill his mother in Durango. Lawrence is being tried as an adult but was initially held in the Division of Youth Services while awaiting trial.

When he turned 18, authorities transferred Lawrence to jail. The defense objected, arguing that trial judges have the discretion to keep defendants like Lawrence in pretrial youth custody.

At a November hearing, Chief Judge Kim S. Shropshire acknowledged she previously declined to transfer a juvenile defendant, who was then serving a sentence, to the county jail once he turned 18. However, she believed she was obligated to allow Lawrence’s transfer, absent “a different opinion from a higher court.”

The public defender’s office turned to the Supreme Court, arguing there is no automatic transfer for a juvenile defendant who is “developmentally close to childhood and is already embedded in (Division of Youth Services) programming.” The office also pointed to Shropshire’s differential treatment of Lawrence, who was in custody pretrial, and the other juvenile defendant, who was serving a sentence.

“The youth with a more recent (criminal) history that resulted in a commitment sentence remains in DYS; a youth with no such history is pulled out and put in an adult jail, with every risk and harm that comes therewith. Timing becomes destiny,” wrote Lawrence’s attorneys.

They asked that, if the Supreme Court finds that state law requires a transfer for defendants like Lawrence, the justices declare the law unconstitutional in Lawrence’s circumstances.

In a June 1 opinion, the Supreme Court rejected the defense’s arguments.

“Lawrence was properly transferred to the county jail when he turned eighteen years old. Any arguments as to the perceived harshness of the result of applying the statute’s express language are better made to our General Assembly,” wrote Justice Richard L. Gabriel.

He elaborated that child defendants prosecuted in either juvenile or district court “must be detained in the county jail” when they are 18 or older, as the law requires.

“Accordingly, as the district court found, the statute afforded it no discretion, and Lawrence was required to be detained in the county jail,” wrote Gabriel.

Turning to the allegation that Shropshire violated Lawrence’s right to equal protection under the law by allowing a different teenage defendant to remain in youth custody, the Supreme Court found that Lawrence was not in an identical position.

The other defendant was serving a youth sentence when prosecutors charged him as an adult for murder. When he turned 18, the prosecution sought to transfer him to the county jail. Shropshire declined, partly relying on a different legal provision authorizing juvenile defendants to serve sentences in youth detention until age 21.

Without deciding whether Shropshire was correct, Gabriel noted that those circumstances were different from Lawrence’s. Therefore, it was not a violation of Lawrence’s equal protection rights to treat the two defendants differently.

The case is People v. Lawrence.