October 17, 2021
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A Tennessee judge created and used policies - and a non-existent law - to jail children, investigation finds - Yahoo! Voices

Judge Donna Scott Davenport.
Judge Donna Scott Davenport is accused of creating policies that led to children being illegally arrested and detained. rutherfordcountytn.gov

  • A juvenile court judge implemented policies that permitted jailing and detaining children, many of them Black, without sufficient cause, according to an investigation.

  • The Tennessee county settled a class-action lawsuit for $11 million after lawyers alleged the policy departed from Tennessee law.

  • The policy has been halted and Donna Scott Davenport maintains her position as the Rutherford County Juvenile Court Judge.

A Tennessee juvenile court judge orchestrated a system to arrest and jail children, many of whom were Black and some who were as young as eight and nine years old, according to an investigation by ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio.

According to the report, published on October 8, Juvenile Court Judge Donna Scott Davenport of Rutherford County created a "process" that involved arresting children, taking them into custody at a detention center, and then filing charges against them.

This differed from the norm in Tennessee, where police would typically serve court summonses to children and their parents instead of arresting children and taking them into custody, the investigation found.

Davenport declined an interview with ProPublica and did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Representatives from Rutherford County and from the state judicial system also did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Under Davenport's system, in 2016, 11 Black children were arrested and 10 were charged with "criminal responsibility for conduct of another" after they allegedly failed to stop a fight that was captured on video. But the attorney who represented some of the children said "criminal responsibility for conduct of another" is not a charge under Tennessee law.

Rather, it's a prosecutorial theory, the attorney Frank Ross Brazil told ABC News.

"So, that being applied as a charge in and of itself is unlawful," said Brazil, who did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment Sunday.



source: https://news.yahoo.com/tennessee-judge-created-used-policies-162839515.html

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