Week 6 Juvenile Courthouse pt 1

This week I’ve gotten a better grasp of what Robyn does and the types of cases she deals with. Last week one of the judges turned 70, and in Missouri any judge that turns 70 is forced to retire, so a new judge arrived. Because Robyn has more experience here, they reassigned her to protection services in court room 1 with the new judge because he’s never worked a Juvenile Court. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays is when he has his review hearing dockets and he’ll also do detention hearings before the docket if he has any. This means that Robyn has about seven review hearings on each of those days along with potential adjudications and motion hearings. Yesterday and today we were in court from 9:00 AM to lunch time going through her docket. These cases are all very complicated and most very interesting but the review hearings are essentially just to get an update on how the child is doing, so they can be a little boring over time.