Episodes
Fifty-four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized for the first time that juvenile court cases are adversarial criminal proceedings. Therefore, the Court held that children are entitled to due process and a right to an attorney when facing charges in delinquency court! To commemorate this landmark case, a small group of youth defenders decided to start the In Defense of Children Podcast, where we hope to contribute to building our community of defenders and raise our level of practice we bring on behalf of these kids every day! On our very first episode, Host Christina Kleiser talks with Memphis Defense Attorney and President of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Mike Working, and Ebony Howard, Deputy Director of the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC) about the unrealized promises of In re Gault (1967).
Host Cashauna Lattimore talks with Assistant Appellate Defender Jonathan Harwell about kids who are sentenced to life in prison, specifically the case of Tyshon Booker, who was sentenced to life in prison for a murder that he committed when he was 16 years old. Tyshon, who is also Cashauna’s nephew, and his case demonstrate the perils of the current sentencing scheme in Tennessee. Cashauna and Jonathan also discuss new developments in the law and how there may be some hope for parole for kids who are sentenced to life.
In this episode, Cashauna talks with Kris Henning, distinguished professor and director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, about her work on trauma and policing. Kris breaks down the research about how police encounters can create traumatic events in the lives of black and brown youth. She also provides some practical tips to youth defenders about how to use this research to the benefit of our clients.
Host Kristen Anderson interviews Daniel Losen, the Director of Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, about school policing’s contribution to the school-to-prison pipeline. Dan explains how it came to be that police were introduced into school systems, what the data has shown on the efficacy of these security measures, and what training is desperately needed for officers and administrators to improve these disturbing statistics. He then delves into what school districts should consider when revisiting their contracts with law enforcement and how we as defenders can be better prepared to represent students encountering police during school.
July 1 marked the 10th anniversary of Tennessee’s Juvenile Sex Offender Registry. In Tennessee, kids can be placed on a lifetime private registry if adjudicated of certain offenses involving delinquent sexual behaviors. There are hundreds of kids on Tennessee’s registry and nationally the Juvenile Law Center estimates there are over 200,000 kids on registries in 38 states…some states have no bottom age when kids can be placed on registries and so there are kids who were as young as 8 when their alleged delinquency occurred that placed them on a registry. With Host Christina Kleiser, Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau discusses her 30 years of research on child sexual abuse and tells us why registries harm children, families, communities and public safety.
Co-host Chris Kleiser chats with University of California Davis Professor Holly Cooper on her work representing kids in ICE custody and shares some tips on working with our noncitizen clients. Together, they review Padilla v. Kentucky, the foundational Supreme Court case that gives defenders guidance on our ethical obligations to clients who are not citizens.
Host Chris Kleiser talks with Dr. Keith Cruise, Professor of Psychology at Fordham University, about all things trauma and how it’s more than an ACEs score. Dr. Cruise is the Director of Clinical Training and a Co-Director of the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice, a technical assistance center that is part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. He has regularly been hired as an expert on cases in Tennessee and happens to be the expert on the Tyshon Booker case, discussed in Episode 2. In this episode, Dr. Cruise dives into what the research tells us about how our client’s traumatic experiences shape their lives and how we as defenders can incorporate trauma-informed practices in our representation.
Host Chris Kleiser talks through adjudicative competency and youth rights waivers with none other than the grandfather of competency, Dr. Thomas Grisso. What are some red flags that should raise the question of competency? Chris and Dr. Grisso take a deep dive into all of the questions.
While various federal and state laws provide protections for youth with disabilities, school districts and law enforcement routinely fail to adequately address the needs of these children before simply deferring them to the courts. Thus, three to five times as many youth with disabilities are involved with the juvenile justice system compared with the general public school population. So in this episode Host Kristen Anderson sits down with the dream team from Disability Rights Tennessee, Assistant Legal Director Sherry Wilds and Staff Attorney Daniel Ellis, to learn more about advocating for the rights of our most vulnerable clients.
How does incarceration impact the development of the children who are held in detention facilities? What are the alternatives to arresting and holding kids in jail? How does the current approach impact children’s ability to succeed following court involvement, especially for those who are incarcerated due to non-violent offenses? And how do we as youth defenders advocate for change? To answer these questions Host Kristen Anderson interviews Mark Soler, Executive Director of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy in Los Angeles, about the psychological impacts of detention on youth and his work over the years to reform the juvenile justice system by ending solitary confinement of children and limiting their traumatizing experiences.
Host Christina Kleiser sits down to have a conversation with Dr. Edward Mulvey about his and his colleagues’ Pathways to Desistance Study, which examines what does (and does not!) support kid’s desistance from delinquency. Dr. Mulvey has dedicated his career to asking what works and what doesn’t. We look forward to hearing how this plays into our critical work.
Also, special thanks to Angela Vigil for the new song, Defender!
