No Matter How Loud I Shout (55 page)

No information is presented to the sentencing judge about George's tragic past, either—how the dependency court was in charge of his childhood since age five, yet botched the job by removing him from a wholesome group home where he was doing well, and entrusting his upbringing to a home troubled by drug abuse. That his problems with school and delinquency intensified at this point in his life is indisputable—but this was never made clear to George's judge.

“George was the star among the kids who came through here,” recalls Logan Westbrook, the director of the Helping Hands group home, where George lived and flourished for two years before being sent to live with his aunt. “He excelled in school, he was a mentor to the younger children here. He was our success story. We opposed him leaving, but the dependency court had other ideas.”

Westbrook would have been happy to testify on George's behalf. “But no one ever contacted me.”

Indeed, the probation report filed in the case makes no mention of George's childhood experiences, other than to outline the minor juvenile offenses he committed before the home invasion robbery. The report—
intended to guide the judge in passing sentence—paints George as a sociopath beyond redemption, erroneously claiming, among other things, that George had been raised by a street gang since age five, when in reality he had been raised by Los Angeles County as a dependent ward of the court. No mention of this can be found in the probation report, nor of his more recent and more positive year spent in Juvenile Hall while awaiting trial and sentencing. Instead, the probation officer states baldly, “There are no mitigating factors,” then recommends a state prison sentence to the maximum amount allowed by law.

The CYA report that follows George's three-month evaluation is somewhat more positive, though its only reference to his childhood history is to say he comes from a dysfunctional family and has been in placement since age five. Still, two of the three evaluators reported that George would do well if sentenced to CYA, that he could be rehabilitated there and benefit from its programs. They also wrote that he would have no hope if sent to state prison with its array of more sophisticated criminals. (The one dissenter on the CYA evaluation team, a psychiatrist known for his conservative views on delinquency, felt George was a very hardened and sophisticated criminal, full of rage and violence because of his tragic childhood, and therefore was a poor candidate for rehabilitation.)

In any case, the portrait of George presented to Judge P. H. Hickok at his sentencing in the Norwalk Branch of Superior Court was both inaccurate and incomplete. George's lawyer would later say it didn't matter, that the prosecutor was out for blood, and that no sob story about George's past and his good works in Juvenile Hall was going to make a judge go easy on a kid who participated in an armed home invasion robbery.

“Nobody wants to hear it anymore,” O'Donnell says. “It's a shame, but that's the way it is.”

Given his jury verdict, the maximum sentence George could get was ten years, down from a potential twenty-five to life. The law allowed a sentence as low as five years, but Judge Hickok gave him all ten, just as was recommended by the erroneous probation report. The judge would not commit him to the California Youth Authority but, as was done with Geri, he ordered George housed at CYA while serving his prison sentence. If he behaved himself, he should be able to complete his sentence there, though there are no guarantees.

Afterward, George sits in the exercise yard at Juvenile Hall, reflecting on his case and his childhood. Much of his early life is still a blank to him, but, ever since his trial, he has been seeing recurrent images from his
childhood, sudden recollections that come to him at odd moments. One day he woke up, lying in his bunk at Juvenile Hall, eyes still closed, and he could see himself at age twelve, wearing a cardigan sweater and a bow tie, a little boy looking in the mirror, making sure his little clip-on tie was straight for school. The memory of it clung to him all day as he walked through the motions of life in the hall, wondering if this image was a real memory, or just something he dreamt up, some wish for a childhood he never had. When he mentions this to me, I tell him his memory is true, that the owner of a group home where he once lived told me about the sweaters and ties he used to wear.

George looks pleased at this, and relieved. “I thought it was real,” he says. “But it's so hard to be sure. There's so much pain back there, I don't like to think about it too much. Memory hurts.”

Though seemingly resigned to his sentence, George remains bitter about his experience in Juvenile Court. He feels “set up” by the court's decision to repeatedly release him on probation after he committed minor crimes, leading him to believe there were no consequences awaiting him.

“That's how the system programs you. They let you go and they know that just encourages you, and then they can get you on something worse later on. It's like, they set you up. Of course, I'm to blame, too, for going along with it. I didn't have to do those things, I know that.” He assumes a look of concentration, trying to focus his thoughts. Sixteen when arrested, he will soon turn eighteen. He cannot conceive of spending the next six years (his earliest possible release) awaiting freedom.

“I didn't have to do those things,” he repeats. “But the system didn't have to make it so goddamn easy.”

A short time after his sentencing, George learns he has won the
Los Angeles Times
essay contest he entered, placing first in the high school category, and first place overall. Not just for incarcerated kids, but for high school students throughout Los Angeles. In his entry, he wrote:

The world's blind, neglecting its land. The human race has turned on itself, destruction's loud, but the world's deaf! Change can be found if it's truly being searched for, we as one need to communicate, guide our youth, because what we do today is setting the path for our children.

A few weeks later, George Trevino is shipped out of Central Juvenile Hall, another convict with a prison sentence to serve, a kid with no family, no visitors to see him, no roots left for him to cling to, no one to guide him
or set his path. His unofficial, adoptive mother—the woman who took him in when he was living on the streets—tried to come to see him, but he asked her to stay away. He says he doesn't want anyone he cares about to write him or visit him, at least not for a while. Not until time has eaten away at his sentence, and he can envision being on The Outs.

“If I see people I love, it will only make it harder for me to pass the time,” he says. “It will only remind me how much I wish I could be free, with them.”

He turns away then, looking out across the hall's grounds, at the other kids playing softball and catching rays, the posturing and shoving and posing for the girls across the way. His narrow face tightens, the wistful sadness that had been there earlier vanishing, and it is easy to see how someone who didn't know him could discern a hardness there, seeing callousness where there really is only emotional callus, layers built up over the years, a shield against more hurt.

“It's easier to be alone,” he says quietly. “I'm used to it.”

In the same week George Trevino learns he has won a citywide essay contest while awaiting the start of his prison sentence, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno comes to Los Angeles, a person of power and position and a world so far removed from George's that he has no conception of it or her. Yet, alone among national figures, she has made it her business to try to alter the way the country views and treats kids like George—and Geri and Carla and the other children of Juvenile Court.

“If we don't wise up,” she says in her usual manner—half hammer-over-the-head bluntness, half passion, a dash of sarcasm—“we'll never have enough money to build all the prison cells we'll need.”

She is a tall, imposing block of a person, awkward and awe-inspiring at the same time. Having met with the mayor of Los Angeles, and preparing to don a cap and gown to address the graduating class at UCLA, Reno is sipping coffee at her hotel, her security detail guarding the door as she discusses one of her main interests as Attorney General—the juvenile justice system.

In the year and a half it took George's case to wind its way to its sad conclusion, Reno has pointed out, in speech after speech, that half a person's learned human responses are picked up in the first year of life, and that the whole concept of reward and punishment is learned—or not learned—by age three. What good is punishing kids later in life if they don't connect it to
their conduct, she asks, if the lack of nurturing, guiding adults in their early lives has left them totally deficient in matters of morality and conscience and empathy? We've got to reshape the system to begin the process of helping children steer clear of criminal behavior far earlier than is happening now, she says. And it has to happen everywhere—in day care centers, in hospital neonatal units, in classrooms and principals' offices, with cops on the beat, with juvenile judges like Roosevelt Dorn, willing to counsel kids in chambers before they become criminals, with an army of volunteers willing to go into detention halls and camps and youth prisons to work one-on-one with troubled young people, to become that one, positive adult in their lives who gives them hope and approval, a sense that someone, somewhere, finds worth in them. It's hard to take a chance on kids who have committed crimes, she says, but we have to suck up our guts and gamble on our children.

Not that the hard-liners are all wrong. Yes, Reno says, the true sociopathic children—she figures one in ten violent, serious juvenile offenders might qualify as bad seeds who cannot be rehabilitated—need to be locked up and dealt with harshly (though she says the current fitness system that simply fixates on chronological age and a laundry list of crimes does not accomplish this—there will always be the child-monster who beats the birthday cutoff by a year or a week). And all juvenile criminals, even minor ones, need to face definite, real, and rapid consequences, something the system is not doing well at present, she says. But in the nine out of ten cases that do not involve sociopaths, Reno envisions a whole spectrum of ways to help and heal children and families before they land in Juvenile Court, requiring a new way of thinking about the juvenile justice system, a cradle-to-grave approach. Waiting until some child commits his fifth offense is just not cutting it. It's wrong, it's stupid, and it shows our nation's lack of commitment to its children, Reno says.

“Too often in the last thirty years America has forgotten and neglected its children. Twenty-one percent of the children in America live in poverty, a far greater percentage than any other age group. That's our future, that's our workforce in twenty years, those are our people who will be in prison in twenty years unless we do something about it.”

Before Janet Reno, juvenile justice—and children in general—have never really been a national priority. The real money has always been committed elsewhere, wars hot and cold, drug wars, space races, Social Security and medical coverage for the aged. There is the occasional blue-ribbon commission or congressional committee that produces some hand-wringing pronouncements about the dire problem of youth violence and crime, but the
essential futility of the system's predominant pattern—reacting to the worst juvenile offenders, instead of the first—goes on uninterrupted. Rare are the national figures who care to make children their signature issue. Janet Reno, for her efforts in this regard, has been attacked by conservatives in Congress, who deride her as more social worker than prosecutor. And though she sees some sparks of hope around the country—a handful of promising programs and a dawning realization that preventing juvenile crime beats imprisoning juvenile criminals any day—there is still a predominant tidal force in favor of reducing or killing the nation's separate juvenile justice system, so that more kids can be treated as adults and locked away. Her calls for reform of a different kind have yet to yield any major changes.

“Locking everyone up is not the solution,” she sighs, staring into a cup of coffee gone cold as The Box at Juvenile Hall. “It's just the symptom of the problem. It's the proof that we're doing something wrong.”

·  ·  ·

A few days later, Juan Macias—Scrappy—bids the writing class farewell. He was convicted in adult court of assisting in the murder of honors student Alfred Clark, shot dead at McDonald's over a CD player. Scrappy still insists he was unaware of his friend's plans to kill Alfred, but few beyond Sister Janet believed him. “You got a gun, Scrappy?” his homeboy had asked. They had done petty crimes together before, been through probation and camp. He was a little crazy, but Scrappy still said Sure, and his friend said, “Can I have it?” Again, Sure. Then they went to eat, his friend had some words with the kid with the CD player, then told Scrappy, “Wait in the truck, homes, I'll be right back.” The sound of gunfire had constricted Scrappy's chest—he guessed immediately what his friend had done. Moments later, his red-faced friend had rounded the corner, bulleting toward the truck, elbows and knees pumping, wild expression on his face confirming Scrappy's worst fears. “I did it,” his friend had exclaimed. “I wasted him.” Scrappy drove away fast, then hid the gun for his friend. Even as he jammed it into an old tool box and shoved it out of sight, he kept chanting to himself, Stupid, stupid, stupid. But what was he going to do? Turn his friend in? A week later, he was in the hall. Two years later, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to twenty-six years to life in prison.

In writing class, Scrappy always crafted tender, amusing stories about a bashful boy named George who likes chubby girls because they are less likely to dump him. He wrote longingly of just lying in bed with such a girl, watching old movies on TV in a motel room, a nice, safe, clean room where no one would shoot at him. He spent two years in the hall, waiting
for his case to come to trial, earning his high school diploma and becoming a model resident, volunteering as a mentor and tutor for young kids. Yet he also heard the DA talking about him in court, using words like “heinous” and “malicious” and “vicious.” He saw the hate in the eyes of Alfred Clark's family. Could that be me they are talking about? he wondered.