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Sometimes siblings are asked to play a role in the implicated young person’s court proceedings. “A sibling, for example, could be an eyewitness to whatever the issue is,” says attorney Tim Curry, director of training and technical assistance at the National Juvenile Defender Center, which focuses on defending youth in juvenile court, where children are prosecuted as children and not as adults. “If the sibling has positive things to say towards the defense, they might be a defense witness. If the state believes that the sibling has information against their own sibling, they could force them to testify as a state’s witness against their own sibling.” The Center deals primarily with status offenses, which are not considered crimes and which include truancy, curfew violations, underage drinking, smoking, and running away.

Not only do prosecutors have every right under state laws to subpoena a sibling and force him or her to testify against their own brother or sister; the parents have no say in whether or not they will allow the minor to testify. There’s no sibling equivalent for the parent-child privilege that some states have, which protects a parent from testifying against their own child. A child does have the same Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination that any other person would have in those circumstances—but does a child always understand that or have adequate counsel to explain it to them?

In some cases, even if a child does not have materially significant information, she may be drawn into a confounding legal web. “Kids are subpoenaed by the prosecution because they really are on a fishing expedition,” Curry says. “They want to know what’s going on, so they subpoena the kids in and bring them into the office, and say, ‘Well, if you talk to us before you go to court, we might be able to get this to go away.’ Kids go in without lawyers. They answer all these kinds of questions, and then whatever happens happens.” Though prosecutors may simply be gathering evidence against the target child, for “a sibling, that could be traumatic,” says Curry. “The state has every right to subpoena whoever they want. They could technically subpoena anybody at any age.” Sometimes the non-offending sibling could even end up divulging incriminating information and being prosecuted, too.

The defense team may also involve a sibling, either as a fact witness to testify about what happened to exonerate her brother or sister or to serve as a character witness to try to mitigate the prosecution’s case. “Character witnesses are really hard because they get super cross-examined by the prosecutor,” Curry says. “I personally, for example, would be hesitant to put a child character witness up there, just because I think it’s harder for them to withstand cross-examination.”