When the Judges Forgot Who They Served

In 2018, a federal investigation in rural Mississippi uncovered that two juvenile court judges had been routinely sentencing Black teenagers to months in detention facilities for offenses as minor as missing school or talking back to a teacher. Meanwhile, kids from wealthier families received counseling referrals and second chances. One mother, Odessa Kelly, told reporters she watched her fourteen-year-old son get shackled in a courtroom for a dress code violation while the judge barely glanced up from his paperwork. "He treated my boy like he was nothing," she said.

When the Department of Justice finally intervened, investigators found that the judges had ignored their own sentencing guidelines for years. Nobody had held them accountable. They sat in positions of enormous power over the most vulnerable people in their community — children — and they wielded that power with contempt.

Psalm 82 opens with a breathtaking scene: the Almighty takes His stand in the great assembly and looks directly at those entrusted with authority. "How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?" He demands. "Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed."

Every person who holds power — whether in a courtroom, a boardroom, a classroom, or a church — answers to a Judge who sees the shackled teenager, who hears the weeping mother, and who will not remain silent forever.