No Matter How Loud I Shout

12-year-old Cecil Jacks and his 15-year-old friend, Danny, have been charged with sexually assaulting a boy with autism, including forcing the autistic boy to fellate them, sodomizing him, and forcing him to eat their feces. While awaiting trial, Cecil gets arrested again for robbery and aggravated assault after hitting a woman with a brick while trying to steal purse. At the trial, the boy with autism is judged not mentally competent enough to be a reliable witness, and the woman Cecil robbed was an undocumented immigrant who disappears. The Commissioner lectures Cecil and Danny and releases them, unable to do anything else, much to the prosecution’s bewilderment, as there seems to be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Cecil and his friend are guilty and will victimize other people. Cecil openly laughs at beating the system.

As summer weather bakes Los Angeles, the Public Defender’s Office has decided to refuse to be tried by Dorn by papering the judge. Dorn responds by sending them to courthouses as far away as possible. Everyone has forgotten that this war started over a minor case, and both sides have differing opinions about who started it. The PDO believes Dorn wants to be king, while Dorn believes the PDO has a personal vendetta against him for unknown reasons. The lawyers blame their bosses for the papering, so they don’t have to take the heat, and about 1/3 of the cases that come into Dorn’s court have to be shipped out, leaving the court in a constant state of confusion, with the kids having no idea what is going on.

Whenever a PD papers him, Dorn smiles, makes them wait all day, and then tries to send him as far away as possible, like to Pomona, blaming the PD when their client is upset. Sometimes, other judges refuse to take the cases, and it takes hours to find someone to try the case. Everything leads to delays and missing files: “The spread of the cancer is then complete. Kids and families wait all day to have their cases resolved. Students miss school. Parents miss work. Witnesses are told to come back another day” (288). One kid, a car thief who now wants to join the Marine Corps, has to wait all day to get a piece of paper to begin his induction process, only to be told that he has to come back in a few days because his PO didn’t file the necessary paperwork. He leaves furious because he has done everything asked of him and in place of congratulations, he is met with apathy.

Dorn plans to win the war, which he has played before. The PDs get overwhelmed by all their transferred cases, often being expected to be in several courts simultaneously. The other judges usually uphold Dorn’s irrationalities. The DA’s Office decides to start papering Pasadena’s Judge Luke, who rarely worked more than three or four hours a day: “Another game is set in motion, the object of which has nothing to do with the welfare of children or the protection of public safety” (290-91), and it is successful, as the system essentially collapses. Judge Luke is removed, but Dorn stands his ground, focusing his attention on status offenders instead. The PDO decides Dorn has learned his lesson and abruptly stops papering him, although everyone agrees that nothing good came out of this, as Dorn has not changed at all. The only people that got hurt in the process were the kids, their families, and the victims, as well as the overall image of Juvenile Court.

A kid escaped from JH and now the facility is on lockdown, with much fewer privileges. Everyone is in a quiet mood, except for one student, Rodrigo, who has never spoken before but decides to share a poem. A repeat offender, Rodrigo, aka Stranger, faces a long prison sentence for attempted murder because the probation department never got around to checking in on him, even though he had a history of drug-induced crimes. Everyone congratulates Rodrigo on his poem:

He blushes deeply then and, for just a moment, this lost cause bound for adult court and state prison named Stranger is suddenly Rodrigo again, years melting from his face to reveal the 17-year-old boy underneath, a kid who has survived by carefully hiding his hopes and dreams from view so long that he has forgotten he had them (295).

He talks about always wanting to write, but is transferred out of JH before the next writing class.

Every once in a while, just when all the adults in JC are about to give up, a success story emerges that reminds them why they do this in the first place, like a repeat offender getting his college degree, or a girl who has been clean and with a job for three years. Defense attorney Sherry Gold is a constant and respected presence in JC because of the care she takes with her clients. She encourages their parents to get them back to and demonstrate improvement in school, because she knows the judge will be more lenient if they demonstrate scholastic drive: “Appearances are everything […] No one has to know it’s being done under orders from defense lawyer Gold” (297). Sometimes this simple parental involvement can pull the family back together and even garners the kid’s buy-in.

On more difficult cases, Gold will either hire out or do private investigator work herself. One of these cases is Leon Jones, a 17-year-old with no criminal record who mistakenly gets picked up by the police for shooting another man. At first, Gold thought he was guilty, but then a little digging revealed a tragic past: at 5 years old, Leon had found his father hanged in an apparent suicide; at 10, he was removed from his mother due to her drug abuse and neglect. He was placed in various foster homes and constantly moved to new schools: “Juvenile Court is full of kids with backgrounds like Leon’s. Crime can come easily to them. Yet Leon had never been arrested before” (300).

When Gold and a PI recanvassed the neighborhood of the shooting, they quickly found witnesses who labeled Leon as a mere bystander, one who did not remotely resemble the alleged perpetrator. They also found that a recorded interview of his older sister, in which the police argued she admitted that Leon was the shooter, said nothing of the kind. When the police begrudgingly reopened the investigation, they found the shooter, who even said that Leon tried to stop the shooting. Beckstrand drops the charges, unnerved at the police’s lack of follow-through, although she does charge Leon with lying to the police. He gets sentenced to camp, where he can explore his love of basketball that moving around previously prevented; he wants to go to college on a basketball scholarship.

Hugh’s defense attorney believes in Hugh’s innocence, although he feels immense pressure, considering the sensational nature of the murder spree. The cops found two witnesses who alleged Hugh to be the shooter even after they had previously said they could not ID the shooter, and the police believed Hugh to be involved in a gang via his tagging crew.

When they present Beckstrand with the evidence, she wants to bury Hugh, although the cops arrest him before she has her paperwork in order. However, when she looks into the case, she finds that the cops are in such a rush to convict Hugh because they don’t want the trial to interfere with their vacation plans. When Hugh’s defense attorney looks at the case, he finds that the mentions of Hugh as the shooter are second-hand rumors from people who were not actually at the shooting and that Hugh’s involvement in a gang is also based entirely on hearsay and not at all true. Also, the alleged witnesses had problems with Hugh in the past, accusing him of stealing a pager. Hugh’s previously asserted crazy behavior had also been exaggerated: in reality, he had uncontrollable urges to smash windows, behavior which a program that Stegall turned him onto helped ameliorate and for which Hugh was profoundly grateful. Hugh’s defense attorney also found that his alibi was rock solid, as there were several witnesses who would testify to him selling magazines in Oxnard at the time of the shooting, one of whom was a respected CYA employee.

The police refuse to back down, but the Deputy DA and defense attorney show the evidence to Judge Scarlett, who asserts that there is no probably cause to convict Hugh and sends him home. The cops believe that Hugh will kill again, but later the witnesses recant their IDs and the cops admit that Hugh is not involved in a gang and has even broken ties with his tagging crew. Beckstrand argues that justice has been served, admitting that the police put in less effort to JC cases.

Another of Gold’s clients, Shy Boy, is incorrectly charged with murder. Shy Boy flirted with gang life until his mom put a stop to it entirely, although the large gang Shy Boy had attached himself to was in a turf war with another gang. Twelve people were killed and wounded; cops even found themselves shot at. On the 12th murder, Shy Boy was arrested for allegedly being in the shooter’s getaway car. No witnesses could identify Shy Boy as even being in the car with the shooter, and cops claimed he had confessed on tape.

Shy Boy refused to rat on his friends, and when Gold told him they were using him because of his age, he admitted that he was afraid they’d kill him if he snitched. Gold launched her own investigation, finding no evidence that Shy Boy was in the car during the shooting and that the pistol Shy Boy claimed to have shot in the car in the alleged confession did not match any bullets recovered at the scene. When Beckstrand hears the new evidence, she agrees to drop charges, although Shy Boy pleads to firing a gun at a person and gets a year of camp from Dorn. His parents hope that this will set him straight; Shy Boy thanks Gold for not giving up on him. She believes justice was done. Gold meets her next client, who informs Gold that his mother will hire a real lawyer, which Gold is grateful for because she does not believe he is innocent.

Humes writes: “Three weeks, three murder cases, all filed against innocent kids, all dropped by prosecutors when the errors were pointed out by defense lawyers […] And yet there is not uproar, no demands for reform” (311). Humes talks about how easily the kids could have been convicted and even transferred to adult court, where racist juries regularly convict black kids with alleged gang affiliations. In an entirely different scenario, chronic truant and drug abuser Mark Lancaster had non-fatally stabbed a gas attendant with a screwdriver, whom Lancaster mistakenly thought had killed his friend. The police did not believe him, but a psychiatrist said he should be treated for drug and alcohol abuse, much to the irritation of the JC commissioner, whom believes Mark has lied from the outset. In CYA, Mark could have received rehabilitation and even remedial education classes, but his case is transferred to adult court, where the prosecutor compares his relatively mild case to the dozens of other more violent cases. He lets Mark plead out to time served, and Mark goes home, “[e]xactly the opposite result intended by the get-tough law has been achieved. Society is no safer, and neither is Mark” (314).

New kids replace the old without warning in the writing class, so that most of the original members have left; Humes writes that he has “learned to make each class self-contained, to treat each kid as if [Humes] will never see him again. Each class starts from scratch” (316). The class was almost barred from meeting again on this night because a probation counselor at the low-security Kirby Center was murdered during an escape attempt, the first time anyone has died on the job at the probation department since its founding in 1903. The PO had been known for allowing kids to break the rules, and so now the atmosphere is incredibly oppressive.

Everyone is quiet in the writing class except a newcomer, 14-year-old Little Criminal, who was arrested for killing one 18-year-old and wounding several other kids because he didn’t like the way the kid was looking at him. This happens to be the same kid who disturbed the DA by talking about how it didn’t matter how many people he killed because he’d still get out at 25. Geri has written some new chapters for his autobiography, which reflect a viewpoint that was similar to Little Criminal’s, when Geri was that age. This surprises Humes, who wonders how anyone can tell if the juvenile system actually changes kids. Humes reads Geri’s writing about getting mad when a Nintendo he bought didn’t work, so he got his grandmother’s gun and was walking to the store when the cops caught him and brought him in on his grandmother’s tip. Humes wonders if the judge will take a chance on the person Geri is now to erase the child he was and later learns that the reason for Geri’s unusual silence today was that he just found out his younger brother had been murdered.

At the courthouse, Geri feels sick when he remembers being arrested. After many delays, he is told his defense attorney is on vacation and he is surprised when, instead of a continuance, a new defense attorney shows up, one who doesn’t know Geri at all. He is sick of waiting, and just wants to get on with his life, but then in court no one mentions how well he is doing or any of his favorable reports, which his defense attorney neglected to even open. Geri is in court for less than five minutes while the adults cut a twelve-year deal for attempted murder, which his attorney assures him will be shortened to seven years with good behavior. Geri is upset because he thought he had a good shot at getting only four years.

Humes tries to figure out why Geri’s progress was dismissed so easily. The defense attorney mistakenly asserts that the law doesn’t allow for it, and when Humes points out the error, the attorney talks about how the system should have spent its money getting Geri into college but that this was the best possible outcome for him, given the circumstances. Humes goes over the defense attorney’s head to try to get an appeal, angering the defense attorney, and the appeal does not work because the appeals attorney worries that it would cause the judge to retaliate against Geri, believing that Geri got the best he deserved. Geri gives up and accepts his sentence, deeply depressed at the idea of serving twelve years.

Humes discusses The Funnel: “At the very end of The Funnel, 330,000 kids out of the 2.3 million arrested [each year] are left to have their cases disposed of through probation, foster homes, or detention of some kind” (324). The other almost-two- million kids arrested have their charges entirely dropped, mostly because the system has neither the money nor the manpower to deal with them.

This then leads to the 16 Percenters, who must get arrested several times before the system realizes that they are a problem. The system can’t even handle the small percentage of delinquents it has, even with The Funnel in place. No one remembers the kids, so they only deal with the crimes. An example of this is John Sloan’s sentencing hearing, the prosecution for which frantically reads the case file before the hearing so she knows what the crime is. Humes compares Geri and John’s respective situations, the only similarity of which is their anonymity.

Dorn has put in organizational measures to streamline his courtroom as his status-offender program has grown, getting two DAs because of the caseload, although no one is sure how effective his measures actually are. At John’s sentencing, his private attorney contradicts any prosecutorial assertion of John’s apathy or likelihood of criminal recidivism as well as indicating how supportive his family is and how they are willing to go to counseling with him. She wants John to be released to his parents, but Dorn rules that he will be sent to camp, only to be released early if he gets good grades and behaves: “Unlike Geri—unlike most kids charged with serious crimes—John has received a sentence that is tailored to him, rather than to his offense” (329). The victim, Joseph, is upset because he feels betrayed by the levity of John’s punishment, especially when Dorn had made such a big deal at the fitness hearing about holding John’s life in his hands for longer if he were charged as a minor. He believes John’s familial money bought a lighter sentence, although he admits that maybe this is what John needed to be scared straight, and, if so, he can live with that.

George, on the other hand, has no hope that he will get leniency. No one explains to him that the gun charge has been dropped, and George’s private attorney does nothing to show George’s progress, or his troubled past. Everyone who would have testified on George’s behalf were not contacted to help him, and no mention of the fact that he was a ward of the state for most of his life is made in any report, save for one brief mention. As a result, George receives the harshest sentence the judge can supply: ten years at CYA. George talks to Humes about how much his memories hurt and is bitter about his sentence, knowing he didn’t have to do those things, “’but the system didn’t have to make it so goddamn easy”’ (333). George wins the LA Times high-school-essay contest, for all LA County high schoolers, but then gets shipped off to CYA and doesn’t want anyone to come see him, thinking it’s easier to do his sentence alone.

US Attorney General Janet Reno comes to LA to talk about how the juvenile-justice system needs to be fixed, in order to prevent a rise in adult incarceration. She says it needs to begin much earlier, with mentors and other programs to convince the kids that they have worth: “It’s hard to take a chance on kids who have committed crimes, she says, but we have to suck up our guts and gamble on our children” (336). She thinks the system should focus on rehabilitation, although it should also offer swift and real consequences the first time a juvenile commits a crime. She talks about these kids being neglected, not just by their parents, but also by the State, who would rather spend its money on other things than poverty.

Scrappy gets sentenced to twenty-six years to life for being the getaway driver in the murder of the honors student. He writes stories about girls, and has spent the past two years in the hall getting a high school diploma and being a model resident. He thinks that his sentencing is payback for all the bad things he has done in his life without getting caught, like not preventing his friend from beating a girl to death. He talks about using his time in prison to get everything he can out of the academic and other programs because if he gives up, he might as well die. He writes an essay about regret and the pain that is associated with it.

Beckstrand can only convict a 16-year-old gun runner of a minor charge, much to his humor. The public defenders have been selectively papering Dorn for his lock-up of chronically-truant kids. The Commissioner berates another judge’s kid for his sudden academic apathy, although the kid seems unimpressed. Judge Scarlett has forgotten who Duncan is, at Duncan’s sentencing, as well as his crime. Duncan still does not admit to shooting the Rusitanontas, although he does say he robbed them and Jason shot them, changing his story yet again while unwillingly admitting to the felony murder rule that makes him just as guilty as Jason, in Duncan’s alleged version.

Duncan feels no remorse and does not think he should be locked up. A psychiatrist finds Duncan’s home life rife with abuse and fragmentation, alongside clear warning signs that Duncan was disturbed and violent. Duncan has joined a Bloods gang in lockup and needs intensive therapy or to be punished to the harshest extent of the law, depending on which adult interviewer is asked. Beckstrand argues that Duncan’s term should be consecutive, not concurrent, which Scarlett and the defense attorney don’t believe matter because Duncan will still get out at 25, but Beckstrand believes represents the principle of letting Duncan know that both victims’ lives matter. Duncan’s father is angry, believing that the state allowed Jason—the real perpetrator—to go free while throwing the book at Duncan. Beckstrand believes that Duncan will learn nothing from his incarceration.

The decrepit and neglected South Bay Community Day Center acts as a school for kids who aren’t allowed back in regular public schools. The kids are just passing time and watching movies while the teachers do not believe they’re making any difference in the kids’ lives. Carla attends school there with a concrete path, assuring everyone she has turned over a new leaf; “[t]he secret was pushing her into seeing herself and her actions clearly, forcing Carla to take responsibility for what she has done” (346) through repeated counseling sessions.

However, her natural leadership tendencies make it difficult for her to remain aloof to the young gang members who instinctively follow her around. Humes suspects she might be manipulating the system again, saying exactly what she knows adults want to hear. Carla says that she had to want to change because no one could have forced her to; however, she does think that she’s grown up because gangbanging does not interest her anymore, differentiating her from many of her friends, whom never grow out of it. Carl has a job now and is a month away from high school graduation. She has many different possible career paths, but she is also approaching her 18th birthday, so she will no longer be tried as a juvenile. Stegall, her PO, worries that she might be sucked back into her old life because she still hangs out with her old friends and is impressed with the power associated with leadership. She seems to have changed, but it remains to be seen.