A nonprofit organization in Detroit took a field trip to the 36th District Court for students to gain insight into the legal system. During the visit, a teenager who fell asleep ended up being brought before Judge Kenneth King, where she was placed in a jail uniform and handcuffs due to her behavior in the courtroom.
On Tuesday, children participating in a three-week program with the nonprofit The Greening of Detroit visited the 36th District Court as part of their field trip activities. This trip was used to provide students with the chance to observe a live trial and engage in conversation with a judge. Before the defense and prosecution arrived in the courtroom, Judge King took the time to speak with the students and respond to their questions. During this interaction, he observed a 16-year-old girl who was falling asleep.
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“You fall asleep in my courtroom one more time, I’m gonna put you in back understood,” the Judge said to the girl in the courtroom. “It wasn’t so much, in fact, that she had fallen asleep because I have attorneys that fall asleep sometimes, so that’s not too big of a deal. It was her whole attitude and her whole disposition that disturbed me,” King told 7 News Detroit. “I wanted to get through to her, show how serious this is and how you are to conduct yourself inside of a courtroom.”
The judge then instructed that the girl needed to change into a jail uniform and be placed in custody.
“That’s not something that normally happens. But I felt compelled to do it because I didn’t like the child’s attitude,” King said. “I haven’t been disrespected like that in a very long time.”
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The judge then warned the 16-year-old that she could face time in a juvenile detention facility.
“The thing about the juvenile detention facility is a lot of the people that are there are not just bad kids. You have a lot of mentally ill kids there. The last time I was there, I had a kid who was actually sticking a spoon up their rectum and spreading feces on the wall,” he said to the young girl in the courtroom.
The judge then asked the other students to vote on whether she should be sent to the detention facility, ultimately deciding to let her go.
“Was I really going to do that? Probably not. Could I have? Probably so. But that’s not what I want to do to a kid who’s there on a field trip,” King said. “Do I think I was heavy handed in what I did? No, I don’t. Because I’ll do whatever it needs to be done to reach these kids and make sure that they don’t end up in front of me.”
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