No Matter How Loud I Shout (41 page)

“Can I get free passes, to go home?” Keesha asks, desperate for some glimmer of hope.

Dorn fudges a bit here, saying yes, though he cannot know if this will be possible (it won't be, at least not for many months). “I'm doing this because it's best for you,” he says. “I want you to get well, so you can go home. That is what I'd love to see.”

He gives her a last smile, then sets her file aside. Dorn's kindly tone vanishes then, and it's back to business. He's calling the next case as Keesha walks from the courtroom, waving to her red-eyed mother and whispering, “I love you, Mom.”

A few weeks later, Keesha is in Amethyst Cottage with Carla James and Mr. Shabazz, who nicknames her “Li'l Sweetie” because she is so unlike the other girls—a troubled, sick, but eminently healable young woman, not a criminal.

In Juvenile Court, this is success—the system working, not because of the court and its rule of law, but in spite of it, bureaucracy overcome by a cantankerous judge and a prosecutor willing to do the right thing instead of the legal thing.

·  ·  ·

At the same time Judge Dorn is breaking the rules for Keesha and others, the family of a seventeen-year-old former tagger is having a vastly different and far less satisfying run-in with the supervising judge at Thurgood Marshall Branch. In this boy's case, Dorn seems intent on a strict enforcement of the rules, no matter the consequences.

Christopher Jones had been convicted a year earlier for being a minor in possession of spray paint, a misdemeanor created in recent years by a legislature anxious to slow down graffiti. It led to Chris's first-ever appearance in Juvenile Court, though he had been chronically truant for years without penalty. The judge on the case—Dorn's predecessor in Department 240—didn't want him to do time in camp or the hall. But straight HOP was out, too, because Chris and his stepfather despised one another, and Chris's mother made no secret of whose side she preferred. She pronounced herself “sick of Chris's garbage,” giving the judge no alternative but to send the boy to a group home to live.

A year later, Chris's mother telephoned her brother and sister-in-law, asking, How 'bout if Chris comes to live with you guys? He's finished his sentence in Juvenile Court, but he still can't live with us at home. He just doesn't get along with his stepdad. Andrea and Robert Jones liked their nephew Chris. They talked it over and said, Sure, we'll take him, but only if he agrees to our ground rules: He goes back to school, he gets a job, and he stays away from South Bay—the area south of LA where Chris's tagger
friends hung out, and where his legal troubles began. With that settled, Aunt Andrea became the taskmaster Chris Jones never had.

“Education is the number-one priority in this house,” she told Chris at the outset. “We're all in school here—junior college, adult extension classes, you name it. So join the club.”

But she saw Chris was far, far behind where he should be. One year from graduation age, he had only 30 units of credit out of the 220 required for a diploma. So she put him in a special series of classes that would enable him to earn a GED high school diploma instead, replacing an impossible goal with an attainable one—the same way kids in Juvenile Hall can graduate from high school. Then she helped him get a job at a movie theater, and enrolled him in a vocational program that, once he had his GED, would teach him skills for the construction trade, so that he eventually could become self-supporting. It seemed curious to Andrea Jones that the juvenile system had spent a year with Chris, yet had not taken any of these steps. But Chris's mother had told her of many letters and phone calls to the Probation Department that had never been answered, and she just shrugged it off as another example of ineffective government.

Camp Andrea Jones, however, was anything but ineffective. Chris completely changed his attitude in three months. He dressed better, got up and went to school without complaint. He gave up tagging and his tagger friends. He even got promoted at the movie theater, where his boss raved about his work ethic. He had passed several of his GED tests and had only two more to go, scheduled in two weeks. Most importantly, Chris had begun to speak hopefully about the future. Living in a supportive and structured home for the first time in his life had done for Chris everything that the Juvenile Court could have hoped to accomplish, and in only a matter of months.

“You've really helped me, Aunt Andrea,” he told her one day, giving her a hug, a rare show of emotion from the darkly handsome, quiet young man.

The next night, while the movie theater manager who employed him drove Chris home, a policeman pulled them over for a traffic violation. But when the officer radioed in a routine records check of the driver and passenger, he found there was a long-standing warrant out for Chris's arrest, issued by a Juvenile Court judge. Chris was taken into custody and brought to Juvenile Hall that night. Only then did Andrea Jones learn from her sister and Chris that he had run away from the group home the court had sent him to more than a year ago. Unwelcome at home, he had lived on the street for six months before coming to live with his aunt and uncle.
His mother had never been able to find Chris's probation officer to explain any of this, she said, and she had finally given up. It never occurred to her or Chris to take the simplest and most direct route to straightening out the mess: walking into court.

Because Dorn's predecessor in Department 240 had handled the case, Chris's fate now belonged to Judge Dorn.

Andrea Jones took off from work and school to be here for her nephew (Chris's mother would not leave her new home in Arizona to come). She has been sitting in court for two hours this morning, waiting for Chris's case to be called, and when she finally hears his name spoken by the bailiff, she blurts like a nervous schoolgirl, “I'm here!” and raises her hand.

Chris's lawyer, Leslie Stearns, makes a pitch for the boy's release, explaining his schooling, employment, and his change of life under his aunt's tutelage.

Dorn, face impassive, shakes his head at the public defender. “The minor ran from placement. No one bothered to return him, or bring him to court. If he was with the mother, the aunt or uncle, they aided and abetted him in violating the terms and conditions of probation. . . . Even if the mother had trouble contacting the probation officer, they knew where the courtroom was. And they did nothing. I cannot condone that.”

Dorn then orders Chris kept in Juvenile Hall until a “Triple Seven” can be filed—a probation violation report, named for the statute number, 777—which the judge orders the Probation Department to prepare immediately. This is technically an improper order; Dorn is only supposed to request an investigation, and the Probation Department is supposed to independently determine whether a Triple Seven should be filed. But every PO knows that whether Dorn requests or orders a Triple Seven, the bottom line is that it better be filed, or there will be trouble.

Andrea Jones jumps up. Chris has already been in detention all weekend. “Your Honor,” she calls out from the gallery, as all heads in the audience turn toward her, making her blush and stammer, “we thought everything was taken care of. We didn't know about the bench warrant. I've gotten him into school, into vocational training, I helped him get a job.” She begins to sniffle at this point, her eyes watering. “His life is really on track now.”

Dorn is unmoved. “We'll take that up with you at the next hearing.” The judge asks for a hearing date from his clerk, then says Chris will be back in two days. Andrea Jones starts to protest anew, but Leslie Stearns, knowing Dorn can't see past Chris's original disobedience of a court order,
grabs Andrea and whispers, “Don't say any more. We'll go over it more next time. You'll only make things worse.”

After this, the case devolves into a classic and pointless bureaucratic morass. Two days after the first hearing, Andrea Jones comes back to court at 8:00
A.M.
and waits all morning, then well into the afternoon for Chris's case to be called. She has spent the last two days arguing with Chris's mother for causing this mess, then trying to contact the probation officer preparing the Triple Seven. Every time she calls the Probation Department, she is told there is no Chris Jones case on record. She can't even find out the name of the PO who is supposed to be handling it.

The reason for this becomes clear as the court day winds to a close: No one is handling it. The file arrived at the Probation Department by courier from Dorn's court, but then just sat at the Centinela Probation Office, unopened and unassigned. Dorn is furious when he finds out. He has Chris brought into court from the holding tank, looking disheveled and unhappy, confused at what is going on. He waves weakly to his aunt.

Leslie Stearns begs Dorn to release him to his aunt at this point. She argues that the law requires a juvenile's release within forty-eight hours if no charges are filed, and that time is about to lapse, with no Triple Seven in sight. The DA agrees, happy to send Chris on his way.

But Dorn says he will do nothing without a Triple Seven report so he can know the truth about the boy's behavior for the past year. “Get me a Triple Seven in the morning, or the probation officer in here to tell me why,” he tells his staff. In the meantime, he gets around the forty-eight-hour requirement by resurrecting the original “suitable placement” order that sent Chris to the group home. Dorn orders him sent back—a new suitable placement. Because the process of placing a juvenile takes weeks, the practical effect of Dorn's order is to keep Chris locked up in Juvenile Hall until a Triple Seven can be prepared. Then Dorn can cancel the placement order and do whatever he wants. Meanwhile, he orders everyone back the next day to resolve the case.

When Andrea Jones returns the next day, however, she still has not spoken with the probation officer on Chris's case, though she called and attempted to establish contact six times during the day. And after waiting in court all morning yet again, she learns Chris's case has to be delayed again. Dorn's clever ploy with the suitable placement order has backfired—it had the unintended effect of erasing the forty-eight-hour deadline for filing charges, removing any sense of urgency at the Probation Department. His case went to the bottom of the pile at the Probation Department, behind
all those kids who still had forty-eight hour deadlines to meet. Another hearing is set in five days.

“This is a nightmare,” Andrea Jones complains out in the hallway. “He's missing school. He's locked up. And for what? What's being accomplished?”

While waiting for the next hearing, Andrea Jones duns the Probation Department every day, without luck. Finally, on the afternoon before Chris's hearing, she is connected at random to a sympathetic PO, who agrees to search for Chris's file. He tracks it down on an unused desk at the Centinela office. Someone just stuck it there and left it, no one knows who or why. “No one's doing anything with it,” the PO tells Chris's aunt.

She begs him to help and, hearing her desperation, he agrees, listening to her story, then staying at the office until 9:00
P.M.
verifying everything she had to say—Chris's school performance, his excellent work at the movie theater, his work toward a GED. When the PO determines all this is true, he calls Andrea Jones back and asks, “Why would the judge order a Triple Seven on this?”

“I don't know,” Andrea replies, “but Judge Dorn is pissed.”

The PO then tells Andrea that, regardless of his own feelings on the matter, he must file a Triple Seven to placate Dorn. But he promises to recommend that Chris go home on probation and continue living with his aunt and uncle. “The judge will have to have a darn good reason to go against my recommendation, so you're probably in good shape.” Andrea Jones is confident enough the next day to bring a change of clothes and shoes in a paper bag for Chris to wear home. She looks at some of the other kids in the courthouse and gets depressed, wondering what happens to boys and girls who don't have someone like her to push the system into doing something.

Finally, after another daylong wait in court, a fax of the PO's hastily handwritten report appears in Judge Dorn's courtroom.

Dorn speed-reads it, then tosses it aside without a second glance. “For the rehabilitation of this minor, the protection of this minor, and the protection of society, I am ordering him into short-term camp, closed, so he can't run away.”

Chris puts his head down on the defense table. Dorn never even asked him a question.

Andrea Jones is stunned. She cries out, “That's not fair.” Chris's lawyer shushes her, but Dorn ignores the outburst, and continues speaking to Chris about how he can do up to six months in camp, but that good
behavior can earn him an early release. “You can't keep running. And I will not condone your violation of court orders. I will not simply send you home. If you had come in on your own, that would be another matter. But you did not.”

Dorn hesitates, glancing briefly at Andrea Jones. Then he says curtly, “That's all. Good luck, young man.”

“No wonder our juvenile courts are falling apart,” Chris's aunt says a short time later as she leaves the building “This isn't justice. This is insanity. Now he's going to miss out on his diploma. He's going to have to start all over again. He's going to lose his job, his vocational training, everything. Living with us, Chris had accomplished everything the judge could have hoped to accomplish with his camps and placements. More. Why punish him now? It stinks. It just seems like revenge. What's the point?”

Assistant Public Defender Stearns is equally angry. Juggling files on her way back to her office, she gripes, “That's the thing with Dorn: It's got to be
his
idea, or it's no good. He'll give probation to a bank robber, because it's his idea. But here, he's got a kid who did it on his own, with his family instead of the court, and Dorn can't stand that. He's going to teach Chris a lesson even if it destroys everything good this kid has accomplished.”