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  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Author’s Note

  Intake

  PART ONE: WE’RE DROWNING

  Prologue: Two Boys, Thirty Years, and Other Numbers

  1. January 1994

  2. Home Girl

  3. Nine Days to Manhood

  4. Judge Dorn

  5. Punks

  6. Raised by the State

  7. War

  8. Juggling Act

  PART TWO: SOFTENING UP

  9. The Big Fix

  10. Sister Janet

  11. HOP

  12. Judge Dorn’s Solution

  PART THREE: A CHILD’S DISPOSITION

  13. Thirty-one Flavors

  14. The Dorn Wars

  15. Lost Causes

  16. The Ins

  17. The Outs

  PART FOUR: EPILOGUE

  18. A Year Later, Another Day in Court

  Afterword

  About Edward Humes

  Notes

  Index

  To Gabrielle and Donna

  FOREWORD

  So little has changed.

  Year after year, studies are unveiled with great fanfare and then shelved. Commissions are convened and then ignored, proposed reforms celebrated and then discarded. Today’s juvenile justice system remains remarkably unchanged from the one I encountered when I first started No Matter How Loud I Shout. Juvenile court is still the unwanted stepchild of the justice system, still understaffed and underfunded, still struggling between the opposing poles of rehabilitation and punishment, still deeply misunderstood by public and policymakers alike. For better or worse, the stories of the boys and girls in these pages continue to resonate with relevance and timeliness. Their tragedies, crimes, losses, and fitful journeys toward redemption are mirrored all too faithfully by the experiences of the young people who inhabit today’s juvenile court. So little has changed.

  This is not as hopeless as it may sound. Even as the shortcomings of the system remain the same, so, too, do the occasional bits of magic that inhabit the halls of juvenile court: the child rescued, the family restored, the small victories that come just often enough to keep the judges, lawyers, and social workers from being crushed by despair, to allow them to return to fight another day.

  The environment in which juvenile court operates, however, has changed. When I began this book, the nation’s leading (or, at least, the nation’s loudest) experts on crime statistics and juvenile delinquency were predicting an abrupt rise in violent juvenile crime. The already alarming statistical heights reached in the 1990s would be nothing compared to the following two decades, these experts from leading universities and think tanks predicted, basing their conclusions on the seemingly firm ground of demographics. The population of teens in America was about to explode. So, too, the experts said, would the population of young criminals, including a growing number of violent and remorseless teen offenders they branded the “super predators.” Politicians picked up this idea and ran with it, making it a headline, making it a cause. And soon a majority of states had adopted new, more punitive laws that transferred more children to adult court and prison at ever-younger ages. Most of these policies remain in force today, with kids as young as thirteen automatically tried in adult court in some states, and eligible for life sentences without parole. Sixteen was the minimum age when I began this project.

  Here’s the problem with this course of events: the predictions that drove these “reforms” were wrong. Terribly, irreparably, inexcusably wrong. Juvenile crime has not increased since the mid-nineties. It has declined. The rise of the super predator was a myth. One of the leading experts who issued these warnings and helped popularize the term has admitted that he and his colleagues were wrong, realizing too late that “Demography is not fate.”

  Still, though the laws became more punitive, sanctioning life sentences for kids too young to shave, the juvenile justice system survived the super predator myth. When juvenile crime dropped, the drumbeat for dismantling juvenile court died away, along with the headlines and the confounded experts. The lower juvenile crime rates also bought time as budgets shrank and programs were cut. The lighter caseloads meant the court could hobble along through the years, with the same terrible flaws and the same unrealized opportunities as ever.

  While haunting the halls of Los Angeles Juvenile Court for this project, I came to believe that the society we are, as well as the society we wish to be, is reflected in how we treat our young—including (perhaps especially) the young people in the care of the juvenile justice system, both the children in danger and, yes, the dangerous children. I do not think our efforts over the past twenty years do us much credit.

  But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Elias and George and Carla and Andre and Ronald and the others portrayed in this book, and decide for yourself. They are children on these pages, though their stories and insights and heartbreaks are often profound. Today, however, twenty years later, they are adults—at least those who are still alive, who survived those new, harsher laws that deemed them adults before their time. And think about this: today, each of them is somebody’s neighbor or colleague or employee or cab driver or waitress. Maybe yours.

  —Edward Humes

  Los Angeles

  July 2014

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book represents a year of observation of—and, at times, participation in—the juvenile justice system. It is the story of children, families, and professionals who inhabit the juvenile courthouses of Los Angeles, where the courses of young lives are profoundly altered every day, mostly in secret and only occasionally for the better. These are unvarnished accounts. No facts have been changed. There are no composite characters or fictionalized passages. Names of juveniles have been altered in accordance with state law and court order, but in all other respects, what follows is exactly what happened in the courthouses, probation offices, and juvenile halls—and in the lives of those who passed through them.

  Two factors made this book possible. A court order by former Los Angeles Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Marcus O. Tucker granted me access to a system otherwise closed to the public. But a foot in the door is only a start; I also relied upon the courage, insight, and generosity of many people who labor within the system and who have come to believe that secrecy is harming, not protecting, their life’s work. In particular, I wish to acknowledge and thank Peggy Beckstrand, James Hickey, Thomas Higgins, Paulette Paccione, Todd Rubenstein, Leah Karr, Wendy Derzaph and Kevin Yorn of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office; Sharon Stegall and Jane Martin of the Los Angeles County Probation Department; Sister Janet Harris, Catholic chaplain at Central Juvenile Hall; Michael Roussel and Sylvia Wells, delinquency court administrators; Leslie Stearns, Nancy Liebold, and Oksana Bihun of the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office; attorney Sherry Gold; Judge Roosevelt Dorn, Judge Charles Scarlett, Judge Fumiko Wasserman, Judge John Henning, and Presiding Judge Richard Montes; and Commissioner Jewell Jones and Commissioner Gary Polinsky. Thanks also to David Bayles.

  I received an unrivaled education about the inside of the juvenile justice system from Carla and George and the boys of the Unit K/L and M/N writing class: Geri, Elias, Chris, Louis, Juan, Ruben, Gabriel, Joseph, Ivan, Luis, Daniel, and James. Good luck and good lives to all of you.

  A NOTE ABOUT NAMES

  In accor
dance with state laws on confidentiality and the court order granting the author access to Juvenile Court, names of most juveniles (and their families) portrayed here have been altered. There are two exceptions: True names have been used for older juveniles convicted in adult court of major crimes such as murder; and for younger children tried and convicted in Juvenile Court for the same sort of violent felonies. In California, proceedings in such cases, whether in adult or juvenile forums, are open to the public, and the youths on trial enjoy no right to confidentiality. In cases in which juveniles were either acquitted of violent offenses, or were retained in Juvenile Court after attempts to transfer them to adult court failed, the author has voluntarily withheld their true names.

  Intake

  EXCEPT when earthquakes have rendered it unsafe for human habitation—temporarily, inmates are told—new arrivals at Central lockup are brought to the Old Wing. With its high walls of smog-blackened stone and filmy windows barred with flat, rust-colored strips of iron, the structure is ancient by Los Angeles standards, which is to say, it has been standing since before World War II. Its stone-block facade rears up unexpectedly, a grimy fortress in an otherwise desolate flatland of single-story industrial buildings, lumpy railroad crossings, and darkened, windowless warehouses stacked near a sprawling county hospital. Even hardened criminals gasp when they first see Central’s medieval profile rising before them from the urban plain. The most observant of them, however, can take heart at their continued, valued place in society and commerce: A lone billboard overlooks the street leading to the lockup, a depiction of a man in a crown and royal red robes, flanked by a six-foot-tall pocket-paging device and a young woman squeezed into a transistor-sized red bikini. The man is the “King of Beepers,” and his product is especially popular with the hundreds of drug dealers, gangbangers, and assorted other criminals who pass by his shrewdly placed advertisement in shackles each day, for whom beepers are both status symbols and necessary tools of the trade in this information age.

  Past the billboard, at the terminus of Alcazar Street, there is a guard shack overlooking Central’s drive-in entrance, but it is unmanned at night and the lot is poorly lit, the sort of place where people feel the need to hurry to their cars, locking the doors as soon as they get inside. At the end of this narrow and crowded parking lot, where the spots reserved for visitors are kept full by county employees, a towering brown metal door, big enough to admit a row of three semitrailers, creaks inward on oilless hinges every few minutes. Police cars and sheriff’s vans pass in and out of this immense portal in a constant stream, making their night deposits, leaving behind people charged with every sort of crime imaginable, from shoplifters and drunks to carjackers and killers, linked together without distinction in long conga lines by those great equalizers, belly chains and handcuffs.

  Newcomers arrive at Central mostly at night, emerging from squad cars and police vans to be herded inside the Old Wing, with its smeary walls and cracked linoleum floors, their nostrils assaulted by the universal jailhouse scent, a rat warren smell of urine and sweat masked by some sickly sweet cleaning agent vaguely reminiscent of pink bubblegum. There is a constant electronic buzzing in the air—an old airport metal detector that the lockup staff and visitors must pass through. Its alarm sounds nearly continuously, a piercing bleat no one monitors or heeds, notwithstanding the armed escape at the lockup a few months earlier. Flyspecked fluorescents buzz and flicker overhead, making the newcomers blink and squint as they walk in from the darkness. To some of the new arrivals, these surroundings are well known, bespeaking home, even comfort—as familiar as the aromas of morning coffee and frying bacon are to more fortunate folk. Others have never been in such a place, never seen it, smelled it, imagined it. Their eyes are wide with the ancient instinct to stampede.

  The new arrivals are escorted one by one to a small room, where the Intake Officer conducts a brief interview, reviews the police reports, talks to the suspects’ next of kin if they’re around, then writes a two-page report with recommendations. Some of the intake officers have perfected a technique of quizzing newcomers that rarely, if ever, requires them to utter a complete sentence. They simply say, “Name? Date of birth? Address?” all the way down the form in front of them, like reading a shopping list, a complete interview done and only a few dozens words uttered in the process. This peremptory method belies the immense power the Intake Officer wields as a kind of pretrial judge, jury, and jailer rolled into one. He can recommend release or incarceration, prosecution or diversion to counseling, even dismissal of charges, and his calls carry great weight with the court. The recommendations tend to get more liberal as the lockup reaches its capacity each night—“You can only make so many of ’em sleep on mattresses on the floor before the ACLU shows up,” the Intake Officer on duty this night confides to a cop escorting one of the newcomers.

  The Intake Officer has already processed twenty-seven cases in a little over four hours—all manner of thieves, burglars, and gun-toting criminals, several probation violators, two carjackers, an arsonist, an armed robber, and a drive-by shooter. The Intake Officer is used to routine and rote, to offenders who fit the classic stereotypes, but of late the patterns had been changing, not so much because of the mix of crimes—that had remained fairly constant—but because of the type of people committing them. In recent days, he had referred for prosecution a stickup suspect who was rich, with a home in one of LA’s most affluent neighborhoods and no need beyond sheer kicks for robbing anyone; a drive-by shooter who was female—still an oddity, even in an age of unprecedented violent crime; and a home invasion robber with one of the hardest-luck stories the Intake Officer had ever heard, having been raised by that ultimate dysfunctional parent, the state, only to be abandoned to a life of crime.

  Tonight, he has an even more unusual newcomer, this one charged with murder—though that is not the strange part. Used to be murder cases were momentous exceptions to the plodding dullness of his job, but now they, too, had become almost routine. Dozens a month now. The “pop sheet” at the lockup is full of them. It is the circumstances of the case—and its probable outcome—that jump out at you. It is nothing short of bizarre.

  The case involves a botched robbery at a freeway motel. Two armed suspects demanded money from the desk clerk, but another motel employee emerged from a back room with a gun of his own, blowing a fatal two-inch hole into the ringleader’s chest. No one else was hurt. Still, the surviving robber—Geri Vance, who now stands before the Intake Officer—was arrested for murder in the death of his crime partner, the theory being that no one would have died had the robbery never taken place. It was a legal loophole in reverse, a murder charge for someone who had killed no one. The Intake Officer has heard of such cases, but has never actually seen one before.

  “How can they charge me with murder? I never even fired my gun at anyone,” Geri tells the Intake Officer, which is perfectly true—and, legally at least, completely irrelevant. “I was forced to take part in that robbery. I didn’t want to do it, but I gave in. I know I have to do some time for that, I understand that. But I’m no killer.”

  There is an earnestness in Geri’s manner and words that even the jaded Intake Officer can see. He almost feels sorry for the guy. “You’ll have your day in court,” the Intake Officer offers. Geri only winces.

  Geri’s case is in stark contrast to another murder case the Intake Officer handled just days before—a very ugly double homicide in which the suspect had already confessed to police that he killed his employers, a middle-aged married couple who owned a popular neighborhood ice cream shop in the View Park section of Los Angeles. Although they had long treated their counterman like a member of the family, the shop owners had recently chastised Ronald Duncan for chronically coming late to the shop. This so irritated Ronald that he decided to rob them, then blow their heads off with a shotgun while they drove him home from work. He boasted about it to a friend the next day, which was his downfall, as it is with a surprising number of crimi
nals who would not otherwise be caught. The arresting officers in this case had handed him over at Central with obvious relief, as if he were contagious.

  In both, the Intake Officer had to look through the thick rubber-banded packets of paper compiled by the police on each killing. Although they had both been brought in on murder charges, the two suspects couldn’t have been more different. It seems clear that Geri the motel robber wasn’t a killer at heart. The only reason he had been caught was because he brought his dying crime partner to a hospital emergency room after fleeing the Best Western they tried to rob. He could have gotten away clean, but chose to try to save a life instead. Then he had pretty much told the truth from the moment the police grabbed him at the hospital, immediately admitting to the robbery—not realizing he had signed his own murder warrant by doing so, his protests of coercion notwithstanding. He is bright and personable, with a sad history that began when he was abused and neglected as a child, left to roam the streets and to accumulate a record of minor crimes, none of them violent, at least until today. His fate had been sadly predictable, almost preordained, the Intake Officer figures.

  But this other one, this shotgun-wielding killer, had come out of nowhere. Ronald Duncan had no criminal record, no known history of violence or abuse, no mental illness—just an unremarkable middle-class background, plodding and dull. He had cooked up a bogus alibi when the police caught up with him, then later confessed after a marathon session with detectives, without any apparent pangs of conscience or remorse. Once his initial fear at the unfamiliarity of the lockup faded, the Intake Officer saw a grin on Ronald’s face, as if he had been brought to Central on a traffic offense, not a murder charge. He wondered aloud how much respect on the streets he’d earn for getting busted on such a serious rap. But when asked why he killed his employers, Ronald adamantly denied it—notwithstanding the police tape recording of him admitting to murder. Then he had the gall to ask, “Can I go home now?”