A Detroit judge has been temporarily removed from the bench after he ordered a 15-year-old girl to wear handcuffs and a jail uniform because she seemed to fall asleep during a court field trip.
District Court Judge Kenneth King criticized Eva Goodman’s “attitude” and stated that his intention was to demonstrate proper courtroom behavior.
The teenager was at the 36th District Court as part of a visit organized by the environmental charity The Greening, which also offers activities like kayaking and bird-watching.
On Thursday, the chief judge of the 36th District Court, William McConico, said in a statement that he had conducted a “swift and thorough internal investigation” of the incident and decided to temporarily take Mr King off his cases to undergo “necessary training”.
“We sincerely hope that this incident does not undermine our longstanding relationships with local schools,” Judge McConio said.
The girl’s mother, Latoreya Hill, told local news: “Would you want someone to treat your child like that?
“To belittle her in front of the whole world and her friends, to make her feel even more worse about her situation.”
Video from the court shows Judge King telling Ms Hill’s daughter: “One thing you’ll learn about my courtroom is that I’m not a toy. I am not to be played with.”
He asked other visitors on the trip to vote if he should put Eva in a juvenile detention centre, before deciding to have her handcuffed and dressed in a jail outfit before releasing her.
“It was her whole attitude and her whole disposition that disturbed me,” the judge said in interviews afterwards.
“I wanted to get through to her, show how serious this is,” he said, adding: “I’ll do whatever needs to be done to reach these kids and make sure that they don’t end up in front of me.”
In the video of the incident, Judge King tells Eva: “You sleep at home in your bed, not in court.”
Her mother, however, said Eva did not have “her own bed that she can sleep in”.
“She was tired,” Ms Hill, a single mother of two, said. “I’m trying my best.”
Judge Aliyah Sabree, who has the No 2 leadership post at the court, said on Wednesday that said Mr King’s actions did “not reflect the standards” of the court and would be “addressing this matter with the utmost diligence”.
Mr King said he stood by his decisions. “I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there’s probably no real chance of me putting her in jail,” he said. “That was my own version of Scared Straight.“