The Kids of Rutherford County - Ep. 2
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In two thousand and thirteen, three years before the arrests at hub, the elementary, when a bunch of kids were arrested and brought to jubilant attention for not stopping a fight, a guy named to west Clark could just graduated law school west with twenty five years old, smart, ambitious. But he was also just coming out of a pretty wild past on an off. And he was a teenager.

He's been addicted. Oxy contain a hopeless love of this shit is how he puts IT with that came with as rap. Shi A D Y, some drug charges.

So considering this, you know, the chances of getting a job, but a tony way SHE law, her were pretty close to zero. But he needed a job. That's when some lawyers, he meant recovery circles gave him a tip. There's always work. And juvenile court.

they were like, hate, this is a place you can go and at least start out and learn the ropes, because there is a need for lawyers to do that.

Counter pointed juvenile cases don't pay well. And lawyers have told me the juvenile core lacks the prestige of adult criminal core. One lawyer harshly described IT as the bottom run of illegal practice.

But for less, you know, IT was something to do, which was much Better than .

nothing to do at the time west was living in ruthful d count y. tennessee.

And so I just went down to the juvenile cord and observed a couple of days and then ask to be put on the list to take appointments. And IT was in january of twenty fourteen that I got my first juvenile, al, appointment.

West's first case was for a girl who is being held in detention on a misdemeanor, LED reckless burning. The crime west had never heard of. The girl was accused of setting a small fire and neighbors born, so police had picked her up the day before and taking her to v where SHE spent the lightness cell waiting for her hearing, west went down to the detention center to meet with her.

I remember, just like physically, how small SHE was. Like, kind of struck me like, wow, this is a really little kid. You know.

the girl was twelve, wearing the jail standard issue jump suit, west was thrown.

I remember feeling like I am an a pino facility. I visited prisons before. I'd been in jail before myself. And IT was very much identical to an adult prison.

And i'm sitting across from this little scared twelve old girl who had, like, accidentally started a fire and had now spent the night in in jail. IT just felt wrong. You know, I did not feel like this is how kids should be treated. Didn't feel like this was the right place for this twelve year old to be IT.

Turns out juvenile detention literally wasn't the right place for this tropical to be. Because while mister minor offenses like reckless burning or shop lifting or trust passing are pretty common in juvenile court, what's less common is having a kid jailed for one. And while this was west's first case and he didn't know much about being a defence lawyer, he did know that step one was to read the relevant laws.

He looked up the criteria for ruckus burning, and he also looked up tennis detention statue, which laid out guidelines for when a kid can be locked up. West learned that a minor like this twelve old girl could only be held for very specific reasons, like if he's already on probation or run away from another county, or if SHE caused a serious injury. None of you applied to her case reading this. West did a double. Take cake. Wait minute.

Even if this kid did everything that is said here, they can't be detained according to the statute. This is gold, and get out here. This is some good, good research here. Nobody is. And I thought of this so a bit.

Pushed up over his discovery, west went talk to the prosecutor and triumph tly cited the statue, telling her that bylaw SHE can't hold us client in jail. But the prosecutor didn't have much a reaction to this news. Instead, what says, SHE asked him a few questions about his clients circumstances and then basically was like, okay, yeah, sure, your client can go home. And later that day, the twelve year old girl was released. West ended up having mixed feelings about the outcome.

On the one hand, i'm thrilled because that's the best outcome I can get here, but IT definitely stuck with me that, like the statute, is pretty clear about when you can enjoy a kid. And here's the kid being detained. Anyway.

west thought maybe what happened to his twelve old client was just an isolated incident, a one off, but here's what he saw next. A boy accused of stealing a football jersey jailed. A girl accused of pulling someone s hair jailed.

A girl turned to use a blank check at a school books fair jailed. To be clear, these are all missing or charges and did not qualify for detention under tennessee law. Yet many of us, as clients, were still getting picked up by law, forceful and taking a juv to sit in a cell for a day or two or three.

West had gone to law school for a reason. He wanted to argue the law. He was also a brand new lawyer, still figuring out how the law worked. But from what he could see, radford carney was Operating by its own rules.

They had their own form of juvenile justice and west was about to figure out who and what was behind IT from serial productions and the new york times, i'm marble night. This is the kids of rothhorn county. Episode two, what the how are you people doing?

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From the beginning, west could see something wasn't right with rough for a county juvenile court. And after just a few months taking cases there, he was feeling pretty been .

down IT was just .

this heartening.

I mean, every single docket, there are kids who just simply don't meet the legal criteria to have been detained, even arrested, yet. Here they are in chains in a jump suit, having a attention hearing to determine whether they are onna continue to be attained. That had a pretty negative effect on me and about like, old gosh, what's my role here? Like how good of a lawyer? Ema, if i'm just kind of going along with with this system.

what did you ever talk to other lawyers without?

Like that person should be the, yeah, I did.

And what were these .

conversations? I mean, I would mostly be like complaining after a hearing and say, oh, can you believe this? Like, look right here now the statue, look at IT says this kid had a mr.

Minor assault. There is no way this kid could be detailed. And I don't remember ever really getting more than like, well, yeah, what are you going to do?

To west IT seemed obvious that this, what you gonna do attitude, was because of one person. The judge donors got dav import. Judge dav import oversaw the entire juvenile justice system in roth d county, the court and the juvenile jail. The jay's director answered to her and without jury, an juvenile court SHE had the final say for every case that came before her, says judge dave imports at the tone on everything.

There was always a feudalistic field to the courthouse. SHE was the seat of power. And there is that feel that we were all part of a community, and he made rules of the community. That was just how I was.

Judge dav import was the only juvenile judge the county ever had first elected to the bench in two thousand when the county's juvenile court was established, a White woman with a commanding presence, often wearing her signature teal coloured robe. Judge dave import had a banner hang ging in the courthouse were claiming her the county's favorite elected official, an award given out by the local paper.

SHE was sometimes referred to as the mother of the carney SHE even refer to her office and mother the county. At times, judge dav import declined to talk to me for my reporting, but another interviews, he said he saw her work as a ministry more than a job. I'm here on a mission, SHE said.

It's god's mission. SHE was strict when I came to enforcing the rules of record room, no intact shirts, no sn dresses, no spaetzle raps or spandex, no body peer sings, no uncovered tattoos, pants must be pulled up at all times, and definitely no swearing. But to IT wasn't just A W import, was a tough judge. Word bothered him was the courtroom dynamic, where the staff, and especially some of the lawyers, were less advocates for their clients and more applicants to the judge.

Within the first few detention hearings that I attended, there was a lawyer who was R. U. N. For his client not to be detained and judged in port, was yelling about how much of A A danger, this kid who had been caught breaking into a car, how this wasn't something we can tolerate in this community.

To be clear, breaking into a car did not meet tennesse criteria for juvenile detention.

And the lawyer gets up and he standing there in this suit that looks like it's been stuffin the trunk of a car for a week. And you can see the wrinkles on the back out on the sleeves. And he's got one of those beers that's not like an intentional beard but just, you know fuck that I haven't shaved for a week kind of beers and he's making this argument. But as he's saying words, he's looking down like visibly submitting to the prosecutor and to the judge and say, judge, you can obtain this kid and and you know he's subject to that. But just pleased out that was the essence of what he was saying, just gravy begging without any reference to any rules that actually applied to the situation.

What are you thinking as you're watching this happen?

I don't want to be like that guy.

what's tried to not be that guy, but I didn't get very far. So you're regularly going in front of dab import and saying you cannot detain these kids.

Yes, with the statue like you're holding IT. Yes, I would print IT out and i'd have in my file and I would read IT and I would say this kid is not eligible to be detained, period, so you have to let him go.

So the first time you did that, you can I was like, like, you didn't even say anything, right? Second time you do that.

it's like I find this child a threat to himself for the community and i'm onna hold them and i'm like, that's not the analysis. Like there have to be these prerequisites dings of like felony or prior convictions or the kids on problem and I just that would be like, you know, was just talking about nothing.

And then the third time and the fourth.

yeah I mean.

he said IT would go on and on the phrase that west S W. Import would say in order to justify attention, finding a kid a threat to himself in the community. That phrase came a lot SHE would say IT as exciting illegal rationals.

But a kid being a threat can't be the only legal metric for jAiling them. That's just not how the laws written IT seemed obvious to us. The dave import and the jail SHE oversaw were were violating this detention statute. But he seemed to be the only one in the court felt .

that way by the time I got there, which is twenty fourteen, like IT was just generally accepted. This is how the juvenile justice system .

Operates to west. Everyone was falling in line with how the judge did things, but this was west s perspective. And he was coming out IT from the point of view of a defense lawyer, a very Green one at that.

So was what's right? Was this for the leader attitude, really the culture here? I wanted to find out from someone with a different perspective.

So I went to the court's long time prosecutor, Leslie column. SHE spent sixteen years working in that imports courtroom. And just by the minor, she's almost the total opposite of west, where he is quick to be outraged.

Lesly is much more deliberate, a careful observer of the court's politics. IT is my experience that. Officials, maybe especially judges, don't particularly like to be told they are wrong or how to do things.

See what I mean deliberate. With lesser remembers, west was an interesting nizing presence in the court room, both toward her and judge dave import. And he didn't think that was always the most effective approach.

That said blessed y herself did know is like dave import approach, like when w import with yellow child defendants and their families from the bench. I think of a middle lady yell at you was going to solve your problem, then you wouldn't in chore, because I think most of the mothers would have done. Lesly told me he wanted to get family's treatment, get them in the programs, things like anger management, drug and alcohol counseling, which in her eyes didn't happen nearly enough.

And dab imports court, I asked if he ever saw IT wasted kids being held in detention when I shouldn't have been in. And did you feel like you could say anything? Not really.

Was that a frustrating place to be in? Yes, sometimes. But at the end of the day, it's her corporate. And I need to make myself work within heroles as much as I can. So back to us, he just started his legal career of the juvenile court, and he was already frustrated and demoralized.

He was up against the judge who kept his missing s argument about the detention statute, a prosecutor who seemed to follow her lead and colleagues who accepted the status quote, but what can he do about IT? He was only twenty five years old and still just learning the ropes of juvenile court. He knew he wasn't going to a change things on his own. But then one day, hanging out the smoker section in front of the course, he found an ally that's after the break.

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By the time I met westerly, i've been back in that court for seven, eight years, seeing the same stuff over and over and over again.

This is mark downing. One west first arrived at the court in two thousand and fourteen. Mark had been a juvenile attorney. They are on and off from most fifteen years, though we admit several of those years were blurr, in part because I think .

I would show up to court still drunk from the night that would happen. You know, if you drink till two A M A A M, you're probably still little drop, right?

Just like west market, come to the court with some baggage, a couple d wise in a big drinking problem arrived in two thousand. The same year, dab import became the juvenile judge he'd left a few times over the years for Better paying jobs, but he always lost them because he was drinking and then found himself back in the juvenile court, eventually mark out sober and of focusing more in his work.

And then one day he found himself showing a smoke break with west outside the court house. They quickly hit off over their shared history of addiction and the running with the law as kids and adults, mainly though they bonded over their shared struggles. Defending kids in juvenile court like west, mark also had a document he was always bringing up in the courtroom.

I bring up the constitution. I know, never won. I never won an argument talking about the constitution in that court room lesson, everyone, and argument talking about .

the detention statute so we can. I head IT off.

And again, here's was .

complaining about how a lot of he's really good legal arguments we were making. We're being ignored.

You know you know so is like it's like where you know donkey hot or whatever, you know just we're fighting against phantoms and doing IT over, over, over again.

Pretty quickly, west told mark his ambitions. He was tired of citing the actual law, fAiling to get a client out, and then everyone going back to business as usual, locking up more kids. He wanted to end this system. Marker remembers the main thing west wanted to do.

or he wanted to do that. He definitely wanted to see judge da really early on because of that statute. But the whole idea about suing the juvenile court like IT wasn't I didn't think he was crazy.

And I thought like IT was so hard to do define the rike mechanism to get in because of all the communities that accord has. So like I was like, whatever Wesley is, guess not going to happen. There's no way to do IT.

There's there's no way to do IT to sue this court for various reasons. Courts and especially judges, are pretty well insulated from lawsuits. Generally, you can directly sua judge because of something called absolute munty.

I'll be the details. But still west was determined to find a way. So for the next two years, mark and west had this pie in the sky conversations about suing the court until west finally got a case they both saw as an opportunity.

In April of two thousand and sixteen, who has got an email from the core about one of his clients, a kid damme contrarious feature quanti. Ous was fifteen years old, and he was being held in detention for aggravated robbery. In the email detention staffe rote, that quantities been acting out in jail, flashing gang signs, wrapping hollow oring.

And they have been holding him for a few days, and something called lock down. Now they want to the prosecutor less, they call the mn to find emotion, giving them the authority to keep quanti as and lock down indefinitely. West read this and immediately called buzzy.

i'm like, what the hell is locked down? What are we talking about here? Oh, well, you know, is this process.

And he explained that, you know, the kids, they put him in in the cell twenty three hours a day and let him out an hour a day. And i'm like like that solitary confinement. What are talking about? Like i'm just in dignity about the whole thing because I like, surely i'm missing something. Like really they're not putting kids and solar confinement after getting .

off the phone with, lesley was headed to the detention center and met with quanti as .

and i'm like, hey, buddy, like what's what's gone on back there? Well, I got, you know, I got some trouble and they put me on log down. My quotes was locked down.

Quanti has told west he'd been placed on locked down before I was twice in the past few weeks. Actually once for eight days straight, the staff would take everything out of a cell, including his bedding and his mattress. During the day, he wasn't a little let down, so he sit on the medal bunk. Quanti as told west that they covered up his window so we couldn't see out. All he was left with was just a bible in a cup.

Maja is like dropping that like this has happened. And that is even like sitting there are composed and just like is not like registering with him that this is like some human rights violation that occurring is just like, this is my life now, you know? So i'm like listening, man, this is insane.

okay? They can't do this to you. We're going to put an end of this. This is some real next level bullshit, and it's not gonna fly.

Part of the reason west was so outraged is because he am self of input in solita can find at once when he was eighteen. It's a long story from back in west wild days and involved a heavy dose ability insulting an officer and then getting into a fight with an inmate. West got throwing into solitary, and he remembers feeling like he was totally alone and that anything could happen to him. You know.

your whole world shrinks down to the little concrete hole. And after that point, I found out that I may have rights on paper, but in practice, if i'm alone in a concrete hole under a courthouse and there's a bunch of, you know, angry law enforcement officers that are just irritated with me, i've got precisely as much liberty as they decide I have and and that was that was pretty ary.

So now here west was, a decade later, a lawyer representing a kid who was going through almost the same thing he did except his client, ontario, was going through IT at the age of fifteen. Now, to be clear, locked down was technically legal in tennessee.

The state's department of children services allowed IT as a way to manage behavior, and juvenile detention centers could use IT as much as they wanted, sometimes calling IT isolation or exclusion. But to west, no matter what I was called, he thought that all amount ted to the same thing, solitary confinement. And he thought, for children in particular, IT was cruel and inhumane, leaving quanti as in the detention center, west had just two hours to go before his hearing in front of judge dab import.

So we SAT down in the courthouse. simple. Ul, that is ipad frantically looking for any legal justification to get quota, a set of solitary.

And he found plenty of material to supporters argument. A recent executive order from president obama had banned solitary confinement of children and federal facilities. A report from the U.

N. Qualified the practice as torture. And he also found some psychiatric articles that also the same thing, solitary can find man is a really bad for kids. West assembled this argument right up to the moment the hearing began in front. Judge dave import.

So the judge like, well, that's Clark. What do you have to say and I start rattling off the statistics and the generally accept a definition of solitary ary confinement and how it's like torture for children.

And I don't get too far into IT before the judge cannot interpret me to say we don't put anybody inside trac environment and i'm like, hole, didn't we just say you're going to put somebody in a room for twenty three hours and then let him out for one hour a day? I'm looking around the room for like these other adults in the room like what the how are you people do? And this is a child like you're adults, this is legal system.

And you're tell me you're putting this kid in a hole for twenty three hours a day I explained, well, this is just an outlaw in the federal system and president obama and issue you an executive order prohibiting this practice. And this is exactly why. And then the judge like Scott, that that, you know, all this is not president obama's s court room is my courtroom. And IT was just a crazy st feeling because it's like holding a glass of water and yelling at people about whats in your hand and they pretend like they don't see IT or they pretend like, you know, the reality that you are there observing with your own eyes is just not happen.

At the end of the hearing, dav importers showed her ruling sending ontario back to lock down on the order. SHE scaled the conditions in cell twenty three hours, one hour free time. If disrupt ing free time, the twenty three starts again, sign dona date import west has lost.

I walked out as angry as i've ever walked out of a courter. And in my life, my jaws clenched, my hands are clenched around my brief case. And I don't want to look at anybody. I don't want to speak anybody because I don't have anything but contempt for anyone that could just let that go on. I mean, it's bad to say, it's bad to feel, but I developed a real hatred for some of the people that were doing these things.

On his drive home from the courthouse west.

called Marks like holy shit men, this is, this is really something. And he too had read the obama executive order. And we talk about how this could really be the basis for a lawsuit. Like this is IT. We're onna do IT.

A few days later, they filed a twenty eight page emergency complaint with the federal court, saying the juvenile jail had violated the eight and fourteenth amendments to the constitution. In other words, but rather ford county was doing the quanti ous was cruel and unusual punishment.

Within hours of filing, the federal judge granted the lawyer's request, writing quanti as was being subjected to, quote, inhumane conditions likely to cause them a reparable harm. The judge ordered referred county to let quanti as out of lockdown immediately. Legally speaking, the judges decision was a narrow one.

IT only applied to quanti ous, but IT was bigger than that too. For one, IT set a precedent. Within a year, tennessee had banned the practice as a form of punishment for kids in attention.

But on top of that, for west IT was a personal Victory for two years. He'd been trying to get someone to see what he did that rutherford county was in following the rules. And now, at least for this one kid, he'd finally gotten someone, someone with authority to listen.

Meanwhile, the same week that west and mark we're dealing with, the quanti ous case news began blowing up. About eleven local kids arrested for not stopping a fight, kids as Young as twelve, ten, eight years old who were taken to the juvenile detention center, some even booked and held overnight. When west heard about the arrests, he didn't think much of IT.

In fact, IT seems pretty typical for ruth ford conney. He even joked about IT. What's the news here? But what is soon realize is that this little scandal IT would eventually provide the road map P. N. Mark cabin looking for, and would reveal what was really happening inside this juvenile justice system that's next time on the kids of rutherfurd county.

The kids of rutherford county is a co production of serial productions. The new york times publica and national for public radio IT was reported by me mara night with additional reporting from can armstrong. The show is produced by dying og mat with additional production by Michelle narrow editing from july's nyt and janua, along with sera blue stain and can armstrong at pro and my colleague tony consoles at nashville public radio.

Additional editing from a nata bata jo and alex color, the supervising producer for sero productions, is ended tube o research, in fact checking by band fAiling with additional fact checking by naomi sound design, music supervision and mixing by feb win. The original score for our show is from the blasting company. Susan westling is our standard settings or and legal review from dana Green, alien suma and Simon procs the art for our show comes from public delkin additional production from gene python.

Mac Miller is the executive assistant for cereal. Sam donny is a deputy managing editor of the new york times at the new york times, thanks to Elizabeth Davis Moore, Susan beachy, Kitty bennet, Allen diller's, air climate, neel and kerstin noise, special thanks to our session musicians Austin hook do polio, hennessy Tyler, dominic red rigs and key carmon. The kids of rutherford county is produced by serial productions, the new york times, publica and nature public radio.