Detroit Judge Handcuffs And Humiliates Teenage Girl To Teach Her A Lesson About Being Sleepy

You know, we send kids to jail for a lot of bad reasons, but this would be a new one.

Well, I think we have a candidate for worst field trip ever, and shockingly, it’s not the time my fifth grade class went to Old Sturbridge Village on a 95 degree day and had to stand near a kiln while a guy in some kind of old-timey 1800s blacksmith get-up made a horseshoe and talked about making horseshoes for an absolute eternity.

Eva Goodman, a 15-year-old Detroit girl, was on a field trip to a court room with a bunch of other teenagers when she started to nod off a little between hearings. Can we blame her? No, we cannot. It probably was nothing at all like an episode of “Judge Mathis.” The judge — 36th District Judge Kenneth King — however, was so offended by this that he actually had the girl handcuffed, forced her to change into a jail uniform, and threatened her with actual jail time for “contempt of court.”

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Some of the footage from the courtroom, of Judge King being a king-sized douchecanoe, can be seen below.

Video footage shows that the girl did not return to the courtroom for two hours afterwards, and that, upon her return, Judge King held a “hearing” in which he yelled at her for falling asleep and having shown him “attitude” and asked her friends for a show of hands on whether or not she should be sent to jail for her crimes against his ego.

"You sleep at home in your bed, not in court. And quite frankly, I don't like your attitude," King said, adding, "I'm tempted to give her some days in jail, as a lesson."

That, actually, would have been a tough one for Goodman, as she does not actually have a permanent home or a bed to sleep in.

"We have to bounce around currently because we don't have a permanent address,” her mother, Latoreya Till, told the Detroit Free Press. “And so, that particular night, we got in kind of late. And usually, when she goes to work, she's up and planting trees or being active."

Goodman was actually there with The Greening Project, a non-profit she works with that aims to improve the city’s "green infrastructure."

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"[King] basically was being a big bully to a child that was sleeping and unaware of the etiquette of a courtroom, because she's never been there, she's never been in trouble," said Till. "She's not a problem child."

King says that he was only trying to help the girl, because traumatizing a teenager is obviously the best way to help them. He also said he has actually reached out to the Goodman’s parents to offer to mentor her.

Shockingly, he has not heard back from anyone just yet. But he has been removed from the bench on which he’s sat for almost 20 years pending “training,” which along with unkind comments under the court’s youtube feed, probably makes him the real victim here. Everyone else just thinks he’s disgusting.