WEBVTT - Judge Discusses Challenges of Juvenile Justice 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:05.680 You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:09.320 The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:13.560 the nation's oldest organization for judges. It's two thousand members 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.919 come from every state and several foreign countries, and their 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.840 goal is to ensure justice for families and children in 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.480 courts throughout the country. The organization has a new president, 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.599 Judge Dan Michael of the Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.280 Court in Tennessee, who has more than twenty years of 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:33.080 experience in juvenile law, and he joins me now, thanks 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:35.440 for being here, Judge Michael, Will you start out by 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.720 telling us about the goal of the National Council of 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:43.800 Juvenile and Family Court Judges. Well, the Council is essentially 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.480 a training and support organization for judges. It's the oldest 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:53.160 judicial council in the United States. I believe we're celebrating 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.760 our eighty three or eighty fourth birthday this year, so 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.280 it's been around a long time. My introduction to the 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.960 Council came years ago. Is over seventeen years ago, when 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:04.600 the judge of the Juvenile Court at the time sent 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.880 me to one of their conferences in Florida, and I 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.120 got hooked and I've been a member ever since. The 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.360 reason the Council is important to me, and I believe 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:19.200 the judges that belong vary from judge to judge. But 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.119 we are an implementation site and we've been getting good 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.280 support from the Council for a number of years as 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.200 we executed use of what we call our Dependency and 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:36.560 Neglect bench Book, the Enhanced Guidelines for Judges and Abuse 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.160 in Neglect cases, and they send, of course they're not 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.240 sending anybody here right now, but for years they would 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.360 send a team down here about every other year and 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.360 sit in court review the judges who hear the cases, 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.040 make sure they're following the guidelines properly, and give us 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:57.120 assistance if we were slipping. In addition to that, they 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.840 would hold what they call or Lead Judges Conference a 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.840 year and all thirty or forty lead judges from across 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.440 the country which show up out in Reno, where our 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.120 headquarters is, and spend a day and a half to 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.520 two days learning from one another. Well, this is what 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:14.679 we're doing at my court, or this is what we're 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:19.359 doing at my court, And of course it opens up 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:23.480 the ability to borrow ideas from judges all over the country. 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.880 In addition, and this is what's critical to me, June, 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.360 the relationships that I made seventeen years ago are still 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:36.280 in place. I've got judges magistrate judges who are friends 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:40.120 of mine all over the country, and when we have 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.040 a national conference, I get to see them, I get 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.200 to break bread with them. We make new friends at 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:51.000 the conferences, and those friendships last for a long time. 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.240 And you may not realize, if you're not a judge 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:59.280 that when you put on a robe you essentially separate 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:04.800 yourself from society in a way that's rather unusual. Judges 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:09.360 have very very stringent ethical guidelines they have to follow. 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:13.640 We lose our First Amendment rights to some extent on 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.919 what we can and cannot say, and a roabe can 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.960 be very very isolated. So being able to go to 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.639 a conference, go to a lead judges conference, meet other judges, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.359 be in a room with other judges where you can 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:34.920 discuss judicial issues openly is a very very strong inducement 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:37.880 to being part of the organization. Because in in the 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.200 regular world, I can't talk about cases I'm working on. 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.040 I hesitate to talk about cases. I've even finished with. 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.119 But in the company of other judges you can talk 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.160 about a lot of things you can't talk about in 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.440 public because of the ethical guidelines, and it gives us 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:57.360 that friendship support that we don't get in other places. 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.240 I want to turn to the courts right now, and 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:06.440 COVID nineteen has slowed down or closed courts across the country. 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:09.680 With juvenile and family courts, you have issues that are 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:14.920 emergency or time sensitive. How have the courts been handling 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:19.080 those cases during this crisis? Well, I can tell you 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.960 that my experience in talking to members of the judiciary 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:25.359 across the country the last four months is that it 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:30.640 varies literally from county to county. My friends in Washington, 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:35.120 d c. And Austin, Texas and lots of the states 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.080 were locked out of their courthouses because their courthouses belonged 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:44.039 to the county and the county mayor or the county 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:48.839 manager back in March made decisions to close courthouses, so 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.159 judges were literally stuck without a court room in a 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.720 lot of those counties. Now I can specifically talk about 0:04:55.800 --> 0:05:01.760 what we did. We never closed down. He jumped from, 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.000 oh gosh, how many doctors do we have? A week 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.560 um about forty five docuts a week down to three 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:14.440 and moved into zoom hearings within two weeks of late March. 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.640 It was after March fift when we started doing zoom hearings, 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.279 but we jumped on zoom pretty quickly, and we continued 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:25.480 to hear all our emergency cases on zoom. So if 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.080 a child gets taken into custody, we give them a 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.800 hearing within twenty four hours of that decision. If a 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.800 child is removed from parents, we give them an immediate 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.919 hearing within seventy two hours under state law. We'll continue 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.840 this conversation coming up and find out what you did 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.760 in your courthouse, Judge Michael, as well as what your 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:51.599 goals are for the organization as president. I'm dream Brusso 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.520 and this is job I've been talking to Judge Dan Michael, 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.120 the new president of the National Council of Juvenile and 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.880 Family Court. So, Judge Michael, we were talking about the 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.000 courts and handling COVID nineteen. Tell us more about what 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.479 you did in your court house. What we have done 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:15.160 in our courthouse is we locked everything down. I issued 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:17.960 a mask rule right off the bat. We started taking 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.839 temperatures at the door. We isolated ingress and egress because 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.160 in my building we have about four hundred people come 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:28.960 through here a year, and that's just for juvenile court. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.039 So we've shut it down. Visitors have to come in 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.800 one door, employees the other. We temperature check everyone and 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.080 we started rotating our staff. I have about two d staff. 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.640 They come in and shifts of about four and a 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.760 half hours and then leave and then the next shift 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:49.080 comes in, so our halls aren't packed with people and 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:53.039 knock wood jun We've not had a case of COVID 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.760 among my staff. We sealed off the judiciary so nobody 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.320 can't get back here but the judges and the management team. 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.800 We are working all of our cases on Zoom and 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.760 we have reopened all our docuts except one, and all 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.800 of my magictis come in every day. They go into 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.600 their chambers and they stay there and they're in court 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.440 almost all day, and if they're not in court, they're 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.680 signing orders and issuing orders, and we stay away from 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:21.880 one another. We wave at each other in the hall, 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:26.440 but that's about it. We're trying really really hard to 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:30.280 contain this thing, to keep litigants safe, judges safe, and 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.280 court staff safe and lawyers safe and like I say, 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:36.960 not goold. We've been successful so far and keeping everyone safe. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.240 You are taking the helm of the organization In July. 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.560 I know that you've been leading on a project to 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:50.400 improve child abuse and neglect practices at juvenal and family courts. 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:52.280 Tell me a little bit about that and what you 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.120 hope to achieve their As a juvenile court judge, somebody 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:58.600 has been on the bench over twenty three years. In 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:03.160 my early career of judging, I had numerous dockets of 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:08.160 all types, from child support, two arguments between parents over 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.960 whose parents the child, two delinquency cases when children commit 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.520 acts that would be crimes if they were adults. But 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.520 the most important docket I believe we have a juvenile 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.560 court is the abuse inflect docket. And Tennessee we use 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.200 the word dependency and neglect. The children who come in 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:30.120 before us on dependent neglect dockets. If we can't successfully 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:35.199 break that behavior of where child is being severely abused 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:40.439 or abused or neglected, the risk of that child growing 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:44.360 into delinquent behavior and acting out from the trauma they 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:49.199 suffer as young children is critical. We have had students 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.360 come from the medical school, which is about two blocks 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.200 from here do studies on their PhD work in their 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.880 MD work that shows the connection between abuse and neglect 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:02.280 and delinquent See. So I know as a judge, and 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.920 I can tell you anecdotally that when I saw children 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:10.320 abused and neglected twenty years ago, and now is the 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.120 judge who does only transfer here I see some of 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.240 those children that were in front of me as abused 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:21.240 and neglected children years ago, who are acting out from 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.400 the trauma and the severe damage that was done to 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.360 them as young kids, and they get in trouble. So 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:33.600 my goal is to employ the Child Abuse Enhanced Resource 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.720 Guidelines that were developed by the National Council throughout all 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.920 of those abuse and neglect bockets, and my judges have 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.480 been trained. They all have the resource guidelines in their 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:49.119 chambers when they go into a courtroom. Before the pandemic, 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.760 they carried those resource guidelines in there with them. They 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.920 utilize what we call bench cards. Bench cards are a 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:01.840 one page laminated sheet that essentially has bullet points on 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.960 what you should look for, who should be in the courtroom, 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.680 what kind of questions you should ask, that sort of 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:12.760 thing to guide them to a better shot at getting 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.360 the information they need. So they can make a good 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.160 decision and break the cycle. And it's an ongoing thing. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.800 It's not something that you, Okay, we ordered a bunch 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.320 of guidelines and now we're good to go. It's a 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:31.160 constant training. It's constantly changing your callioquey in the courtroom 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:35.240 to make sure you're showing the compassion and respect for 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.240 everyone in there. Because just because a parent is not 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:43.120 parenting properly doesn't mean they're a bad person. They probably 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:47.160 weren't trained to be a good parent by their parents, 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.240 so they're suffering from trauma that they grew up in 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.320 and that flows through to their children. So what we 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:57.439 try to do is very compassionately help that person find 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:01.560 ways of properly parenting their children so that their children 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.240 can grow up to be productive citizens without the amount 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.320 of trauma that most of these kids see. I think 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.480 that a judge's job, any judge's job, is really difficult. 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:14.200 But it must be very difficult to face, you know, 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:18.240 the the juveniles who are in crisis and families, to 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.839 face that every day, day after day and deal with 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:29.120 these emotional problems. Yes, it's very difficult. We um for years. 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.880 You know, judges are supposed to be um above the fray. 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.360 We're supposed to be independent. We don't adhere to any 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.480 political parties in Tennessee. Judges run independently. We're supposed to 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:43.760 go in the courtroom, and we don't have juries in 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.120 juvenile courts. So the judges, the judge and the jury 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.040 in a juvenile court. And one of the things I 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.040 learned early on from the judges that I worked under 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:58.080 was that compassion is critical, empathy is critical. That you 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:02.880 don't judge the person, you judge the act. Okay, because 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.960 as young adults, we've all made mistakes as children and 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.520 young adults, and even as older those mistakes are part 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.400 of life. Some are worse than others, some are minor, 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.640 some are terrible, but the mistake does not define who 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.560 you are as a person. So we train our magistrate 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.760 judges when they go into court that you're you're dealing 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.080 with a human being who is suffering from trauma, and 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.880 their response to that can be really bad on their children, 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:35.920 and then the children suffer trauma. Now, the third piece 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.600 of that puzzle that you ask about is that judges 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:44.440 and clerks and lawyers who operate in that arena get 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.240 what I call vicarious trauma. If you sit in on 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.520 a murder trial as a juror and the d A 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.200 puts up crime scene photos, you're gonna be traumatized because 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.840 there's a member of the public. You don't see real 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.640 life of a murder seemed very often, and television doesn't 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.320 really do it. Honor judges sit every day and hear 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:10.520 the worst of human behavior, and it has a tremendous 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.080 effect on us. That's why the National Council is so 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.760 important to be. If I have a tough day, I 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:18.800 can pick up the phone and call my friend Tony, 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.760 easy update and just say, Tony, how you doing. I've 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.120 had a really rough day. Let me tell you about 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.240 this case I had. So when I took office four 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:29.880 and a half years ago, almost five years ago now, 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:34.360 I started trauma training in the courthouse. I had the 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:38.360 National Council come in. They did a trauma audit and 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:42.120 they literally looked at absolutely everything in the building and 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.200 everybody in the building. They issued a report. We then 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:51.520 shared a partnership with the University of Tennessee Health Sciencest Center, 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.960 which is Tennessee Medical School. I reached out to their 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.520 dean of the psychiatric department. He gave us people who 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.840 knew how to deal with trauma and aces, and we 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:09.000 trained literally everybody in the courthouse, lawyers, judges, probation staff, 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.240 even our psychologist upstairs took the training. Even our maintenance 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:15.800 people took the training because they're in the hallways they 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.840 run into children and families. I then appointed Dr Eleon 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.560 and she is a PhD. And she is my trauma 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:27.480 authority in this building, and her role is to keep 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.800 the training going for new staff, the retraining of existing staff, 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:35.120 and reaching out into the community to spread the word 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.640 that we know what the problem. If we could stop 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.600 the trauma, if we could stop the aces, we could 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.240 eventually whittle down the number of cases we see to 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:48.840 a small number. And I truly believe that we've all 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.760 known as judges for years who've done this, that the 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:54.320 families that come in front of us are in serious trouble, 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:56.320 but we didn't know how to label it. And it's 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.760 the medical profession that came out and said, these are 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.920 the problems that you're seeing in your courtroom, and they're 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:08.240 driven by high ASIS scores and severe trauma. So I've 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:11.640 been attacking it at the base since I took office 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.880 and looking at your resume. I was intrigued because, you know, 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.240 when you go to law school, almost everybody who was 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.240 in law school just came out of college or came 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.480 out a few years ago. You went to law school 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.400 when you were thirty seven? Why what happened? What led you? 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:30.040 What led you at that aids to try to take 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.520 on the law. Well, I guess I was an argumentative child. 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.040 My parents always used to say to me, you'd be 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:39.040 a good lawyer, of good judge. I went into business 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.720 with my dad right out of college. He owned service stations. 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.320 Now I don't know how old you are, but that's 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.280 a term that nobody ever uses anymore. We didn't sell 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.680 milk and bread. We saw gasoline, and we fixed cars, 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:56.560 and we were franchise operators for and then Exxon, and 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.560 the franchise agreements through the oil companies were chained from 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:05.440 independent dealers owners like my father and I, to big 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.480 finance guys who would buy, you know, two hundred and 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.760 fifty stores across the Southeast and run. I'm with employees. 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.720 And I had grown up in a family business and 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:17.560 realized that I either had to figure out a new 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.080 business to go into because most corporations aren't going to 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.640 hire a thirty seven or forty year old who's been 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.960 running his own business. And I had already worked on 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:31.160 my master's degree. I always loved education, and I took 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.360 the els At on a lark and got into law school. 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:36.400 One of the hardest things I've ever done, to be honest, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:40.160 with schools. I was married with kids, and Lord had mercy. 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:43.160 I walked into that first class and I'm sitting in 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.760 there with nineteen year olds, twenty year olds who've been 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.520 out partying all night, and I've been up all night 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.920 reading law books. Thanks so much for joining us. Judge Michael, 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.360 that's Judge Dan Michael, the President of the National Council 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.320 of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. And that's it for 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.320 this edition of Bloomberg Law. I am June Grasso, and 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:02.359 this is Bloomberg