Snooping

No day can really be boring in the solicitor’s office apparently. Today I had to close out cases for 1993 delinquents because in the state of South Carolina, 17 and older is “upstairs,” meaning they’ve reached the adult court. Because I had to go through all of the filing cabinets and pull those files, I decided I might as well make it interesting. Let’s just say, I have never seen so much assault in battery since ever. Of course there were a bunch of possession of marijuana and truancy (something I will cover later), but these kids take it to a whole other level with their violence.

Parents said that their child had a “short fuse” all too much in these files. For example, this one 15 year old got dumped by his girlfriend, sent three threatening text messages to her friend, brought a knife to school for a week and flashed it at her, then resisted arrest, pushed a police officer, and tried to stab him with a freshly sharpened pencil. (In our docket tomorrow, we have a 15 year old girl who stole a car and crashed it into the local baptist church because her boyfriend dumped her and she “had nothing to live for.”) I’m sorry but there is a significant difference between having a short fuse and misconceiving your life priorities; I didn’t want to believe it at 15, but damn sure knew that I wouldn’t cause a disturbance to the community because there was a boy that didn’t want to be with me. 

Here in South Carolina, there are 3 phases to the juvenile trial: 1) the initial appearance, where the solicitor ( aka DA) meets with every defendant and explains his/her charges, tells them whether she will drop the charges or proceed to the second phase, or offer certain programs such as community service and things of that nature at which she will drop the charges, 2) this is the phase in front of the judge where the defendant will state his/her plea and the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) will recommend a particular course of action based on an evaluation made by Social Services or DJJ; the solicitor and public defender may concur with the recommendation or request a modification which is to be approved by the judge. I can’t tell if we like DJJ yet. Sometimes we do, but then it also seems like the department tries to weasel the delinquents out of trouble. But that is the interesting setup of the courtroom, the school district sits behind us, and DJJ is on the other side of the room. Considering the commonplace layout of a courtroom illustrating the competition between one side of the room to the other, I would say that maybe they aren’t on our side? Finally, 3) this is the sentencing of the juvenile. 

The very unique thing to the surprisingly stringent South Carolina law is that if a child has a certain number of unexcused absences the state gets involved holding both the student AND parent(s) liable and responsible [note: in court someone can be responsible but not liable, so I had to put both; I’m not being redundant :)]. Yesterday, I basically saw what could happen in the worst of circumstances and the little boy was taken from his mother and put into a temporary home. He was 14, in the 7th grade, with a 5th grade reading level and a 4th grade math level. I mean I am sympathetic, but unless he wants to end up like his financially precarious parents (not that they are failures because you could see that this mother truly loved her son), then this, I felt, was very appropriate. That’s how I see this job. We may seem like the “bad guys” because we are on the other side of the court room, but we are providing justice to the community, and trying to help these kids straighten out. I’m sure a public defender, or any defense attorney for that matter, will think otherwise....

“No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.”

                     - Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy’s got a point.