Judge Dorn Lays Down the Law for Juveniles

First, there is the gaze, searing and unsettling. Then the voice, powerful and evangelistic. But most of all, there is the message, the tough and uncompromising message.

And for that, Roosevelt Dorn has earned a reputation for being about the most ornery Juvenile Court judge in town.

He keeps kids on probation longer than any of his colleagues, hauls them back to court for frequent progress checks and doesn’t hesitate to penalize them for any infraction, from disobeying parents to poor grades. Called “sir” by the kids who come before him, he plucks them from their homes for doing little more than ditching school and makes their mothers and fathers go to classes on how to be better parents.

“You violate my orders and your mother won’t even be able to save you!” he roared at a young runaway one day in court. “ Understaaaaand , young lady?”

School or Jail

To another, he bristled: “You’re going to spend a minimum of one day in juvenile hall for every day you cut. . . . You go to school every day or you’ll go to school in jail!”

Idolized by some and castigated by others, Dorn revels in the notion that he is a maverick, a man who will do just about anything and push just about anyone to see that the youngsters who pass through his Inglewood courtroom, from truants to teen-age criminals, get an education.

To that end, the scrappy judge stretches the law to its limits or, as he puts it, “functions on the edge.”

“I create intentionally the image of being tough and I do that because I want the gangs in the streets to know I do not play, I want the youngsters to know I do not play,” Dorn said, peering over his glasses as if to push his point. “I am tough. I am tough because I love these youngsters.”

Believes in His Mission

Intolerant of sloppiness and impatient with mistakes, Dorn believes in his mission, believes in himself to the point of brashness. Often, he refers to himself in the third person, as if speaking of a higher presence.

“Most of the kids on probation to Judge Dorn graduate from high school . . . more youngsters than any other Juvenile Court bench officer in the county,” he boasted. “I’m proud of that . . . I do not believe in programming a youngster for failure.

“They are not going to do without, these youngsters, 16, 17, 18 years old. They are not going to do without. Either we educate them and give them jobs, or we can depend that they’re going to be selling dope, committing robberies, breaking into your home, my home and anyone else’s home they can. I recognize that and society better recognize that.”

sh Get the Job Done

A slight, mustachioed man with salt and pepper hair, he sits high on the bench, using his rich baritone to become someone much larger.

Many in the community, from school officials and police to exasperated parents and probation officers, applaud him for it, saying his relentlessness sets him apart.

From the kids’ side, the reaction to Dorn is somewhat different. He is someone to avoid.

“I had never met the gentleman, but I called him myself about two weeks ago,” said Police Lt. Gabe Ornelas, the commander of a Los Angeles Police Department’s hard-core gang unit. “I kept hearing comments by gang members--’Whatever you do, I don’t want to see Judge Dorn.’ I had this guy in custody for a possible homicide . . . even with the handcuffs on, this guy’s only concern is ‘I don’t want to go before Judge Dorn.’

“So I called him up and said: ‘Thanks, judge, your honor, keep it up.’ I have never done that before in 24 years. Never.”

Critics Find Him Rude

But the demanding and sometimes imperious way Dorn runs his courtroom has earned him critics as well. Those who frequent his standing-room-only court say he can be caustic, he can be rude.

“Sometimes he will get abrasive at whoever happens to incur his wrath,” one prosecutor said.

Most public defenders, for instance, choose to have their clients’ cases heard before other judges. On questions of guilt or innocence, the attorneys say Dorn is anything but a fair arbiter. In juvenile courtrooms, where there are no juries, a guilty finding automatically puts a child under a judge’s control. And gaining jurisdiction over the kids, they believe, is Dorn’s bottom line.

‘Deck Is Stacked’

“If you are a kid and you walk in there, you have the feeling the deck is stacked,” one defense attorney said. “I think he uses the law in a way it was not meant to be used.”

“Dorn cheats on the rules. . . . There is a feeling among most of the attorneys who have appeared in his courtroom that reasonable doubt is a sham,” another defense lawyer said. “The parents love him, the schools love him, the cops love him. . . . But to me, he’s a benevolent despot. . . .

“I’ve had kids that I believed deep down were innocent and I lost,” another attorney said. “When it comes to getting a fair shake . . . it’s difficult to win a case in there.”

Dorn claims not to care what others think, pointing to his “drawers full of cases where I have been appealed and the Court of Appeal has agreed with me.”

“My responsibility is to these kids. . . . My No. 1 priority is to give them a chance in life,” he said. “Anything that I can legally do within the law to see that accomplished is what I’m going to do. . . . I don’t have time to worry whether people like me or not.”

Worked as Postal Clerk

Born in the tiny Oklahoma town of Checotah, the 52-year-old Dorn transplanted himself to California in 1960, living just outside Inglewood and working as a postal clerk. It was then that he got a taste of the underside of Los Angeles.

“I traveled in the streets, I lived in the streets, I got to know the street people,” Dorn said. “I used to love to gamble. Excellent poker player. You get to know everyone. . . .”

Dorn eventually got a job as a deputy sheriff. Assigned as a courtroom bailiff by day, he took classes by night at the Whittier College of Law and in 1970, was admitted to the California Bar.

Married by then and a father, Dorn joined the city attorney’s staff, where he worked his way up to head the office’s criminal trial division. In 1979, he left to become a Municipal Court judge and little more than a year later, then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. boosted him to the Superior Court.

But Dorn quickly tired of the endless parade of rapists, robbers and murderers he was seeing.

“I saw a pattern,” he explained. “Most of the people appearing before me . . . started out in a Juvenile Court. . . . I felt there’s not too much help you can give a person you’ve just sentenced to the state penitentiary for 25 years to life or 15 years to life . . . so I made a decision.”

In 1982, Dorn asked to be sent to Juvenile Court, where he was certain he could have an impact. He landed on the bench in Inglewood, the town where he was raising his own children, where he sometimes preached on Sundays and taught Bible classes on Wednesday nights.

‘I Wouldn’t Change This’

“I wouldn’t change this for being in adult court for anything,” Dorn said.

Dorn’s methods seem to work best with kids who are at the edge of lawlessness. In legal terms, they’re called 601 status offenders, youngsters who skip classes or stay away from home, sometimes for nights at a time. Unlike most other Juvenile Court judges, who concentrate mainly on lawbreakers, Dorn welcomes their problems into his court.

From throughout Los Angeles County, from the wealthy enclaves of Pacific Palisades to the poorer neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, five or six harried parents voluntarily walk into his courtroom each day. Hauling their unruly offspring with them, they are asking for help.

“These are parents who literally say ‘I cannot control the situation anymore,’ ” explained LaVera Otoya, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s liaison to Dorn’s court. “We sometimes get (children) as young as 8, 9, 10, completely out of control.

“He takes a lot of time with them, extra time, to work with these parents. . . . They come back and back and back. . . . He really is not one of these judges who slaps you on the hand and says, ‘Go home and be good.’ He says, ‘I am going to help you but I want you to do some things for me.’ ”

Once under Dorn’s jurisdiction, the youngsters find themselves in the grip of a hard taskmaster, bound to him by a pledge of good behavior. They follow Dorn’s orders or run the risk of juvenile homes or Juvenile Hall.

‘An Act of Futility’

The ticket out of Dorn’s court is a high school diploma or its equivalent. Without it, the judge has been known to keep them coming back again and again until they are 19, 20, even older.

“I don’t disagree with his ultimate goal,” a defense attorney acknowledged. “I disagree in instances where he doesn’t let go. . . . You have to know when you are engaging in an act of futility.”

Although Dorn’s prescription varies slightly from child to child, virtually every list includes attending school, decent grades and good behavior. He sets curfews, and if there is a hint of drug use, he orders drug testing, frequently and without notice.

To the rebels, to the children who doubt, there are the warnings, always in fire and brimstone style.

“You violate my orders,” Dorn will thunder from the bench, “and you will know what a bad day is. You will know. “

Tough but Fair

“Dorn is tough but he’s also fair and he’s compassionate,” said an admiring George McKenna, principal of the Washington Preparatory School, the southwest Los Angeles high school that is frequently praised for adopting higher standards of student conduct and academic excellence than are normally found in inner-city schools.

“When he makes a contract with a kid, he expects it to be honored,” McKenna said. “If a judge can hold out education as a leverage, I say, ‘God bless him.’ It’s the only thing that’s going to set them free.”

On a typical day, Dorn sees as many as 50 or 60 youngsters, many of them simply to check their progress. Among other things, he examines their school attendance records, always zeroing in on classes missed without a bona fide medical excuse. He scorns grades lower than C’s.

‘Turn Them Around’

“In the beginning, out of fear, you can get them to go to school, you can begin to get them to follow the orders of the parents,” Dorn said. “But that doesn’t turn them around. What turns them around is when they begin to realize they can do well, that they can compete . . . that, ‘Hey, I’m pretty smart.’ ”

While there are no records to show precisely how many of Dorn’s youngsters earn diplomas, Deputy Probation Officer Mary Charles estimates the rate to be somewhere around 60%.

“Some of his technique seems to be who is going to wear out first,” said Charles, who is assigned to Dorn’s court. “If you can keep running away, I can keep putting you in Juvenile Hall. . . . He wears them out.”

The downside to Dorn’s incessant monitoring is the pressure it puts on an already overloaded juvenile justice system. Each return visit means another report from the schools, another assessment from probation.

Overworked Probation Officers

“The probation officers don’t like it because they are overworked as it is,” Charles said. “They disagree with his policy although they see the benefits of it, too.”

Even with the grueling work schedule, not all of the youngsters are salvageable. With the toughest of them--from the teen-age drug dealers driving their imported cars to the coldest murderers--the determined Dorn works mainly to get them off the streets.

“That’s all you can do,” he said. “But there are only a very few of these.

“It’s the others. It’s amazing to see . . . the so-called tough kid stand right before my bench and cry like a baby. It’s amazing when they’re by themselves . . . how they turn back to the little kids they are, crying out for help.”

Mother Cites Help

Barbara Baker is convinced that her 17-year-old daughter was doing just that, with her drinking, her wild ways, her truancy.

“We would ground her, she would go out the window,” said Baker, who asked that her real name not be used. “She did whatever she wanted to do. I got absolutely no support from the police. . . . I have three daughters. She was the oldest. It was an example I couldn’t let go on.”

And so Baker made an appointment to see Dorn, a man she had heard about from other parents, a man they swore would help. That was a year ago.

“I love the man,” Baker said recently. Dorn ordered her child into a group home, one with a school on the premises and daily counseling sessions. “She was home for a weekend visit not long ago,” Baker said. “I heard her tell a friend that if it weren’t for Judge Dorn, she’d probably be dead now. . . . I can only think she’s right.” A few weeks after that conversation, the teen-ager was home for good. Her mother says she plans on going to college in the fall.

“At first I thought he was really too hard and perhaps unfair,” said Jean Gary, who represented the teen-aged Baker and scores of others in Dorn’s court. “But now my feeling is I’ve seen so many kids benefit. I’ve seen more and more parents asking for him. . . . The parents and those children have brought me around.”