It’s been two months since a father and son were found dead inside their Chelsea home and a juvenile was arrested and charged in their killings. Authorities have been silent ever since.
Police identified the victims in the June 11 homicides as Christopher Hunnewell, 43, and his adopted son Ty Carter, 22. They said the alleged killer, a 16-year-old boy, was being held at Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, and had been charged with murder, but did not identify him by name. That was the last update provided on the case.
Court clerks have repeatedly refused to provide or even acknowledge the existence of charging documents, petitions or any other files pertaining to the teen’s case. The Maine Attorney General’s Office, which prosecutes all homicide cases, won’t even say whether the teen has a lawyer who might be able to speak on his behalf. No causes of death have been released.
“Without speculating, I would say it’s a little unusual,” Portland-based criminal defense attorney Timothy Zerillo said. “I don’t know the specifics of this case, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s not garden variety for it to take this amount of time.”
A review of past cases involving juvenile homicide suspects suggests that prosecutors and authorities are being especially tight-lipped about the Chelsea case, although it’s not clear why. Even a judge’s orders to seal or impound documents in the case, which are public records under state law, have been kept confidential.
“Nothing in this case is a public document, including the sealing order. There is nothing to share,” Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the Maine Judicial Branch, said in an email.
PRIVACY COMES WITH CAVEATS
State law requires a certain amount of privacy for juveniles. The system is built to shield minors accused of crimes, even serious ones, with the idea that they will be rehabilitated.
But some of the documents being withheld in Chelsea are normally public records under state law, several attorneys told the Press Herald, except under specific circumstances, such as whether there are questions about a defendant’s competency.
Juvenile petitions — documents that formally accuse a minor of a crime and initiate a case — are generally confidential by default in Maine. But state law makes explicit exceptions for murder, manslaughter and other Class A crimes. Court clerks in Augusta have refused to say if one even exists in the Chelsea case.
“The petition should be open to the public if the court has found there’s probable cause to believe the juvenile committed murder,” said Jonathan Mermin, of counsel at Portland law firm Preti Flaherty, which represents the Maine Trust for Local News, the parent company of the Press Herald, Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel.
Juvenile petitions and other basic information about court proceedings have been made public in other recent cases in which teens have been charged with murder, notably the killing of Sunshine Stewart in Union last month in which the charging document was released within 48 hours of his arrest.
But the dissemination of petitions and other charging documents largely hinges on competency hearings, during which the court consults experts to determine if a person accused of a crime is capable of standing trial, according to judicial branch spokespeople.
Bind-over hearings, in which judges decide whether or not a juvenile will be tried as an adult, also heavily factor into decisions about whether to disseminate case information, Zerillo said.
Judicial branch spokespeople have refused to say if a competency or bind-over hearing has been held or scheduled in the Chelsea case.
“Without knowing the specifics of this juvenile or this case, I would surmise that competency issues may be something that would delay the bind-over process,” Zerillo said. “I can imagine these two issues, competency and the bind-over, going hand in hand.”
Judges may also consider the nature of the crime, protecting a juvenile or victim’s privacy, public safety concerns and “the characteristics of the juvenile” in deciding when to keep juvenile proceedings confidential, according to state statute.
“The law gives (the state) a lot of leeway to not tell you things,” Mermin said.
OTHER CASES HANDLED DIFFERENTLY
In other recent instances where juveniles have been charged with murder, the names of the accused and details about the incident have trickled out through court documents, hearings and proceedings, often within days or weeks of the incident.
In 2022, a 16-year-old was arrested in Brooks for allegedly killing a man who had allowed the teen to live at his home. Authorities named the juvenile and his defense attorney just days after the slayings. Later that same year in Waterville, a 15-year-old accused of killing his girlfriend was identified during a court hearing shortly after his arrest.
In 2018, information about a teenager charged with killing his grandmother in Bowdoinham was released just days after it happened. The same was true of a 2016 case in Winthrop where a 17-year-old was charged with killing his parents.
Unlike in those cases, however, the teen in Chelsea was reportedly in the custody of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, family members said in interviews with the Maine Trust for Local News. It is one of, if not the only, instances in Maine history of such an incident.
The teen’s family initially said at the time that they thought the state should have done more to prevent the slayings before they happened and raised questions about Maine’s juvenile mental health system. The teen had been showing signs of mental and behavioral issues for years, they said, and family members had been seeking to move him into another foster home for just as long.
It’s unclear if the confidentiality in the Chelsea case stems from the child being in state custody. Representatives from DHHS did not respond to inquiries for this story.
