Below is a link to an expose of the Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile Court. Although written in 1994, it is just as applicable today due to the cronyism and nepotism within the walls of the castle located at 616 Adams Avenue.
http://64.17.135.19/APF_Stories/Bernstein/Bernstein01/Bernstein.html
Also, below is a copy of an email letter from retired Criminal Court Judge and now television famed Judge Joe Brown. It depicts the genesis of some of the major recurring issues in the Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile Court.
To whom it may concern:
I am keeping up with this issue of naming the Juvenile Court facility after the Hon. Kenneth Turner. and with the matter of a second Juvenile Court Judgeship. As I am retired and no longer on the State bench I am entitled to express my opinion on the matter. I am much in favor of the latter proposition relative to a second judgeship and much against the former proposition relative to naming the institution after an individual that upon the record in an official proceeding I stated was "masquerading as a judge" and "lacked sufficient status and educational qualifications" to be one. During the course of proceedings subsequently arising - in part - from this utterance, the Supreme Court of this State did not take issue with the ultimate substance of the declaration. I am further of the opinion that the hubris of the Honorable Kenneth Turner, lately the nominal Judge of the Shelby County Juvenile Court for most of the last five decades has sustained a regime that has risen to the level of a fraud upon the people of Shelby County and the State of Tennessee.
Before I elaborate and touch upon only a few of the many points that need airing, let me first say that I had occasion to have represented many parties and petitioners, both plaintiff and defendant; both adult and juvenile in Juvenile Court. Further, I was involved with numerous Habeas Corpus proceedings against Juvenile Court as an attorney; as a presiding Judge of Criminal Court for the Circuit, I heard lengthily proceedings against them in further Habeas proceedings. I would convey the following information relative to the experiences that I have had in that august tribunal known as Shelby County Juvenile Court:
I was initially employed in the Memphis area with the Memphis and Shelby County Legal Services Association and had occasion to handle administrative matters for that entity relative to certain of their clientele with matters in Juvenile Court. I was not impressed with bedlam that I observed nor the efficacy of the proceedings.
On one early occasion of attendance upon Juvenile Court, way back when I was a new admittee to the Bar, I was shocked when the Hon. Judge Turner - mistaking me for a party litigant to the Court - called me the "N" word in open court. I must say that I look back on my very heated reaction with some satisfaction now and I am very glad that I responded as I did, indifferent to the consequences: However, four decades ago, contemporaneous with the events related, I must candidly confess that I did give just a wee bit of thought to being disbarred for what I said and did in response to the slur.
Over the years, the blatant and egregious remarks and conduct attributable to various parties in official attendance subsided to a certain extent to be replaced by more subtle transgressions. Publicly, there were a few noteworthy utterances attributed to the Hon. Judge Turner by the news media, such as references to certain of the juvenile subjects as "little bastards" as reported by the Commercial Appeal in at least one feature interview with the Judge in 1976 if I recall correctly.
There is an absolute and inflexible judicial ethic that requires any judicial officer to immediately resign upon qualifying as a candidate for a "non-judicial" office. The Hon. Kenneth Turner ran for Mayor of Memphis twice in the mid-seventies against the Honorable W. Otis Higgs, the presiding judge of Division IV of the Criminal Court at the time, and the Honorable Wyatt Chandler, the incumbent. Judge Higgs immediately complied with the code of ethics and resigned. Judge Turner did not on the occasion of his first nor second candidacy for the non-judicial office in question.
Decades later, Judge Higgs was again elected to judicial office and now sits on the Criminal Court Bench; Mayor Chandler ultimately was appointed then elected to the Civil Court Bench and has now honorably retired. The Hon. Kenneth Turner, in defiance of the Canons of Judicial Ethics, declined to resign and remained the Juvenile Court Judge.
Remarkably, no one seems to have lodged an official complaint against him. It seems quite clear that some interesting procedural and substantive issues would have been raised had anyone challenged him or his official activities on this particular point. One might reasonably ponder the inconsistency of appearing before an official who claimed to hold an office that the law clearly and absolutely forbade him to hold. It would seem that a reasonable conclusion is that the man has illegally held his judgeship for approximately thirty years.
In 1968, the Tennessee Legislature passed an act that required - from that point on - that any newly appointed or elected judge in this state would have to be an attorney admitted to practice before the Tennessee Bar as well as meeting certain qualifications relative to age and residency. Those who held office at the time were "grandfathered" in irrespective of their status as attorneys. Therefore, had the good judge properly resigned in compliance with the law when he first ran for city mayor in 1976, it should be noted that his non-attorney status would have prevented him from being returned to the office of Juvenile Court Judge by either appointment or election.
(As an interesting and pertinent aside, this legislative action also led to the authorization by the State Legislature of a second Juvenile Court Judgeship for Shelby County subject to the mandatory requirement that this individual would have to be an attorney admitted to practice in this state. Current Chancellor Walter Evans provided an excellent brief to the County Commission almost twenty years ago on the relevant points. Rather than pursuing the much more efficient and economical avenue presented by a second judgeship, The County has used an exorbitant number of referees and special judges at great and inflated expense to the tax-payers)
In addition to the shortcomings inherent in Judge Turner's non-lawyer status, the Honorable Judge himself - and his constituency as a consequence - has infirmities related to his complete lack of any formal training as a lawyer or in the law. In and of themselves these deficiencies are sufficiently severe that he has been unable to fulfill the requirements of his office: Officially, the good judge has not been permitted to hear any matters without the express written permission of all parties due to these educational infirmities since 1982 when the Tennessee Supreme Court held that litigants would otherwise be deprived of the Right to Counsel since Judge Turner would not be able to sufficiently comprehend the arguments and points of attorneys to give the person represented full benefit of his attorney's services.
The so-called standard procedures of the Shelby County Juvenile Court relative to the use of six or more referees and special judges superficially appear to be artifacts of the 1982 declaration of the State Supreme Court of the circumstances that led them to hold that the Honorable Judge Turner was unable to understand and fully comprehend the arguments of attorneys thereby depriving litigants of the benefits of exercising their Right of Representation by Counsel.
(It should be noted that in essence there are more referees employed in Juvenile Court than in all the other Circuit, Criminal and Chancery Courts combined. It might also be noted that every other referee in the county must be unanimously approved by every judge; Judge Turner was free to unilaterally select and employ the referees working Juvenile Court)
Unfortunately, this exorbitant and excessive use of referees and special judges long preceded the ruling of the State Supreme Court on the matter: It should be clearly understood that it was not just Judge Turner's non-lawyer status that lead to the remedial appointment of such a redundancy of referees and special judges. There actually was quite a serious deficiency in his capacity and ability to manage the necessary affairs of the court.
This is quite reflective of the same point we make over and over again when we tell the youth to stay in school and get an education! There are those that try to diminish the value of formal education or training, but it is irrefutable that certain levels of education are prerequisites to performing certain tasks.
During the course of Habeas Corpus proceedings heard before me on the Criminal Court Bench, I became fully apprised of Judge Turner's educational status through the introduction of Admissions produced in separate but related Federal Proceedings against Juvenile Court (there were similar issues in the Federal matter that were successfully prosecuted by the plaintiffs resulted in a significant monetary judgement against Juvenile Court that had to be borne by the tax-payers).
It would appear that the good judge lacked not only a law license, but also lacked any sort of law degree, bachelor's degree (college), or associate degree (community college). It would appear that the only sort of educational credential that he possessed was purportedly some sort of unofficially awarded correspondence course 'diploma' acquired from an obscure and now defunct business.
(While I suppose that it is commendable that Judge Turner has gone as far as he has with his limited education, we must consider the tremendously negative effect the last five decades of his reign have had on the citizens and youth of this community. Their needs and their necessities demanded sufficient education and training in the incumbent to enable him to fulfill the requirements of his office. It is the unfortunate fact that Judge Turner was actually quite incompetent to handle the business of the court due to his educational infirmities and that circumstance has been manifest for decades now)
Perhaps it was with a surplus of time on his hands relative to the handling of court business that prompted Judge Turner to drift from the business and workings of the Judicial Branch of government to the business of the Executive Branch. It appears that the principle activity of the good judge has been to put together an organization that to all intents and purposes functions as a collective alternative to a number of Executive agencies including but not limited to the District Attorney General's Office; the police and Sheriff's departments; the Department of Human Services; Child Protective Services; the Department of Corrections.
If we were not speaking of a Juvenile Court and spoke of judicial institutions with which we might be more conversant, perhaps the analogy that would best show the wrong of this is as follows: The Criminal Court Judge that the defendant found himself appearing before was also the same person who was Chief of Police, Chief Prosecutor, Chief Defender, Chief Investigator and Chief Advocate for the alleged victim and Chief Jailer. Sounds like a foreign country with 'Fearless Leader' in charge. Well that is precisely the same situation as exists in Juvenile Justice.
The same individual who was supposed to be the fair, impartial, neutral and detached judge was the same person who had a personal contract with the Shelby County Commission to prosecute child support violations; the same person who had personally contracted with the Department of Human Services to represent them in proceedings against alleged fathers; the same person that had agreements with the IRS, Soc. Sec. and other agencies to investigate alleged offenders; to operate juvenile detention facilities and to privatize them and become a principle share holder in the enterprise; the principle collector and dispenser of money; and to keep his own records (subsequently thwarted by the State Supreme Court when it ruled that the Clerk of the Juvenile Court was a Constitutional position that had to be filled by public election).
In functional fact, Judge Turner did not do all these things personally, but created an empire where everyone worked for him and he delegated these tasks to them. He hired, supervised and fired. Sound strange? It was and is strange. The Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1986 decision of Severe vs. Turner et al thought so too and declared that there was absolutely no constitutional authority for any one person to embrace all of these separate and distinct powers and functions reflective of these disparate executive governmental entities. It was further held that any such activity was completely outside the proper authority and power of a judge and was done without the protection of authority. Such exercise of power was held to constituted personal and private acts by the actor leaving him personally liable to anyone who might prove that they had been wronged. The tax-payers unwittingly paid out considerable sums to multiple parties who had been wronged by such unlawful action by Juvenile Court and the good Judge.
Sitting Judges have long been prohibited by judicial canons of ethics from active participation in partisan politics. Of course, this sanction and absolute prohibition has been totally ignored over the years by the Honorable Kenneth Turner with out comeuppance. Judge Turner was strident in his long term insistence that his non-lawyer status exempted him from such prohibitions; further, he often demanded and obtained the assistance of his employee staff in various political campaigns and activities.
I could really belabor the point of impropriety and discuss at some great length Judge Turner's activities during the Sanitation Strike during 1968 and his personal efforts to thwart Dr. King's civil rights activities in this city immediately before his assassination at the Loraine Motel. However, a mere mention of his threats to the African-American parents relative to them allowing their children to participate in the boycott of the schools should suffice for those with need for refreshment of their personal recollections.
On the other hand, Mr. Shep Wilburn, late of the office of Clerk of the Juvenile Court, was subject to considerable negative innuendo in the media after he discovered several million dollars of Juvenile Court Money that had been deposited in a non-interest bearing account for a decade. He was entirely too nice in his handling of the matter and had his name besmirched in the process. The money was secreted away by parties at Juvenile Court to use as collateral for personal and political loans. That is typical of the long and short of the matter.
For the life of me, I cannot think of much positive in the way of commentary on the last half-century of the operation of the Shelby County Juvenile Court system. It does fit in with the baby selling scandal of the administration of the Lady Judge next preceding the Honorable Kenneth Turner but that's only a small point.
Thank you for your indulgence in perusing this essay. I remain yours in duty and obligation.
Sincerely,
Joseph B. Brown
Judge Joe Brown Show;
Judge, Retired, Division IX of the Criminal Courts of
Tennessee, 30 th Judicial District at Memphis
These remarks are delivered in my personal and private capacity and reflect the views of the writer. Feel free to disseminate them as you see fit.
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