THE HABEAS CORPUS PETITIONS WENT out en masse on Wednesday from the tired group of public defenders, led by Jenny’s colleague Natalie Finegar, who had stayed up all night. By midafternoon, the public defender’s office got word that hundreds of arrested protesters would be released. At least one hundred began to be released, half on their own recognizance, many on astronomically high bails.
Most of the city was still shut down, but the juvenile courts had opened solely for the children who were arrested in the protests. About five attorneys from Jenny’s office had gone to represent the defendants in court hearings—all told, forty-nine kids. The state’s attorney dismissed twenty-one cases without even bringing them to court, so the attorneys tag-teamed on the remaining twenty-eight hearings, some for adolescents who had been held since Saturday. Police officials admitted they had not provided due process to all who were detained but explained that they had been overwhelmed, that they were just rounding them up and shuttling them out of the chaos of the protests. In defending themselves, law enforcement officials pointed to the 1968 riots, when more than five thousand people were arrested and hundreds were held in jail for days before appearing in court because arrest records went missing. History was just repeating itself, with different excuses.
Jenny wanted to give the police the benefit of the doubt, but the truth was that at this point they deserved none.
One of her clients had been protesting at the Western District, but he wasn’t arrested there. He was in his house when the cops barged in through the door, tackled him, and arrested him. He was then held for days in juvenile lockup with no probable cause. Eventually he was released after seeing a judge, but the fact that he had been illegally arrested in the first place was never addressed. Meanwhile, Jenny knew that the police were retaliating against the boy—they wanted to make sure he knew that when all was said and done, they could still get to him without consequence. Jenny had several other clients who were arrested with no police reports, no charges, basic violations of their rights. And everyone let it happen, from the police to the state’s attorney to the Department of Juvenile Services. Even after all that had happened, Jenny was still shocked at how quickly fealty to the law and the principles behind it could fall away.
The vast majority of kids who were being held at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) were released that day, and many of them were back on the streets marching by that evening. Around 6:00 P.M., as she worked alone in her office, Jenny could see them as they passed the Juvenile Justice Building on Gay Street. As she watched them heading down Gay Street, Jenny snapped a picture from her office and breathed a sigh of relief. They were out, they were free, and they weren’t cowed.
At 6:44 P.M. she sent a message to her wife: “100+ detainees being released from BCDC due to the brief we prepped last night. Huge victory!”