Updated 08/16/24 at 3:30 PM ET

Well, the judge in Detroit who forced a 15-year-old black girl to be handcuffed and put on a prison uniform because she fell asleep in the courtroom just got some bad news.

This week, 36th District Court Judge Kenneth King was indicted for his actions against Eva Goodman. Despite earlier claims that his harsh response to her nodding off was necessary, King’s conduct was removed from his list of charges, according to CBS News.

In a statement released Thursday, Chief Judge William McConico said the decision came after a “swift and thorough internal investigation.” King has now been ordered to complete the “necessary training” to address the “underlying issues” that led to the stunt.

“We regularly and actively welcome students to observe and participate in the court process with the goal of providing valuable learning experiences and promoting familiarity with the justice system. We sincerely hope that this incident does not undermine our long-standing relationships with local schools,” McConico wrote.

In another statement, Chief Judge Aliyah Sabree said the court does not condone King’s actions. In response to the decision, Eva’s mother, Latoreya Till, told NBC it was a “lesson for him” to learn a lesson from her daughter.

Mother of a teenager from Detroit speaks out

Till had previously told the Detroit Free Press that the reason for her daughter’s exhaustion was likely the current struggle with the housing shortage.

“We have to travel around right now because we don’t have a permanent address. And so we arrived pretty late that night. And usually when she goes to work, she’s up planting trees or being active,” Till told the outlet.

Exhaustion caused Eva to nod off in the courtroom, which she was visiting during a field trip with a local organization. Judge Kenneth King yelled at her to wake up, according to a court recording. But her reaction to him, which he took as an “attitude,” prompted him to make an example of her – he ordered her to be handcuffed and dressed in a green prison uniform.

Till told the Free Press that her daughter did not understand the seriousness of the situation because she had never been in a courtroom or done anything to get there.

“(King) was a huge bully to a child who was sleeping and didn’t know the etiquette of a courtroom because she was never there and never got in trouble. She’s not a problem child,” Till told the Free Press.

Till said the situation left Eva hurt, scared and unmotivated to go to work. She said her daughter also felt like her peers were working against her, as King forced the field trip group to vote on whether to send her to juvenile detention.

What her next steps are is unclear, but Till told the outlet that she will be meeting with an attorney.

What happened?

According to WXYZ, local nonprofit Greening of Detroit took a group of students on a field trip Tuesday as part of its three-week summer program. The program included a visit to the 36th District Court to attend a court hearing and have the opportunity to speak with Judge King. Before the two sides of the pending case entered the courtroom, King took time to answer some questions from the students, according to a now-deleted court recording.

During the question and answer session, however, King turned the spotlight on Goodman, who appeared to be dozing off in the audience box. In response, he told her on video that if she fell asleep in his courtroom again, he would “sit her in the back.” King then said the teenager had been “put on the spot” with him without saying what she had said. Whatever it was, it rattled him.

“One thing you will learn about my courtroom is that I am not a toy. I am not to be played with,” he tells the teenager in the recording.

In the video, King ordered the girl to put on a prison uniform, handcuff her, and sit in the detention area. He then threatened to send the girl to a juvenile detention center for a real prison sentence. “I’m going to go to sleep tonight while you sit in juvenile detention,” he said. King took this action even further by letting the teen’s peers vote on whether she should be sent to juvenile detention.

He eventually took his proverbial foot off her neck, but the whole situation left some wondering if all of this was necessary. Online users in particular criticized King for his mean and inappropriate behavior toward the teenager.

“Poor girl, you never know what she’s going through at home or why she’s so tired. His behavior is inexcusable,” wrote one X user.

“She is not being taught how to conduct herself in the courtroom by having her peers vote to send her to jail. If anything, it has destroyed relationships. If anything, it has reinforced many of the negative attitudes that people in Detroit and other cities have toward the court system,” wrote another.

When asked about the criticism, King stressed that the incident had been a lesson for him, describing it as his own version of the 2010s television show “Beyond Scared Straight.”

“I wanted to get through to her, show her how serious this is and how to behave in a courtroom. That doesn’t usually happen. But I felt compelled to do it because I didn’t like the child’s attitude. I haven’t been treated with such disrespect in a long time,” he said.

The organization that hosted the trip called King’s behavior “unacceptable” in a statement to WXYZ and said King should have asked her to leave the courtroom instead. They added that after speaking with the girl’s family, they learned she was “traumatized by the unnecessary discipline and verbal abuse from the judge.”

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