*UPDATED*
This past Saturday afternoon, Shaquanda Cotton was released from a juvenile prison in Brownwood, Texas, and promptly had a McDonald’s burger.
Shaquanda is the 15-year-old Paris, Texas, girl who, at 14, was sentenced seven years in the state’s harshest juvenile lock-up for pushing a school aide. [Earlier posts on the subject here and here] The sentence was indeterminate—meaning she could be out within one year, or remain inside until she was 21 years old.
Chicago Tribune writer, Howard Witt, originally broke the story and it’s since gotten a firestorm of national attention—both on the blogs and in the media. Yet, as contradictory information floated to the surface, it seemed that perhaps Witt—in pursuit of a hot and heartrending story—failed to look too far in any direction that didn’t bolster his original thesis.
The major discrepancies came from the Lamar County D.A.’s office, which put out their own statement that contradicted the Trib’s and Shaquanda’s mother’s account in three specific ways.
1. According to the D.A.’s office, the girl was originally offered two years of informal probation, and her mother declined.
2. The DA also said that, after the trial, Shaquanda’s mother, Creola Cotton, made it clear to the judge that if her daughter was put on probation then she, the mom, would refuse to cooperate.
3. Finally, the DA’s office said that, under state law the judge was left with only two options in Shaquanda’s case: either probation, or CYA—prison for kids. And since Creola Cotton wouldn’t cooperate with probation, that left only one choice—meaning this whole over-the-top, racially-driven punishment thing Witt had written about was….well….false.
Since the Tribune mentioned nothing of these story-mitigating issues, one was left wondering about the real truth of the matter. But, with still more digging, it becomes clear that the DA’s statement is riddled with its own holes.
First of all, the claim that there were only two sentencing choices— informal probation or TYC—is patently untrue. There are various levels of juvenile facilities in Texas, including juvenile boot camps and a variety of County-level residential placement facilities, all of which are far more rehabilitative in nature than TYC. According to the Texas Juvenile Probation website, 97% of the juveniles who commit crimes in the state of Texas are either given informal probation or placed in one of these county facilities. Only 3% go to the Texas Youth Commission.
In other words, there’s no reason why a ouldn’t have been mandated by the judge. Instead he chose the high control facility level typically reserved for violent kids, and/or repeat offenders for whom the lower level programs had been ineffective.
When Alan Hubbard, the spokes-guy for the DA’s office, was asked about these mid-level, gentler alternatives in an interview, he muttered something about the mother being unwilling to cooperate. Legally speaking, this isn’t credible either. The mother doesn’t NEED to cooperate. If the girl is adjudicated into any juvenile residential facility, she goes there, period, end of story.
The question of whether probation was ever offered, is more difficult to answer. Shaquanda’s mother, Creola Cotton, has repeatedly said the offer never existed. But the Houston Chronicle quotes the girl’s former defense attorney who says it was. And still other versions are floating around the Web, (check out the excellent commentary on Shawn William’s Dallas South Blog).
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I’ve now read about this case more than is likely healthy (considering the other work that’s sitting on my desk, staring at me with beady, little, accusatory eyes). Yet, after much wading through facts and counter facts, for me one simple truth still stands above all others: This misbehaving fourteen-year-old should never, NEVER have been put into the Texas Youth Authority—essentially prison for kids. (Even Prosecutor spokesman Hubbard, in his radio interview. agreed she was a nice kid who didn’t belong there.)
Would the same thing have happened had the bratty teenager in question been a white girl? There’s no way to know. Terrible things happen to white kids too. But the studies showing racial bias in the treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice system, are lengthy, numerous and, cumulatively, beyond dispute. Thus, it’s understandable that people would draw conclusions.
And here’s another troubling little fact: the judge and the prosecution said that the mother’s attitude was so problematic that they had no choice but to yank the girl from her home and make “a ward of the state.” (Their words.) Oh really? No choice? Because Creola Cotton was an over-the-top, in-your-face activist, she’s an unfit mother? We’re taking kids away from their parents for that these days? (Good Lord, it’s a lucky thing my kid’s 21 now, thus ineligible to be snatched by the state on account of his uppity mother.)
But in truth, can you imagine THAT happening to a white parent? I can’t.
But let’s even say we accept the judge’s whacked out, kill-a-fly-with-a-hand-grenade position as reasonable, why TYC?
It’s hard to find any other reasoning beyond that of a judge—egged on by a passel of pissed off school administrators— all of whom were was pissed off by a quarrelsome mom, thus decided to be mean spirited and punitive.
But it was 14-year-old Shaquanda who took the hit. Not her mom.
But,hey, that’s my opinion. Listen to a couple of interviews with Creola Cotton, and DA spokesperson, Hubbard, make up your own mind.….and let me know what you think.
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PS: Once inside TYC things got ugly quick for Shaquanda. Here’s just one example:
Shaquanda had been diagnosed as having ADHD and is on medication for the condition. But, while she was locked up, according to her mother, the administrators took her off her ADHD meds and put her on 50 mgs of Zoloft for the first few months, then upped the dosage to 100 mgs. Zoloft and some of the other SSRI antidepressants have been shown to be potentially EXTREMELY problematic when given to adolescents often causing suicidal ideation. To have put an ADHD kid like Shandra on it without close monitoring was, by any sane standard, unnecessary and reckless. Indeed, at the higher dose of Zoloft, Shaquanda reportedly began to hallucinate, cut her arms repeatedly, and tried to hang herself with a knotted up sweatshirt.
[…] Shaquanda 2: Finding the Truth […]
The Sins of the Mother
“The gods visit the sins of the (parents) upon the (children).” – Euripides
“For the sins of your (mothers) you, though guiltless, must suffer.” – Horace
“The sins of the (mothers) are to be laid upon the children.” – Shakespeare
It seems to me that Creola Cotton was determined to prove that black children are punished more harshly than white children and was willing to throw her daughter under the wheels of the BUS to prove her point.
Alternatives to TYC, such as foster care and similar facilities are reserved for abused and molested children not juveniles convicted of crimes. The TYC boot camp is a 128-bed military-style training program for male juvenile offenders, which obviously was not an alternative. No other programs appear to be available. http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/programs/index.html
Apparently what Texas needs is the “Stupid Parents And Naughty Kids” program.
More Background
“This mother is an anti-white extremist … and has filed numerous complaints with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division alleging that black kids are punished more harshly,” says Allan Hubbard, spokesperson for Lamar County District Attorney’s Office. “It’s like someone can holler racism and just because you’re white, you’re guilty. There were black teachers and school officials who testified that girl had been trouble from day one.”
Paris Independent School District General Counsel Dennis Eichelbaum said Creola Cotton filed eight complaints with the office of civil rights, three of which were found to have no cause and five of which are still being investigated. “But had they found anything to date with those five complaints, I’m sure we would have heard of them by now,” says Eichelbaum.
Hey, Pokey, I always admire a guy willing to quote Euripides.
But about the facilities, there’s a lot of middle ground between probation and TYC. I’m not talking about foster care or group homes. There are many county juvenile detention facilities. (See update to the post)
Here are a few random links, one for an individual facility, another a list of all of them:
http://dentoncounty.com/dept/main.asp?Dept=46&Link=494
http://www.tjpc.state.tx.us/publications/other/searchjuvprobdirectory_results.asp?RowsPerPage=50&SelectedCountyNumber=000&SelectedOutput=T&SelectedPosition=DC&SelectedSortBy=NAME
I know this post is long, but it seems to contain the full details of what happened – from an unbiased witness.
Student sent to TYC for shoving aide
http://www.lamarcountyattorney.com/06news.html
By Charles Richards
The Paris News
Published March 12, 2006
A 14-year-old girl has been sentenced to a state juvenile correction facility “for an indeterminate period not to exceed her 21st birthday†for shoving a 58-year-old teacher’s aide.
The incident occurred Sept. 30 at Paris High School, while the aide was on hall monitor duty. The girl has a history of problems at school, according to court testimony.
County Judge Chuck Superville said the girl must spend a minimum of one year at a Texas Youth Commission facility. How much longer she will stay depends upon her progress, the judge said.
A three-man, three-woman jury listened to testimony Thursday and Friday before being handed the case about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The jury deliberated just 10 minutes before reporting it had a verdict: “We the jury find it true that the respondent … did engage in delinquent conduct by commission of an assault on a public servant as charged in the petition.â€Â
Superville discharged the jury, and the trial moved into the punishment phase, which continued for about two and a half hours before defense attorney Wesley Newell and the Lamar County district attorney’s office rested about 6:15 p.m. Friday.
School officials said they have dealt with the girl, who is now a high school freshman, many times on disciplinary issues dating back several years.
Newell argued for probation, and Superville had gone on record that sending a teenager to the TYC was something he generally would do only as a last resort.
Prosecutors argued against probation, saying that the girl’s mother is perhaps her biggest problem and that the girl has no hope of getting better as long as she’s in the same home as her mother. District Attorney Gary Young said the mother’s response to any problem at school was to paint school officials as racist.
During the punishment phase, a half-dozen or so teachers  both white and black  from the high school or from Paris Alternative School, where the girl was transferred after the incident last September, described the girl as “openly defiant, generally did not follow rules.â€Â
Michael Johnson, a teacher/coach at the alternative school, said after a teacher “wrote her up†for violation of rules, the girl told him “I’m going to bust her in the nose.†She wanted to go home, but he made her go to the office with him, Johnson said. He said she told him, “You don’t know me very well, because I’ll burn this school down.â€Â
Johnson, who is black, said the girl’s mother berated him, calling him the equivalent of an Uncle Tom.
The jury had three women, one of whom was black, and three men.
PHS principal Gary Preston said the school district made available every resource it had “but regularly got road-blocked with non-support of her mother.†He said he knows of nothing more that can be done.
“I think (the girl) is capable, but she is enabled by a mother who won’t support the attempts to help her. … Up until now, I think it has been very harmful for her to be in the same home with her mother.â€Â
The girl admitted pushing the teacher’s aide, Cleda Brownfield, but said she did so only after Brownfield shoved her first.
The Sept. 30 incident occurred about 15 to 20 minutes before regular classes were to begin at 8:30 a.m. at Paris High School. Brownfield was the hall monitor in a building where some students were having meetings and others were being helped by tutors.
The hall monitor’s job is to lock the doors about 8:05 a.m., keeping all other students out of the hallways until 8:30 a.m. to keep disruptions at a minimum. Brownfield said she was on her way to lock the door when the girl walked in. When the girl was told she couldn’t come in, she protested, saying she had to go to the restroom, Brownfield testified.
She told her she’d have to use a restroom in the cafeteria across the courtyard, and the girl finally left, she said. Minutes later, when another student was admitted into the building for a meeting, the girl insisted that she also be let in. When the girl told her, “I’ll knock your block off,†and moved to come in, Brownfield said, she put up her hands in a defensive posture, and the girl responded by shoving her hard.
A teacher, Jerry Fleming, was nearby and the girl complained that he had a pencil in his hand, causing a cut on her hand when he put out his hand to restrain her. He also stepped on her shoelaces, causing her to fall, and she bumped her head, she said.
School resource officer Brad Ruthart testified he was on duty in the parking lot when he was summoned to the building because Brownfield “had been assaulted by a student.†He said he found her in the lounge and the student seated outside the principal’s office.
Brownfield “was crying, very upset, holding her arm. I asked her if she was OK, and she said she was not. I felt she needed medical help. She was so upset she had difficulty talking,†said Ruthart, a Paris police officers who works as a school resource officer for PISD.
The girl “was very calm, didn’t appear to be a threat,†Ruthart testified. During the next half hour, he talked to the various teachers who were either involved or had seen part of what happened. He also talked to the girl and to several of her friends, all of whom insisted that Brownfield shoved first.
“I thought it didn’t seem like something Brownfield would do. From what I knew of her and from what others were saying, it didn’t add up,†he said. Ruthart said he had known the teacher’s aide for several years and described her as “mild-mannered, soft-spoken, a grandmotherly type.â€Â
The girl’s mother testified late Thursday afternoon that she got dressed and drove to Paris High School after receiving a telephone call that her daughter had been involved in an incident.
“She was sitting in the office with two other girls, crying. She had a knot on her head and a cut on her hand,†she said.
She talked with Ruthart and Preston, she said.
“I was upset because my daughter was sitting there hurting, and nobody was doing anything to help her. I asked them why nothing had been done to treat her injuries,†she said.
Newell asked if she got any satisfaction from them.
“No, they could care less,†she said.
She took her daughter to the hospital emergency room, where she was treated for a contusion on her head, a laceration on her hand and a sprained neck, she said.
About an hour after the incident, Brownfield was removed from the school on a stretcher and was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
The girl’s mother said her daughter has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and was trying to get into the building that day so she could get medication from the school nurse.
Brownfield testified the girl made no mention of needing to see the nurse and that if she had, she would have been allowed to do so. Ruthart said the girl also said nothing to him about having wanted in the building to see the school nurse.
Good grief, Celeste. You started out correctly by stating that Witt, the Tribune writer, did a crummy job of reporting the story. That should have been that, but then you watered down your statement by saying that others did the same thing. Did it occur to you that no one else would be explaining things if Witt had done his job correctly in the beginning? It’s like Clinton trying to water down public concerns over his Oval Office shenanigans by saying that Thomas Jefferson may have black ancestors. You lost a good opportunity to teach journalism students a valuable lesson, by partially justifying a bad job in saying that others did it, too.
On the racial aspect, I’m skeptical, but there are always those who want to hide behind that. However, there may be cultural conflicts, and I suspect that white parents may not have reacted in the same belligerent way to the court as did the girl’s mother, who seems to have a chip on her shoulder over racial issues.
Woody,
I kept thinking of you as I was working on that post. On first bounce, I honestly wrote quite a critical piece about Witt and the Chicago Trib. But, then, unfortunately, before I posted it, I kept researching. And the more I researched, the more incensed I got with the ridiculous, fact-free horse-pucky coming out of the DA’s office. As it ended up, I trashed what I’d written and started over at, I don’t know, 1 in the morning. I agree that the mom sounds like a piece of work. And the Trib should have gotten countervailing voices. Worst of all, they race baited with the side-by-side inclusion of the 14-year-old white girl who burned down family house getting probation, while Shaquanda got TYC. (We have no idea what the extenuating circumstances were in play in the case of the house-burner girl. And, likely neither does the Trib.)
But, in the end, I think the point that this girl (Shaquanda) was given a mean-spirited, hideously punitive sentence still has the high card—completely contrary to the nonsense the DA’s office put out. And had the Tribune not called attention to her situation, she’d still be locked up (and still being given freaking antidepressants). So there you have it. Nothing’s simple.
Pokey’s clipped article above from the Paris, Texas, paper is probably one of the most even-handed pieces. I’ll try to pull a part of it up front as an update tonight, as I think it seems pretty agenda-free. After that, I think we should all STEP AWAY FROM THE SHAQUANDA RESEARCH…. At least that’s what I’m trying to do.
Thanks for following up, though.
Okay, now I’m back to researching a lovely hospital horror story. 😉
Celeste,
I know what you mean. For 2 weeks, it was all Shaquanda, all the time. I was off work with an injury (God sent I believe), so I was able to blog the story more extensively.
Think about this in a Law and Order sort of way. Let’s say that the young lady did not push the teacher’s aid. When she was detained thereafter, she was still in a restricted part of the building, whether she pushed her way there or not. Now this would not justify prison, but there has been NO ADMISSION OF WRONGDOING by the young lady or her mother.
I agree with Pokey’s point wholeheartedly. I kept digging as well, but because I’m from Paris, my digging was with teachers, administrators, my sister, friends, people who have known about this case for over a year. The weren’t just becoming experts on the situation over a two week period.
I believe that had the WHITE GIRL’s family, the one that that got us all riled up for burning down the house, been offered probation they would have taken it – which they did. Had this girls mother agreed to the probation, or had she thrown herself on the mercy of the court, Superville would have gone easy on her.
Also in my experience in “transition” type detention facilities, almost 100% are on probation. Probation seems to be the first step, and everything else goes from there. All my interviews show that the mother has had a my way or no way attitude with the schools throughout. Even on my blog, I have had very little speculation or hearsay – even though I talked eyewitnesses and people who were present at these events. I don’t think it’s fair to the girl.
But there is no doubt in my mind, she is a victim of her mother misplaying her cards, and then blaming everyone else for it. She would never have been there had her mother made the same choice for her daughter that any of us would have made. There is NO OTHER CONCLUSION for me. Pokey is right.
Hey, Sean, thanks for coming by. You did terrific work on this story on your site.
You’ve convinced me about the mom. (And that story Pokey referenced pretty much had already.) As you said, any of the rest of us would have tried to make the best of it for our kid, not been hell bent on making a point, no matter the cost. Sounds like Shaquanda’s mom chose the latter.
About probation, however, I don’t know Texas law very well. But, based on what I’m able to get from the Texas Juvenile Probation website, juvenile probation works pretty much the same down your direction, as it works in California. In the juvenile system, being on probation doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t get locked up. It may or may not, depending upon the disposition. In other words, I think the judge could have remanded Shaquanda to a probation facility for a given period of time, with additional probation to follow that upon release. The probation on the outside would have terms and condition that, if not followed, results in more lock-up time. Sure, the mom can choose not to cooperate, but then her kid would get yanked from her care again. But, without making phone calls, I don’t know for sure. And mental health precluded me from spending any more time on this &^%$# story than I already have.
Thanks again for coming by. Hope you keep checking in !