3 girls plead not guilty in suicide bullying case

Article here. Excerpt:

'HADLEY, Mass. - Lawyers for three teenage girls accused of participating in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide entered not guilty pleas Thursday on their behalf to charges including civil rights violations and criminal harassment.

Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Flannery Mullins, all 16, did not appear in Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court for their arraignments.

A judge ordered them to have no contact with the family of Phoebe Prince, a South Hadley High School freshman who hanged herself in January after what prosecutors called an "unrelenting" three-month bullying campaign by six teenagers. Prosecutors say Prince was targeted after she briefly dated a popular boy.
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Mullins, Velazquez and Longe are charged as youthful offenders with civil rights violations resulting in injury. Mullins and Velazquez are also charged with stalking.

Prosecutors said in court Thursday that all three also face separate delinquency cases listing the same alleged offenses, along with criminal harassment charges against each of them.
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Prosecutors said they will argue the delinquency charges at the same time as the other charges. Had the teens been charged only under delinquency laws and not as youthful offenders, their identities would have been confidential.

The maximum punishment in a juvenile delinquency case is commitment to a state youth services facility until age 18. Juveniles ages 15 and 16 who are charged with a felony can be prosecuted as youthful offenders under certain circumstances, including when they are charged with a crime that involves the infliction or threat of serious bodily harm.'