Before Alfred Anderson and Darrell Johnson, there was Henry Campbell. More than 100 years ago, 11-year-old Henry Campbell, the first official juvenile delinquent in America, was hauled in front of a judge in Chicago.

  Campbell’s case was the first in the U.S. to be heard in a separate juvenile court and the details of it now seem rather old-fashioned. Campbell had stolen from his mother, and she herself brought him in to see the judge. The judge sent Campbell out East to live with his grandmother in hopes that he could straighten up his act there.

  But the catalyst for this first juvenile court was quite serious. Social reformers of the day had discovered that hundreds of kids – some as young as seven and eight years old – were being abused because they were imprisoned alongside adults.

  The Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899 stopped that practice. Along with its other reforms, it specified that children were not supposed to be kept in adult facilities. That first court also came up with an entirely new philosophy, says Katherine Federle, a former Tulane University law professor and current director of the Justice for Children Project at the Ohio State University College of Law. "The notion of the juvenile court judge initially was this kindly father figure who would take a child under his wing and to correct his behavior," Federle says. "It was meant to be corrective, not punitive."

  The ideals and general structure of the Illinois juvenile justice system were soon mimicked in other places. Orleans Parish established its own separate juvenile court in 1910. Certain standards were established in those early years: in juvenile courts, hearings were private, and records were confidential and sealed when a child became an adult.

  Across the country, fewer of those standards remain today, mostly as a result of mandates passed by state legislatures in response to high-profile cases involving violent adolescents. "Adult crime, adult time" is a catchphrase behind this philosophy. "Because of political pressure in the 1980s, when crime generally started to increase, juvenile court systems began to look more punitive," Federle says. "And legislators began to find ways to demonstrate that one of their primary purposes was not simply to rehabilitate but also to punish."

  In the years between 1992 and 1995, 48 state legislatures, including Louisiana’s, stiffened their laws regarding juveniles. Even in an atmosphere where juvenile crime has been declining in all major categories since 1994, Louisiana’s legislative changes of the early 1990s still stand. They have a huge impact on defendants like Alfred Anderson and Darrell Johnson – in fact, the sentences Anderson and Johnson face are a result of a 1993 Louisiana statute, which mandates that juveniles charged with violent felonies must face a sentence called "juvy life," or incarceration in a secure correctional facility, without chance of parole, until the age of 21.

  Another Louisiana law passed during the 1990s stipulates that, because Anderson and Johnson are charged with a violent crime, their proceedings are no longer confidential. Which means that all the hearings for this case are open to the public and that news media are able to use Anderson’s and Johnson’s names.

  Back in September, the Woodson school shooting traveled far and wide courtesy of the Associated Press, Newhouse News Service, and United Press International. CBS Morning News covered it; and the Calgary [Alberta] Herald wrote about it, as did the Xinhua [China] News Agency, The New York Times, and most large news dailies in the United States. As a result of the Louisiana statute, the reports were able to discuss the defendants by name.

  Wanda Anderson, Alfred’s mother, shakes her head. She had realized, of course, that everyone in the neighborhood would know that her son had been charged in the shooting. But she was not prepared to have his name travel around the globe. And it wasn’t just his name. "They had his picture in the paper and on the TV news nationwide," she says. "His face, right there on TV."

It’s lunchtime, and one of Darrell Johnson’s feet is tapping out a little beat on his wheelchair footrest as he and his mother, Catrice Johnson, walk down the block to find some food.

  They’ve been given a brief respite from the courtroom. Judge C. Hearn Taylor ordered a short recess for lunch. The Johnsons and the rest of the courtroom crowd quickly head into the sunny outdoors.

  Alfred Anderson isn’t far behind his classmate. He and his mother, Wanda Anderson, stop in a little store just inside the doors of the Juvenile Court building, and his mom buys Alfred a hard-boiled egg. They walk outside and stand off to the side of
the main doors. Alfred doesn’t take long to polish off his lunch; he soon heads back inside. He emerges and begins chomping on a second egg. He doesn’t look around.

  His mother and grandmother stand a few steps away. Wanda Anderson turns to introduce her son to a children’s advocate. Alfred wipes his face with a napkin and reaches out his hand. He says nice to meet you and they talk for a few minutes. He says that he misses his friends and he misses school. He hears that he may be able to get into a different school very soon. He says that he especially misses seeing his friends.

  It’s time to head back to the courtroom. Anderson holds the door open for his mother and grandmother. The small group walks through the metal detector and down the hallway
into the waiting area for Orleans Parish Juvenile Court. Long rows of molded plastic chairs hold teenagers, both boys and girls. Some sit with their parents, some hold babies of their own.

  Anderson and his family walk off to the right, to the locked door that leads to the Section B courtroom – Judge Taylor’s courtroom. Some of the other people involved with the case are already standing in front of the door, waiting to be let in. The Andersons join the group; Alfred stands off to the side with his eyes down at the floor, the part in his fresh haircut more visible than his face. He doesn’t look at the kids in the chairs.

  But the kids are looking at him. Across the room, out of his earshot, one of the girls says, "Hey – I’ve seen that little guy. He’s one of the Woodson kids." The boy across the aisle, her brother, also looks. "The one who’s got his head down?" he asks. She nods, sitting back in her chair and looking over. The door to Section B opens, and Alfred gets next to his grandma and follows the rest of the crowd through the door.

  The girl across the room watches Alfred file in. "He is such a little guy," she says. Then she looks over to the doorway. "That’s the other one – the one in the wheelchair." The girl, her brother and a few of the kids turn to gawk.

  Darrell and Catrice Johnson have just entered the waiting area. Darrell’s mom expertly makes a turn with her son’s wheelchair and continues toward the Section B door.   

  The kids across the room turn in their plastic chairs, their eyes following the Johnsons. "Is he paralyzed?" says the boy. His sister, who says she knows a girl in Johnson’s class, seems to have all the answers. "He can move his feet and stuff," she says. "So the doctors think he’ll be able to walk again. But they don’t know for sure." Her brother nods, his eyes on the wheelchair.

Derwyn Bunton from the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and Harold DuCloux III from the St. Thomas Community Law Center are Darrell Johnson’s pro bono defense team. They say that if Johnson is going to be trotted out in the public eye, then he also deserves to be judged by the public. Specifically, he deserves a trial by jury – one of the only adult rights that is not accorded to kids.

  Bunton and DuCloux have asked Judge Taylor, via written motion,
to grant Johnson a jury trial. Alfred Anderson’s defense team didn’t
write a separate motion but they, verbally before Judge Taylor, joined
the motion.

  The motion spells it out in legalese: "If the public is to condemn, stigmatize, and make Darrell notorious, then fundamental fairness requires that sentiment be manifest in a jury’s verdict." Bunton puts it in plain terms: "If you want to treat and convict him like an adult," says Bunton, "then you have to judge him like an adult – with a jury trial."

  At its most basic level, the motion argues, Johnson is entitled to a jury trial by the United States Constitution.

  Justice for Children Project Director Katherine Federle says that a jury trial could clearly benefit Darrell Johnson and Alfred Anderson. "In terms of a jury, these kids probably are very sympathetic defendants," she says. A judge is less likely to be influenced by, say, Johnson’s injury or Anderson’s size. "Judges are obligated to apply the law, no matter how sympathetic a defendant might be," she says.

  Federle is quick to emphasize that Bunton’s and DuCloux’s motion is clearly not just a strategic move. "They might have very good grounds to argue that … they’re entitled to a jury trial, given that everybody now knows who these kids are. Because of that, one of the reasons for staying in juvenile court – that is confidentiality – has been so undermined that it would be unfair to not give them their jury trial."

  Defense attorneys prefer juries in certain cases, says Federle. "The thinking is that bench trials, which is what we call judge trials, are better if you’ve got a complex legal issue that you need the judge to resolve. But you might prefer that a factual dispute – which involves assessment of credibility – be resolved by a jury."

  It’s no stretch to say that that the April 9th hearing in Judge Taylor’s courtroom raised questions of credibility.

NOPD Detective Decynda Barnes was the first
witness called to the stand. Her testimony was dissected by the defense team to the extent that it was difficult to understand what point they were trying to make. How far apart, they asked, were the shelves in the corner store where Barnes showed the photo lineup? Were they high shelves? Was it quiet in the store? Was the school gate visible from the nurse’s office? Who did the nurse see come through the gate?

  At a few points, Judge Taylor stopped and told the defense that he would give them leeway. But he was not, he warned the defense, going to allow them "to go to the Gulf of Mexico" with this.