US judge has girl handcuffed for sleeping during court field trip | Hacker News Reader

US judge has girl handcuffed for sleeping during court field trip

bbc.com

44 pointsonemoresoop52 comments

Knock the savagery of it all you want. I've served on juries. The lesson is "The court is a place where your life ends at a capricious coin-toss by 12 idiots". This is a perfect way to show that. Everyone should fear being in a courtroom as anything other than an employee or jury member.

"Everyone should fear being in a courtroom as anything other than an employee or jury member"

But to fear it as a student, on a field trip?

I can't imagine punishing a teenager for being so exhausted they fall asleep.

Falling asleep isn't even intentional. How does one know who's suffering from sleep apnea or other condition causing poor sleep.

> Judge King tells Eva: "You sleep at home in your bed, not in court."

> Her mother, however, said Eva did not have "her own bed that she can sleep in".

Just don't be there

Good point. Perhaps the kid learned pretty cheaply that you don't fuck around when you're in the presence of a de facto king.

> The teenager was visiting the 36th District Court for a trip organised by the environmental charity The Greening, whose other excursions include kayaking and bird-watching.

> [...] Mr King said he stood by his decisions. "I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there's probably no real chance of me putting her in jail," he said. "That was my own version of Scared Straight."

Is it "https://www.greeningofdetroit.com/"?

> The Greening of Detroit is a non-profit organization focused on enhancing the quality of life for Detroiters by planting trees, providing job training and involving our youth in the education of the natural environment. We involve Detroiters in the process through community engagement, green spaces, education and jobs.

Is this primarily an at-risk teens program, without saying that directly?

Why were these teens visiting a courtroom?

Why did the judge think "Scared Straight" trauma was appropriate under the circumstances?

>Why were these teens visiting a courtroom?

It's not really that unusual. Every student in my district (thousands) visited their local courthouses in Civics class in 10th grade.

>Why did the judge think "Scared Straight" trauma was appropriate under the circumstances?

Power tripping.

> Power tripping

Exactly this. How can it be seen in any other way? Why do these people have such power to do this to someone who isn’t breaking any law?

I appreciate that someone needs to take responsibility for a decision over a trial, but for someone not involved in a trial?

What repercussions are there for a judge to behave like this? This is some major authoritarian judge dredd shit.

Not a civics class, but an environmental charity.

Maybe the environmental charity was visiting a courtroom because environmental conscientiousness sometimes involves engaging with government processes through the courts, and a courtroom visit would make that abstraction more concrete.

Or maybe the environmental charity has an at-risk youth program component, and someone thought it would be a good idea to confront teens with some of the undesirable reality of getting into crime.

In either case, the judge might or might not have been in the loop on that. They might've just been in default mode, where they see bad and troubled behavior every day, all day.

Were there adults accompanying the students? Who was responsible for the students’ behavior in the courtroom, especially, after the warnings from the judge to, at the least, one of them?

Judge maybe needs to learn the same lesson. Power tripping is not appropriate behavior either.

good luck w/ that

At this point I'm convinced judges are among the most corrupt, despicable government officials in the US.

The judge got suspended. He is better off taking some anger management classes and apologising to the sleepy girl. Not sure how long his suspension will last but his record will have that on.

What sort of capability does the US court system have to admit accountability or remediate past mistakes or to question whether a judge still belongs as a judge? I don't think I've ever seen this happen outside of the appeal system (admittedly working far from its day to day business).

It's really quite revealing that the judge seems to believe the power of the court emerges from fear of it, not out of its unique ability to resolve disputes reasonably.

Judges do have oversight and they can / are disciplined for behavior. It even happens when the behavior would be otherwise legal for most folks, but inappropriate for a judge who does something outside the court as an individual.

It happens fairly regularly.

What does this process look like and how can I follow when this happens?

I usually find out about it by reading the news.

It varies from place to place. In some states, judges are elected positions and their appointment comes to for review; in others, they're not.

I mean the highest court in the land, the US supreme court has members openly taking bribes a la Clarance Thomas and he's still around.

We really need to eliminate all these special powers afforded to judges, police and other government officials. They are civil servants and need to remember whatever authority they have is granted by the people and exists only to serve the community. Sadly, most of the people in government don't seem to realize this fact of public office / civil service in any democratic society.

i guess someone needs the power to enforce the law. But for someone who isn't even on trial? that feels like a major oversight if they really do have that power.

Who else would have the power in court room? No one apart from the Defendant and maybe their public defender is forced to be there. They are there by choice and thus should act accordingly. Judge is in charge of the place for duration of trial, so should have rights to instruct any deputies present.

The same people that have the power to remove people causing a disturbance elsewhere. The police could have been instructed to remove them, arrest them, issue a summons for court, and then the judge can have their turn. That a judge can skip that entire process on a whim is a massive overreach.

I see in the news that the judge has been removed from trials for "training". Hopefully they will stick him in cuffs, dress him in prison garb, and publicly humiliate him in front of his peers while they flip a coin to decide if he should spend his "holiday" in prison. But I doubt it.

> "I wanted to get through to her, show how serious this is," he said, adding: "I'll do whatever needs to be done to reach these kids

I'm sure he reached them, but I don't know if the message he sent was the message he intended.

Mistrust authority.

"Authority is absolutely not on your side. Authority is on authority's side."

It's hard to see what other message would be communicated by this.

Also:

> I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there's probably no real chance of me putting her in jail," he said.

Probably no real chance??

> "That was my own version of Scared Straight."

Oh, he means that program that not only doesn't work, but tends to result in the opposite of what it purports to be trying to accomplish?

https://psychcentral.com/blog/scared-straight-not-really

> The program effect, whether assuming a fixed or random effects model, was nearly identical and negative in direction, regardless of the meta-analytic strategy.” In other words, Scared Straight not only doesn’t work, it may actually be more harmful than doing nothing.

Yes, it's a good way to lose respect.

"The system's purpose is what it does" or whatever.

The kid learned exactly what they need to know - a judge having a bad day can seriously alter the trajectory of your life.

Generally unless you're a teacher or school administrator, or the police and there is a serious issue ongoing, I think it's best left to the parents to make those kinds of calls.

Very strange incident.

The judge doesn't know why she was falling asleep, there could be a problem at home causing her to loose sleep. The girl also had no choice in being there - it's a school field trip, and I'm sure she'd rather be napping in the bus if she had the choice. Humiliating her in this way is not how to "reach her", it does the opposite.

And in fact, the girl’s single mother says near the end of the article that the girl does not have “her own bed” to sleep in :/

"It was her whole attitude and her whole disposition that disturbed me," the judge said in interviews afterwards.

I wish I could read the transcript of what the 15-year-old girl said. I suspect it was some really disrespectful stuff, which doesn't justify the judge's actions, but does add context to why he did it.

I read somewhere else the entire exchange was streamed online.

His streams are here if you're interested in looking for it.

https://youtube.com/@CTRMthDistrictCourt-hj2tc

The judge and everyone who follows this creep should be fired and put in front of court for abuse of powers.

A judge has the authority to handcuff someone who isn’t on trial? How did that happen?

Exactly. What crime did this kid commit that justifies being cuffed and put in a jail uniform?

Wow. Something is deeply wrong with that judge if he cannot deal with a non threatening situation without resorting to the humiliation of a child.

Not just handcuffed. Also dressed in a jail outfit, and threatened with juvenile detention. I'm not sure which is worse.

This feels like an overstep at first read, but I take a little pause that the judge mentioned it was more than sleeping which bothered him. Should he react that way? Probably not. But I’d like to hear more about how that teen specifically acted towards the judge before jumping too far into an opinion.

I'd have thought the correct procedure is to have the bailiff remove them from the courtroom, handcuffs would only be needed if they refused to go. They can pout in the hallway.

From the article, it was more than just handcuffing and the judge caused more disruption than she did.

This is sickening. How has he not been arrested? She was not on trial. Can judges cast judgement on people who haven't been accused of anything? I obviously don't know anything about the legal system, but isn't holding someone who isn't on trial technically kidnapping? And forcing a minor to undress and put on a prison uniform is insane.

>How has he not been arrested?

Humiliating school children is not a crime. Though it's a really shitty thing to do .

>Can judges cast judgement on people who haven't been accused of anything?

A judge maintains order in their courtroom. They have a large amount of latitude in how they do that.

Even though it's a terrible thing to do, I don't believe anything illegal occurred.

Using your powers as a judge inappropriately should be.

This is a bit beyond humiliation, this amounted to traumatizing a person for an involuntary action. The student could have sleep apnea...

I agree - its terrible, inappropriate, and uncalled for.

That doesn't make it illegal.

The judge got suspended. Whether illegal or not, his behavior was sanctioned one way or another.

> Humiliating school children is not a crime. Though it's a really shitty thing to do.

I don't think if I slap someone in handcuffs and force them to change clothes I'll be able to write it off as just "humiliating" them when the legal system comes calling.

IANAL, so spitballing here, but it seems like this might be false imprisonment, given the use of handcuffs to restrain the student. It would be hard to argue this was a reasonable means of maintaining order when the student was not actively disrupting proceedings and when, say, simply having the kid ejected from the courtroom would have removed whatever disturbance was being presented.

It doesn’t seem that the handcuffing was connected to any sort of contempt proceeding. Judges are, as you note, given wide latitude to determine how to maintain order in their courts, but there are usually limits to how they can exercise their contempt power. It would seem, though, that handcuffing a student who is not actively disrupting proceedings or posing a threat without a formal contempt proceeding would be considered a due process violation, regardless. I expect having a member of the gallery handcuffed without being held in contempt exceeds that wide authority, so I wonder if the student couldn’t recover some damages for the tort.(Edit: Probably not, as judicial immunity would likely shield the judge from any civil action against him. There was a recent Sixth Circuit case—Orta v. Repp https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/23... —that upheld the immunity claim in a similar case of abuse of contempt power.[0])

But even if this incident is not criminally or civilly actionable, it is highly likely that the state judicial ethics commission might take a rather jaundiced view of such behavior.

[0] The record in the Orta case honestly makes this whole incident look trivial by comparison. If you want to see what it looks like when an asshole judge goes on a power trip, here you go: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/3/2020/2020-O...

It should be noted Repp was later suspended for a year without pay by the Ohio Supreme Court.

> One thing you'll learn about my courtroom is that I'm not a toy. I am not to be played with.

What a narcissistic piece of shit. Not everything is about you...

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