Esmeralda Guevera, age 10, was convicted of threatening to bomb or injury property. The trial court concluded that despite her age Esmeralda had the capacity to commit a crime. She appealed and the Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 3 affirmed the conviction.

Ten-year-old Esmeralda Guevara wrote a note on a stall in the girls’ bathroom at a school in College Place, Washington, on the afternoon of Monday, November 5, 2007. The note read, “[B] omb set 20 mins were [sic] going to die.” School administrators evacuated and closed the school to allow a bomb squad to search. The squad was unable to locate a bomb.

Late that evening, Esmeralda . . . started crying and said, “I did it. I did it.” Esmeralda’s mother, Zenaida Guevara, asked Esmeralda what she did. Esmeralda said she wrote the note on the bathroom stall. She told her mother she had been teased about her teeth and about being fat. Zenaida explained to Esmeralda that the matter was “really serious” and that they must call the police.

Police Officer Carol Ferraro went to the Guevara home. She arrived shortly after midnight. Both Zenaida and Esmeralda were crying when the officer arrived. Esmeralda explained to Officer Ferraro that she had written the note about the bomb.

She said that she had written the message with a pink marker and then had thrown the marker in a bathroom wastebasket.

She also shared that she had been feeling sad because of problems at home . . Officer Ferraro took Esmeralda to juvenile detention, where the officer took a written statement from Esmeralda. The statement read:

On Monday I was feeling very sad because there is problems at my house. Like my Dad is in Jail and my sister is at College and my grandpa is sick so I wrote Bomb threat in a pink Sharpie at 2:35 p.m. and the school was evacuated and saved. At 11:50 My mom called the police and told them I had information about the bomb threat a[sic] I told them I did it. So the police took me to J.J.C.

. . . The State charged Esmeralda with one count of threat to bomb or injure property. After a contested capacity hearing, the juvenile court ruled that Esmeralda had the capacity to understand the wrongfulness of her actions and could be prosecuted for the crime. Esmeralda then pleaded guilty to the crime charged. At sentencing, the court entered an order of deferred disposition and sentenced Esmeralda to a 12- month term of community supervision.

. . . Esmeralda contends that the court impermissibly relied exclusively on Esmeralda’s after-the-fact statements to police to conclude that she had the capacity to understand the seriousness of this crime. She notes that she made the statements after her mother had told her that her actions were “really serious” and after the police came to her house close to midnight, arrested her because of the “seriousness” of her actions, and booked her into a juvenile detention facility.
. . . A statutory presumption that children between 8 and 11 years old lack capacity to commit a crime applies in juvenile proceedings. To rebut this presumption, the State must convince the trial judge that the child had sufficient capacity to understand the act and to know that it was wrong.
The court decides whether the State has rebutted the incapacity presumption by considering the following factors:
(1) the nature of the crime, (2) the child’s age and maturity, (3) whether the child evidenced a desire for secrecy, (4) whether the child told the victim (if any)
not to tell, (5) prior conduct similar to that charged, (6) any consequences that attached to that prior conduct, and (7) whether the child had made an acknowledgment that the behavior is wrong and could lead to detention. State v. Ramer, 151 Wash.2d 106, 114-15 (2004).
. . . The State, then, need not show, and the court need not find, that Esmeralda understood that her act would be punishable under the law. “The focus is on ‘whether the child appreciated the quality of his or her acts at the time the act was committed,’ rather than whether the child understood the legal consequences of the act. Ramer, 151 Wash.2d at 114.
. . . The juvenile court judge here considered and made appropriate findings on the seven factors outlined in Ramer:
Factor 1: The alleged crime is a Class B Felony and a serious offense. The language used threatens that people will die in a short passage of time. Considering the violent nature of our society, the recent history of violence in schools and the worldwide use by terrorists of bombs, school officials and law enforcement officers are supersensitive to threats of this nature.
Factor 2: The child, at the time of the incident, was approximately 10.5 years old. The child’s appearance in court, her mother’s testimony about the child and her activities and Officer Schneidmiller’s testimony about his involvement with the child leads the Court to conclude Esmeralda is of at least average or above average maturity for a 10 year old . . .
Factor 3: The child did not tell anyone about her behavior that afternoon, or even early evening, when she was picked up by her mother after school was cancelled and when they returned to find the parentteacher conferences were cancelled. She was secretive at that time.
Factor 4: There was no individual victim.
Factor 5: There is no history of prior similar conduct.
Factor 6: There were no prior consequences.
Factor 7: The child, when she told her mother later that evening, after awakening from nightmares, that she had written the threat, was at a minimum indirectly acknowledging the wrongfulness of her behavior. She also cried during the police interview.
. . . We conclude that this evidence supports the juvenile court judge’s finding and that finding supports the conclusion that Esmeralda had the capacity to understand the wrongfulness of her actions . . . We affirm the conviction.

Questions:-

1. What factors did the court use to determine if Esmeralda had the “capacity” to commit a crime?
2. What type of punishment is appropriate for Esmeralda based on her age and the crime she committed?