Juvenile Division

Today I spent the day in Juvenile Court. It is a separate division; I was previously in felony. I went over there firstly to see a different type of system, and because my sponsor is out of town. She is going to watch her daughter graduate from Elon. So, for the next week, including this Thursday and Friday, I am going to be shadowing different divisions with a host of different defense lawyers.

The Juvenile Court building is really rather gross, old, and awful. Thankfully, they are getting a whole new set up in I think 2012 (?) or somewhere around there. Sadly, that new building is on top of an old brewery and the premises was/is toxic. Why they decided to put the new Juvenile Justice Center there is beyond me, probably because it was cheap land. There is a random triangle of land in the premises that they couldn’t build on or plant because it was too toxic to even “clean up.” I found this out today from multiple lawyers who found it amusing to tell me. They were looking forward to the new center, but also kind of wondering out about this placement choice. Another problem with the existing structure is now before the victims and defendants go into the court room they are waiting in the same room together. This of course posses lots of problems as fights / arguments break out between the families in the waiting area. So, in the new building the victims and defendants will be kept apart separately. The problem now is there isn’t enough space to do that.

I shadowed too different Juvenile Defense lawyers today. I went into the detention home, next to the court, for children who have no families or no one who is willing to take them and have been thrown out of other foster systems wait for trial. I was in there with my lawyer visiting one of her clients. It was pretty bleak and dismal. It was rather a sad atmosphere to keep kids locked up for months waiting trial / filling out light sentences. We then met the same kid (defendant) again in the magistrates office (they are allowed to handle misdemeanors/ light felony cases). They are not the Judge, but each one is assigned to Judge to basically help them out and lower their case load. That way the Judge can focus on his trials and the more serious plea deals. This is not the same as in Felony Court. Juveniles that commit very bad crimes can be bound over to the adult Felony Court (where I was previously). This way they are tried and sentenced as adults. This happens usually in murder / rape / really bad assault etc. In adult Felony Court in the past couple weeks I have witnessed/helped out in two child bindover cases. One was a really bad assault (left the victim having seizures). The other bindover case was a murder of a Chinese food delivery man (couple of kids were being stupid and planning to rob the delivery guy. One kid spooked had a loaded gun and shot, and sadly killed the man). So the really bad Juvenile Cases are not in Juvenile Court. They get shipped over to adult Felony Court. So, I saw this one kid plea to a couple of misdemeanors from a felony. It was pretty routine.

Another case I witnessed was one that actually got dismissed. The witness didn’t show up. It was set to go to trial. A kid was accused of stealing a bike. The witness had written out a statement that accused this one kid. However, the kid had told the lawyer privately that someone else really had done it but because of his close relation with the real stealer he wasn’t giving over the name. This was just a really sad case. The kid had a learning disability, and had never been in trouble before. He obviously was the wrong guy. He was hanging out with the kids of which one of them stole the bike. He admitted that, but he denied actually stealing it. When this woman sees a African American youth sitting next to a Defense Lawyer and is asked, did this guy steal the bike? Sadly, a lot of the time they’ll say yes, even if it’s not a correct match. So, in this case it was really great that the witness didn’t show up so the case got dismissed. The victim and file another claim and try again, but the prosecutor was going to try to talk to the woman out of doing so. It was a really unfortunate case and showed a lot of the flaws in the Justice system. If this had gone to trial, the woman would have testified and the kid would probably have lost. Fortunately, it all worked out.

The biggest difference between Juvenile and adult Felony Court is the really the clients, which seems obvious but you have to be there to fully realize it. Maturity can be low in either place, but working with teenagers is really tricky. Many parents probably can attest to that. They are moody, with lots of anger, and most of the time they don’t understand what’s going on, either its just simply confusing or they pretend “not to care” and don’t really take the situation seriously. Working with teenagers (because most are) is definitely a skill that is acquired and patience is really key. They sometimes really don’t know how to act in there best interest where as adults usually are mature enough or have enough real life experience to know when to just be quiet and take things seriously (I’ve had exceptions).