When a teenager fell asleep during a field trip to a Michigan courtroom earlier this month, the judge responded by ordering her to be placed in a jumpsuit, handcuffed, and held in a cell for hours—livestreaming what he later called "my own version of Scared Straight" to social media followers.
The teen's mother has now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the judge, Kenneth King, violated her daughter's constitutional rights.
According to the suit, the 15-year-old, identified as ELG, was participating in a vocational program set up by a local nonprofit. As part of the program, ELG was attending a field trip to King's courtroom, aimed at teaching students about possible careers in law. Once the group arrived and were seated in the courtroom, the teenagers watched a homicide proceeding, followed by a lecture from King, which was livestreamed online.
During this lecture, ELG nodded off. The lawsuit claims that this was, in part, because she had been "exposed to a court hearing that forced her to relive a traumatic event." The suit says that when King noticed the teenager had fallen asleep, he began berating her. After ELG apologized, King allegedly moved on and continued with the lecture.
When ELG fell asleep again, King ordered her to get up, go to the bathroom, and get a drink of water, "because of what he had in store for her," according to the suit. When she returned, court officers locked her inside a detention cell and ordered her to take off her clothes and change into a jail jumpsuit.
ELG refused to remove all her clothes and "was permitted to put the jumpsuit over her clothing before being handcuffed and transported back to the original holding cell, where she was held captive for hours," according to the suit. She was eventually "re-cuffed and brought into the courtroom after the close of the day's proceedings, where a fake trial was convened."
After assigning a "random private attorney" to serve as the teenager's "counsel," King threatened to send her to "'juvey,' with vulgar stories of beatings and feces at the county's juvenile detention center."
"While panning the camera to focus upon his juvenile audience for the benefit of his internet fans," King directed ELG's "peers to serve as a fake jury of public opinion and decide whether to let her go home to her mother and grandmother, or to serve time in the juvenile jail," even though he completely lacked any jurisdiction to actually send her to jail.
"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 later told 7 News Detroit, a local news station. "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."
In all, the lawsuit argues that King's actions clearly violated the teenager's constitutional right to due process.
ELG "was subjected to unusual punishment that was cruel, before farcical process, because she upset" King, the suit reads, adding that while he "acted under color of law, his actions were outside the bounds of his authority, providing no just process at all."
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