No Matter How Loud I Shout

Humes speaks to Beckstrand at Thurgood Marshall while lawyers try to find clients they’ve never seen before and a mass of kids, parents and witnesses mill about, seemingly aimlessly. Beckstrand speaks about the failures of the juvenile-justice system, “the constant aura of futility that leaves this career prosecutor regularly muttering about walking away from it all” (32). Beckstrand talks about how the recent study merely states the obvious: that the system is neither rehabilitating nor punishing these kids. Beckstrand gets called away to deal with a crisis, walking past a mentally-ill 16-year-old girl who might be transferred to adult court because the voice in her head told her to attack her sister with a machete.

Humes talks about the fear that binds people together, particularly fear of children, as juvenile crime rates have risen substantially, especially in wealthy suburbs. Humes also discusses the confusion evident in the courthouse, as no one seems to know where they are supposed to be because there are not clear signs. The parents wear modest casual clothing, but most of the kids sport “bagged-out, gangster-chic clothes” (35) while the lawyers are dressed professionally. Humes can hear clips of conversations amidst the roar of voices, which are covered by the PA system summoning witnesses, parents, or children to court. The PA system is so loud it frequently drowns out speech in court while public defenders and district attorneys are so understaffed that they are usually supposed to be in two or more places at the same time.

Beckstrand goes to sit in on Judge Dorn’s courtroom to assess the new judge, anticipating that he will be problematic. Dorn preaches to his courtroom, lecturing the kids on the penitentiary-or-cemetery route they are on. Dorn lectures Robert, a young car thief, for skipping school after the last time he was in Dorn’s courtroom, then sends him to a county-run boot camp. One father whispers his admiration for Dorn and a woman says Amen repeatedly, which makes Dorn smile and then speak about his love for Robert, whose name he forgets.

Beckstrand speaks to the defense lawyer about Ronald Duncan’s trial date, but the defense says she needs more time. Beckstrand is fine with this because her key witness is missing, but feigns annoyance to obfuscate this truth. Beckstrand watches Dorn hand down a surprisingly lenient sentence for a girl driving a getaway bank robbery car, despite the girl’s alleged gang ties and prior arrests: “But Dorn is impressed by the girl’s membership in a church choir and her plans to go to college, where, she says without a trace of irony, she plans to study to be a police officer or a CIA agent” (41). Dorn then gives her a similar speech about self-love and the cemetery or the penitentiary. For the next case, Dorn accuses the prosecutor of not being tougher on a first-time 13-year-old auto-burglar. Dorn lectures Beckstrand implicitly, but Beckstrand believes it is merely a way for him to demonstrate his authority. Beckstrand leaves, but on her way out overhears the kid being rude to his father.

Carla stays late after school to volunteer in the school office, where the staff joke that she runs the place. She has been unusually quiet today, randomly opening and closing her backpack, but when the school counselor asks, Carla maintains that she is just tired. Her counselor makes Carla promise to call later, worried because Carla’s grades have been slipping, which the counselor chalks up to being upset at Carla’s mother’s remarriage after her father’s untimely death. Carla knows she will break her promise, thinking about how she slipped into her house this morning after her mom and stepdad had left for work. She had looked at herself in the mirror, wondering if people would notice the difference in her face but deciding it was undetectable. Carla leaves school with a gun in her backpack. The next morning, two policemen arrive at school looking for Carla, who was a shooter in a drive-by. The counselor mistakenly thinks that Carla was the victim, and then is shocked to hear Carla was the perpetrator.

Carla’s probation officer reprimands her in the PO’s office for having everything yet still screwing up. Carla meets her PO’s intimidating gaze and tells the PO she’s gone straight now, which her PO does not believe. Her PO says that she’s not sure she can get through to Carla, but if she figures out how, she can figure out how to solve the increasing problem of juvenile crime. “Carla rolls her eyes and laughs […] her tanned skin is marred by a large scar in the center of her forehead” (46), which she got after crashing while being chased by the police during a drive-by shooting. Humes describes the paradox of Carla: that she is at once the best and worst kind of teenager, a babysitter and a shooter.

Carla lies to her parents, saying that she is going to the library or a friend’s house but really hanging out with kids on the street. It started when she was 13, and the family photos show Carla’s dramatic change into a defiant teenager. Carla had always wanted to be one of the boys, and she was much closer with her deceased father:

his death in a car accident when she was nine devastated Carla, leaving her depressed and withdrawn for many months, then resentful of her brothers, sisters, and mother when they picked up the pieces of their lives and tried to move forward(48).

Carla cites her father’s death as the reason behind her behavior, but Humes denies this, saying that her behavior started when her stepfather moved in. Now, she hangs out with the gang Tepa-13, leading a double life as both an honors student and a gangbanger.

Her parents didn’t know what was happening until it was too late, and Carla started getting into increasingly-violent altercations at school, eventually running away from home. She was jumped into the Tepa gang, wherein she had to fight off three girl Tepa members and then two male Tepa members. She stood her ground and threw back many hard punches, earning the respect of the gang. She became a gang leader, from whom older members would ask for advice. “The power was intoxicating” (49) and she liked the clear rules of right and wrong. When her friend was shot, she instigated and perpetrated a drive-by, insisting that if she was caught she wanted to have been doing something worthwhile. Carla believes she shot someone that day who allegedly recovered and believes she is invincible. Carla kept up her helpfulness at school to make up for her slipping grades and truancy, although she treated her parents with defiance and disrespect.

Humes discusses how status offenses—running away or truancy—could have been punished under the old juvenile justice system, which realized that these crimes are usually precursors to more aggressive acts of rebellion. But during the 70s, this behavior was decriminalized, as it was seen to be unfair to punish kids for things that were not crimes for adults. It was also a matter of saving money. Now, judges have no power to enforce status offenses, and parents are often told they have to wait until their child commits a crime. Carla’s mother believed that if she waited, it would be too late. She was happy when Carla got arrested for stealing another girl’s backpack, but then the girl refused to cooperate. After getting arrested for being in a stolen car, Carla is released again because of Beckstrand’s backlog of cases. After the drive-by, she gets stuck in Juvenile Hall; Beckstrand wants to send her to the Youth Authority but the judge has to impose the least restrictive punishment, so she goes to a detention camp for a year instead. Carla runs the detention camp in the same way she ran her school.

When she gets out, Carla promises her PO that she’s changed, but her PO—who only works with the hardest and toughest cases—remains skeptical, believing these kids rarely change: “Few of them faced any meaningful consequences or supervision early on when it might have mattered. Now, though, these cases get the most intensive attention from the system available […] when they are the least likely to benefit from it” (54). Her PO acknowledges her reservations, but Carla smiles and says she wants to be a lawyer. Her PO gives her a laundry list of probationary requirements, including not fraternizing with gangs. Later that night, Carla is out with Tepa. When she sees one of the members got a new Tepa tattoo—a direct violation of probation—she asks when she’s going to get hers. Within a week, Carla has run away, and her PO and Beckstrand agree she needs to be locked up.

In the writing class, Ronald announces he will be free soon, which incites ridicule from his peers and Humes’s doubt as to whether or not Ronald is joking. His peers ask about Ronald’s trial and Ronald replies that he said he was innocent, correcting Geri, who calls him a punk tagger. “‘Tag-banger,’ Ronald corrects quickly. ‘We’re a lot badder than just taggers’” (58). Most of the kids laugh at Ronald, who relays to them his version of events that he told in court: that he mistakenly got into the car with the real killer, getting blood all over his clothes and taking some of the stolen money. Geri reprimands him for talking like a gangster, saying that street words will illicit harsher punishment, which Geri knows from personal experience. Ronald replies that he can’t go to jail, which irritates Geri, who can be tried as an adult. Ronald announces he’s going to use the writing exercise to write a fictional story based on his life, but ends up writing nothing at all.

Ronald looked like a kid too skinny to lift a shotgun when Beckstrand first saw him giggling in court, but he has since bulked up in the hall. Ronald’s parents believe their baby is innocent: “To them, Peggy Beckstrand is the monster—the humorless face of the state, trying to take their child away” (60). Beckstrand contemplates how love blinds people to harsh truths. She thinks about the photos of the Rusitanontas in their car with their heads blown off, still wearing their Baskin-Robbins shirts. Humes discusses how witnesses and hard evidence led police to arrest Ronald, eliciting a confession after lying that Ronald could get the death penalty if convicted. Beckstrand believes that Ronald reloaded in between killing Chuck and Adelina, demonstrating premeditation. The next day at school, Ronald showed off the money he stole, and classmates believe that he killed the couple because they criticized him for being late.

Beckstrand believes Ronald is a conscienceless monster who demonstrates that the problem with the juvenile justice system lies in its obsession with birthdays, as Ronald cannot be tried as an adult because he allegedly committed the crime nine days before his sixteenth birthday. In forty-two other states, Ronald could have been tried as an adult, and the arbitrariness of this California law makes Beckstrand sick, just as it ties her hands because “the same Juvenile Court that could not impose adult penalties on Ronald gave him all the same legal tools an adult enjoys—and imposed on Peggy all the same legal burdens” (64). Frustrated, she goes on a rant at her staff meeting about how money is used poorly and ineffectively in the juvenile-justice system.

Later, Beckstrand admits hating her job, and that she once tried to volunteer for the Peace Corps only to find out they didn’t want lawyers. Beckstrand used to prosecute sex crimes, remembering one young boy, Peter, whose father sodomized him for years, such that Peter could no longer control his bowels, but his mother blamed Beckstrand for ruining her life. Beckstrand gained Peter’s trust and Peter eventually confided everything to her. He recited his father’s crimes at the trial, and the jury convicted Peter’s father on all counts. Later, Peter’s father got a retrial with another judge, who decided the case was too difficult and dismissed it, letting Peter’s father walk free. Beckstrand remembers how hopeless she felt, and thinks that Juvenile Court makes her feel that way every day. She cannot save Peters, so she must lock up Ronalds: “Lock the little monsters away. Protect the community at all costs” (68).

Humes discusses Beckstrand’s inability to focus exclusively on Ronald’s case, as she would like, because many other things demand her attention, like the wealthy 16-year-old John Sloan’s attempted robbery. Sloan’s defense lawyer wants to the case to be pushed back into juvenile court but Beckstrand refuses to yield. This prosecutorial crackdown is a response to the rise in juvenile crime and also sets Beckstrand completely at odds with Judge Dorn.

In writing class, Geri reads from his autobiography about his parents growing, selling and smoking pot in front of him and scamming for money. Humes speaks about Geri’s potential while acknowledging the challenges life has dealt Geri. Geri is now a prolific writer, although he must hide his writing so it doesn’t get confiscated and lost by hall staff. Geri speaks about his father requiring him to touch a prostitute Geri found in bed with his father when Geri was 6. One day, Geri was playing with his dad’s gun; his mom came home, beat him, and then found her husband in bed with a prostitute and tried to shoot him, but the gun was not loaded. Geri’s father beat his mother, who later took off with Geri and his younger brother to stay in a motel paid for by her earnings as a prostitute. His mother was addicted to crack and eventually got sent to prison for cashing other people’s checks, while Geri got sent to Juvenile Hall. Geri’s peers joke about the Menendez brothers getting off because they were white and claimed abuse while Elias talks about how no one will take this into account for Geri because he’s black.

Humes recounts the courtroom incident in which Geri’s lawyer tried to appeal the DA’s fitness motion while Geri scanned the seats, seeing no one he knew: “No one asked Geri about his background, his willingness to reform, the trust and praise he had earned from the Juvenile Hall staff” (73). Geri thinks he might have been able to be tried as a minor if he had gotten Dorn as a judge.

In Dorn’s courtroom, the judge starts promptly and expects kids to be on time, having them spend a few hours in lock-up if they are late, which the attorneys believe convinces kids not to show up at all. The lawyers jostle each other to be ready first, and Dorn calls the first case, rubbing his face with his hands while other parents, kids, babies, police officers, witnesses, and victims merely wait their turn for cases that will probably be postponed.

The first case is a skinny 12-year-old who attacked his bully at school with a pipe and then turned on a teacher, the latest in four unpunished incidents that seemed to start after his father left and his mother started dating. The lawyers always try for acquittal, which makes prosecutors double down on locking these kids up. “The Pipe Kid cuts such a pathetic figure that Dorn is leaning toward sending him home instead” (77), but then his mother says she can’t deal with him and so Dorn remands him to state custody. The nameless Pipe Kid is not allowed to speak and the next case begins before he even leaves the courtroom. Within six months, the Pipe Kid gets so frustrated by the continued postponement of his trial that he runs away and commits another crime, causing the cycle to start over again.

Humes argues that time is the enemy, emphasizing that Dorn’s docket is so swollen with cases that he only spends about five minutes per kid. Humes lists all of the thirty-two kids Dorn must see that day, more cases than most adult courts hear in a week. Humes speaks to the feudal mentality of each judge, each of whom has an individual philosophy that widely differs according to the person, and so similar cases get vastly different results. Most of LA County’s daily 1,100 cases are postponed with the exception of those that fall in Dorn’s courtroom. Humes relates how Dorn showed up on time his first day back, reprimanding the court administrator for the shameful state of the courthouse. The administrator made a weak excuse about the budget, which Dorn tore apart.

Dorn has a history of harsh punishments for simple acts of teenage defiance, including sentencing a kid to six months of boot camp for refusing to take out the trash. He got into a war with the public defender’s office, which then refused to try cases in front of him, so Dorn held open court for droves of parents with troublesome teens. Dorn was forced into a new assignment in adult court for four years after being accused of favoritism. Humes discusses Dorn’s view of himself as a teacher and his activism within the black community. Humes discusses Dorn’s background, including his emphasis on education and discipline as well as his desire to work with juveniles. He blames adults for youth’s problems; “go to school or go to jail is the alternative he offers” (82), believing himself akin to a prophet. The public defender’s office bides its time, waiting for him to be removed from power again, while everyone else wants to see what he will do.

Dorn calls John Sloan’s fitness hearing, openly despising the idea of sentencing a kid to an adult trial. Dorn inspects Sloan and his clean-cut family behind him with approval:

The boy’s fate rests with a simple equation: measure the child against the crime he committed, then divide the total by Judge Dorn’s willingness to break the law. For only a flat refusal to enforce a state law that virtually mandates his transfer to adult court can save John now (84).

At Geri’s behest, Luis “Cartoon” Santos shares his story with the writing class about the day he got caught. He remembers all his friends getting ready for a party, the boys in one room the girls in another. He sees Tiny, who looks so pretty that he wants her to be his girlfriend, and sits down on the couch to talk to her, working up the courage to ask. Santos is interrupted by his friend, who tells him they have to take care of something. He promises Tiny he will be right back, and she begs him not to go. His friends joke with him about liking Tiny as they drive to get guns to rob a house. While stealing pot, money, and gold chains, Santos gets into a scuffle with one of his victims.

A detention officer comes to try to remove Santos to adult lockup, but Humes convinces the officer to allow Santos to finish his story.

The other guys start attacking Santos and take his rifle from him. Knowing he will die, Santos holds up the sign for his gang, but when one of the guys shoots at him, the gun jams. The police come and take Santos to the hospital, and he knows he is going to jail, thinking of Tiny. Humes writes:

The room is silent. Every page of the little college blue book […is] filled up by this world Cartoon lived in, where the juxtaposition between being too shy to hold a girl’s hand and bursting into someone’s house armed with a rifle is not considered extraordinary (88).

The other kids applaud Santos’s story, and Humes implores him to write more. The detention officers arrive to take Santos away, and the happiness evaporates. As Humes goes home that night, he sees Santos being taken to prison for four years. Santos waves. Humes never hears from him again.

In Dorn’s courtroom, they are hearing evidence to argue the fitness of John Sloan, the honors student who robbed someone at gunpoint. John got the gun courtesy of a connection at school, and he and his friend, Richard, decided to rob a Latino in a parking garage with bandanas pulled up over their faces, like Western movie bandits. Humes discusses John’s disconnect between his Korean immigrant parents and his American upbringing, as well as the increase in racial tensions at John’s school, all of which led to a downward spiral in terms of his grades and behavior. In the garage, they hold Joseph at gunpoint and yell racist phrases at him. John takes his wallet, sees a badge, and assumes the guy is a cop. He and Richard back away.

Outside the courtroom, Joseph paces, unable to watch the proceedings unfold. He complains about how witnesses are treated in Juvenile Court, and another woman agrees that she has missed three days of work, only to be told her case has been transferred to make it easier for the accused. Humes discusses the tactics defense attorneys use to try to prevent witnesses from showing up, thereby forcing the prosecution to drop its case.

Joseph is questioned ridiculously by the prosecution, admitting his fear and saying that he is a city inspector, not a cop. Joseph talks about how he went to his car to get his gun and then chased after John and Richard. He thinks about how he had promised his family that moving to the South Bay would allow them to be safe. Joseph feels like he was targeted because of his race, which irritates him because his wife is Asian-American. After he gets his gun, he catches up to the boys while John is trying to unlock his car, makes them get down on the ground, and waits for police to come. The prosecution rests, believing that he has proven that John should be tried in adult court. The defense attorney argues that John Sloan and his friend are merely punks, trying to undo the prosecution’s argument by contending that John and his friend are not sophisticated criminals who committed a grave crime and therefore should be tried in JC.

Dorn seems to be taken by the defense attorney’s argument and does not seem to like Joseph, whom Dorn believed acted irrationally when he chased John and Richard down. John’s father speaks about his lack of knowledge of the influence of gangs on his son’s life, which he believes to be causing this rebellion. Humes seems to believe that this line of argument is too convenient, but the prosecutor does not argue against the father in his closing argument. The expensive private defense attorney plays to Dorn’s arrogance and argues that John can be rehabilitated:

Everything she said is indisputable. State prison, with its hardened criminals, its predatory rape gangs, its rampant AIDS, is no place for a willowy seventeen-year-old […] He is the sort of kid everyone agrees is most likely to be rehabilitated by the juvenile system, and most likely to be destroyed if punished as an adult (100-01).

However, the law says that an armed robber over 16 has to be tried as an adult unless his crime was neither grave—like a fake gun—nor sophisticated. Dorn and the prosecution argue about the nature of sophistication, and then Dorn argues that John would get a less severe sentence in adult court, so he will be tried in JC. Humes acknowledges the truth in Dorn’s argument though it subverts the law itself, which has led to consequences for other judges. He reprimands the prosecutor and then tells him to take John’s admission of guilt to all charges. The prosecutor goes to complain to Beckstrand while Dorn hears the next case. Joseph is stunned by how the hearing has unfolded. Beckstrand is furious, even more so when she finds out the prosecutor allowed John to plead out, which quashes any attempt they could make at an appeal. Beckstrand reprimands her prosecutor, and thus begins the war between the DA and Dorn.

In Juvenile Hall, George spends a lot of his time imagining what his life would be like if he weren’t raised as a 300 kid—a ward of the state—trying not to think about how he can no longer imagine the faces of his mother, brother, or sister. He was abandoned by his mother at 6 and his mother was later imprisoned for manslaughter. When the judge hears this, he thinks it explains George’s criminal activity:“And the state made George what he is today: While under Juvenile Court’s guidance and protection—as a victim, not a victimizer—a bright, law-abiding A student with a penchant for writing poetry was destroyed […] He considered himself a prisoner” (107). George always wondered what he did to deserve his life.

George’s fitness hearing is being held at the same time as John Sloan’s, and Commissioner Jones laments about what George’s case says about the system. George’s lawyer asks if he should bring in a psychiatrist to testify, but worries it won’t make a difference and will waste the psychiatrist’s time. The Commissioner says she has no choice but to suggest George be moved to adult court.

As a kid, George moved to many different foster homes, constantly disappointed by all the adults in his life who promised to visit but never came through. His relatives out-of-state asked to take care of him, but the state waited so long that it fell through. He was briefly reunited with his mother, against the advice of social workers, and his mother was subsequently arrested for murder. His mother continued to move in and out of prison and eventually died inside. George’s father died of a drug overdose when he was 2. George’s little sister was adopted and he is alternately happy for and jealous of her luck. He saw her once for fifteen awkward minutes; soon after, she and her family died in a car crash. George and his older brother were separated after they kept running away from foster homes together. Now, George doesn’t know where he is, believing himself to be in prison. Despite his troubled upbringing, George did well for a period after he received medication and counseling, becoming the role model for his group home.

But then the court sent him to live with a drug-dealing uncle who died of an overdose and an aunt who suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction. George “began staying away from the house, then skipping school, his once excellent grades plummeting. Then he joined a street gang […] The social worker assigned to track George’s case somehow never noticed any of this” (111). Under the tutelage of an older gang member, George got involved in a schoolyard brawl and then rode in a car he knew was stolen, leading George to get arrested for assault and car theft and landing him in Juvenile Court. George meets his lawyer for the first time that day; George is put on probation and changed from a victim to a criminal, and his status as a 300 kid is revoked. George represents the third of 300 kids who eventually turn to crime. George’s file as a 300 kid remains confidential but he loses the counseling and help he was receiving so it appears as though he spontaneously turned to crime for no reason. George is released back to his aunt but runs away, eventually finding a stable home with a friend’s mother, Kathy, who worked hard to convince George he had finally found a home. His grades improved and he even referred to Kathy as his mom.

George gets picked up again for possession of stolen property, and because another member of Kathy’s house stole it, the court deems it an unfit environment for George and sends him to a group home. George runs away, falling in with Villa, an older gang member, who convinces George to help him rob a house. Villa gets shot and then, once arrested, informs on George and the other minors. George is found at Kathy’s house and arrested on six accounts of armed robbery and attempted murder, even though Villa, not George, fired the gun. Because George is 16, the prosecution argues that he is a threat to other people and should be tried in adult court.

Kathy accompanies George to court. George’s lawyer tries to keep him in the juvenile system:“Unlike John Sloan, who had so many advantages in life before he became the leader of a botched armed robbery, George has never been much more than a bystander to crime […] he has never physically hurt anyone […] he is consumed by remorse” (115). The lawyer also argues about the availability of guns in LA. George even tells her that the gun was not loaded, but his lawyer does not share that information. After the prosecution argues his criminal sophistication, George wants to explain himself, but he is not given the chance to speak and begins crying. The Commissioner has recently been “papered” by prosecutors for her attempts to prevent kids from being sent to adult court, so she feels she has no choice but to send George to adult court, even though she feels like the system has failed him. Out of everyone who was involved in the robbery, George fares the worst; the other two minors were under 16 and Villa informed and was pled down to an 8-year prison sentence: “In adult court [George] will face a potential sentence of 29 years to life in state prison if convicted of every possible charge against him” (119). As George leaves, he thanks his lawyer for her time.

The Mexican Mafia has decreed that there will be a truce between Latino gangs and that anyone who does not comply will be killed. Law enforcement is skeptical, and then realizes that the point of this truce is to assemble an army against the black gangs. Young Latino gang members are encouraged to stir up racial tensions at school, Juvenile Hall, and everywhere else.

On a stop, police come across Carla James, who gives a fake name and impresses the sheriffs as a hardened gangbanger. The cops photograph her and her friends with Tepa-13 tattoos across their stomachs and show it to another officer, who recognizes Carla. Her PO spends two weeks hunting her down before arresting Carla for violating her parole. A few weeks later, an outwardly repentant Carla sits in Juvenile Hall, asserting that she wants the tattoo removed. Once she and Humes are alone, she tells him that if she wants to be comfortable during her time in JH, she has to tell them what they want to hear. She argues that adults don’t understand her world. Carla argues that a drive-by is different from a murder and that the courts shouldn’t treat them the same. Humes disagrees, and Carla admits that if she killed someone in retaliation for her brother getting killed, it would be justice, not murder.

All morning, Dorn has been on a tirade, rebuking defense attorneys, police, probation officers, and the prosecution alike for not doing their jobs, according to Dorn. He also plans to hold a meeting of various bureaucrats in February to announce his plans to reform the juvenile justice system:

Dorn is enjoying the sort of morning that makes it possible for public defenders to call him too harsh a judge, for prosecutors and cops to label him far too lenient, and for everyone else in the system to wonder just what the judge will do next (125).

Dorn yells about the case of Eric Davis, whose criminality flourished despite probation and several arrests. Disgusted, Dorn sentences him to boot camp and when his mother objects, he requires she take parenting classes as well. Dorn gives Eric the penitentiary-or-cemetery speech, later arguing that if Dorn had handled Eric’s case earlier, Eric might be applying to college, instead of being in his courtroom.

Dorn believes that Juvenile Court is the most important part of the American justice system that no one knows about. Dorn argues that the reason crime is skyrocketing is because the juvenile-justice system focuses on the worst offenders instead of on first-time delinquents, whose lives he believes can be changed. Dorn argues that dollars spent on juvenile justice are equivalent to ten times that later on, and that the juvenile-justice system must be more transparent. He gets annoyed that the juvenile system is seen as less prestigious and therefore less desirable, and that this translates into shortages and poor excuses for judges. There is no effective way to discipline judges, so prosecutors or defense attorneys paper them instead, and end up paralyzing the Juvenile Court entirely. Juvenile defense attorneys are paid much less and the prosecutors are often ill-funded and the least experienced: “Juvenile Court, however, is as much a training ground as a court of law, where errors are more easily forgiven, and problem lawyers more easily hidden from sight” (131).

Dorn believes that in order to effect change within the system, they have to get to kids and charge them with minor offenses sooner. Dorn puts out the word that he will begin trying status offenses in Open Court. Before the parents start coming in, Dorn also attacks the problem of dismissed cases. One such kid, a shoplifter, is dismissed because the prosecution did not subpoena the witnesses until the day of the trial. When his mother complains about her kid’s behavior, Dorn tells the PO to give the mother forms to fill out to charge her son with a status offense. Dorn scolds the prosecution, who gives up several excuses—including the inability of witnesses to appear—as to the prevalence of dismissal. Many kids fall through the cracks as a result of the dismissal of their charges, including violent kids, and Beckstrand sometimes feels responsible for the violent acts these kids commit when their charges are dismissed. After dismissing another case, Dorn goes on a rant about how this would never happen in adult court, and demands to have a meeting with Beckstrand the following morning.

Beckstrand spends the night before Ronald Duncan’s trial gluing crime scene photos onto poster board, worried about the outcome of this case. Police are too busy to take her calls and a crucial witness is missing, so Beckstrand is thinking of granting immunity to Jason Gueringer, whom she believes to be Duncan’s accomplice, to ensure that Duncan does not walk free: “And while she ponders all this, the endless series of crises and distractions of her jobs must be dealt with. Four other murder cases are reaching the make-or-break stage” (137).

Political standoffs between judges and prosecutors have arisen, and she has to approve her prosecutors’ plea bargains when a computer crashes. She meets with Dorn, who reprimands her for the number of dismissed cases, threatening to leak the information to the press. She says that she is not responsible for minors committing crimes, which Dorn concedes, and both acknowledge that something must be done. Dorn proposes a kind of truce between the DA’s office and himself. Beckstrand readies herself for the trial, donning a new pair of shoes, as she does before every trial, for good luck. She gets a phone call saying that her witness has been found, although he might pose problems during the trial because the witness’s father does not want him to snitch on Duncan.

Over the weekend, Beckstrand began reviewing and organizing the past year’s files, which was a waste of her time but someone had to do it because the department was short-staffed. She keeps a list of all of the complaints her deputies log against commissioners and judges, to be set aside for their reappointment. She goes to the building and finds a homeless man on the steps complaining about his feet, which stink of gangrene. She gives him money and food, and when she asks the security guard about the man, the guard answers that he’s been there all day. Furious, Beckstrand demands the guard call paramedics because she is sure the man is dying. After they come and take him away, she goes into her office and cries, thinking of all the kids in all the files that she cannot help. She wonders if the man was in the juvenile system, just one more person other people ignored. She debates leaving her job. She looks over the harrowing Rusitanonta crime scene photos, thinking of how their relatives referred to her as their lawyer. She begins working through her files to prepare for Duncan’s murder trial.

Beckstrand is nervous because she has not tried a case in a long time. She also has Judge Scarlett, who is stubbornly resistant to any get-tough policies. Duncan’s private attorney is also well-liked and throws a few barbs at Beckstrand, including suggesting that Jason is the murderer. Beckstrand is annoyed that the defense lawyer is not taking this case seriously. Duncan comes in all smiles and giggles, while his parents glare at Beckstrand, whom they believe is demonstrating favoritism to Jason, a cop’s godson. Duncan’s father again asserts his son’s innocence. Beckstrand wants to continuously remind Scarlett of the heinous nature of these crimes, especially so that the judge will allow Duncan’s confession.

A witness testifies that he found the car with the bodies inside, but does not know if the person he saw fleeing the scene was Duncan. A police officer testifies to the condition of the bodies, and Beckstrand displays the gruesome pictures, “[b]ut just when [Beckstrand] felt she had gained some momentum, the chaos so common in Juvenile Court asserts itself” (145). The power goes out, Scarlett gets distracted, and Beckstrand has lost her momentum. Beckstrand goes through other witnesses and the blood on Duncan’s backpack and clothes, then moves onto Duncan’s friend, who has donned a new gang member aesthetic that concerns Beckstrand. But the kid reiterates his allegation that Duncan admitted murdering the Rusitanontas, which mirrors Duncan’s own confession to the police. Scarlett looks disinterested, which bothers Beckstrand. Duncan’s lawyer argues that Duncan lied to get street cred, which the witness admits that he did.

Beckstrand introduces Duncan’s confession, which his lawyer argues was coerced because the police threatened Duncan with the death penalty, which Duncan can’t receive. Beckstrand cross-examines Duncan to demonstrate how many times he lied, and then catches Duncan on a technicality, arguing that the police officers did reference the death penalty but not in a way where it directly related to Duncan. Scarlett argues that the boy could have perceived the detectives’ statements as a threat, making the confession inadmissible. Beckstrand tries to argue, but Scarlett interrupts her repeatedly to attend to other court matters, including hearing other cases, distractions which are not allowed in adult court but are constant in Juvenile Court. Scarlett is known for holding police to a high standard and decides that the confession was elicited under coercion. As the trial recesses for the weekend, Beckstrand announces that she will give Jason full immunity as her next witness, informing the defense attorney that this is his fault.

Humes describes how Jason was brought in on suspicion of his cop godfather after being found scrubbing down his van. Jason argued he had nothing to do with the murders, but that he was an accomplice after the fact: “That [Jason] was never charged for this was, to the Duncan family, more signs of favoritism” (154). But the police had offered Duncan a deal if he rolled on Jason, which he refused. The night before the trial resumes, Jason calls and insists he talk to Beckstrand before the trial, so she meets him in her office the next morning. Jason admits to being the getaway driver in the bank robbery, but argues he didn’t know Duncan would shoot them. Peggy feels like she is drowning, offering immunity to a person who she feels is legally a murderer, but figures that she is at least getting someone worse (Duncan) off the streets.