Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 23, 1990 TAG: 9007230087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS HUANG LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long
He walked into a Calvert Square apartment with a probation officer and found a drunken mother sprawled on the living-room couch. Her 16-year-old son, on probation for assault and robbery, was nowhere to be found.
In four days, Martin, 37, would don a judge's robes. He wanted to learn up-close about the world of those who will come before him. He wanted to see the other side of life.
At Calvert Square, the lesson was vivid.
The woman awoke bleary-eyed and barely coherent. A little girl sat on the floor, playing with a doll. A cabinet was stocked with bottles of extra dry gin and cheap white wine.
"It seems in a lot of cases, there is no family," concluded Martin, a former prosecutor who on July 9 was sworn in as one of four judges of the Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
"You have a mother with one or more children. The father hasn't been seen in some time. When we visited that drunk mother, I was thinking, `What a horrible place for a kid to have to grow up.' "
For Martin, this is a new world where cherubic faces hide the most barbaric of acts, fragile families fracture under the strain of parent-child confrontations, and parents often are plagued by their own addictions.
The weeklong judgeship seminars he took in Richmond and Williamsburg, ranging from decision-making to ethics, from pensions to press relations, could not teach him about these things.
In the sweltering apartment, Martin sat down on a footstool and draped his blue blazer across his knees.
The 16-year-old had been released from a state learning center, or rehabilitation facility, recently and probation officer John Morse was trying to help him find a job.
"I don't know where he is," the mother mumbled.
"There are certainly more problems than the court is capable of handling," Martin said after he and Morse left. "With the comparatively little time we judges and probation officers deal with them [juveniles], they still have to go back and deal with the problems they have at home.
"No matter how hard we try, we can't solve all of their problems. We never will be able to."
Martin graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in political science. He received a law degree from Washington and Lee in 1977 and a master's degree in federal taxation law from New York University in 1980.
After graduating from law school, Martin clerked for U.S. District Judge Richard B. Kellam for a year. For eight years, he practiced law in Norfolk, specializing in tax law, estates and wills, and personal injury lawsuits. In 1988, he became an assistant commonwealth's attorney.
One of the first documents he looked at as a judge was a list of youths who have been in the Norfolk detention home more than 30 days.
"There was one accused of murder and several accused of malicious wounding," he said.
" . . . Fifteen to 20 years ago, detention homes were filled with runaways, truants, your occasional car thief and burglar. Now they're housing people accused of being murderers, rapists and robbers."
The 35-year-old Morse, in his laid-back drawl, explained: "You look at some of these families. It's a setup for the kid. It's a bad situation.
"I see a worse level of behavior - the use of violence and the use of weapons. Kids are getting involved in violence quicker. I don't know the main reasons, but a lot of it goes back to the drug trade."
The plum-cheeked boy smiled shyly at Martin and juvenile probation counselor Arthur C. Pigram. Then his dark eyes searched the floor.
Martin noticed how the boy had come swaggering into the lounge at the group home like a little street fighter, sporting a box haircut, a fluorescent-green surfer shirt and red boxer shorts.
But now, seated and fidgeting with his hands, under the scrutiny of his probation officer and a stranger, the boy had returned to being a 13-year-old. Martin didn't tell the youth he was a judge, because he didn't want to scare him.
"How are you doing?" Pigram, 38, large and teddy-bearish, asked in soothing, avuncular tones. "How's your mother? How was your visit with your family?"
It was like pulling teeth. "Fine. OK," the boy whispered.
"What was he in for?" Martin asked after the boy had left.
"I know what you're thinking," Pigram said. "How did this cute-faced boy get here? Robbery by force. He was a member of a gang in Roberts Village. They saw a boy with new sneakers. They beat him up."
Martin shook his head. "When I saw that kid, I had a hard time believing he'd been charged with robbery," he said later.
The boy was staying at Kempsville Place, a group home for juveniles awaiting trial or placement in a detention facility.
The boy's mother was ill and had had a hard time looking after him.
"He was out of control," Pigram said. On visits to the boy's home, "I never saw him. He was out of the house for days. They say some of these young kids can get adults to rent them hotel rooms at the Oceanfront and Military Highway. They use the money that they steal" or earn through drug dealing.
"The kids are so young, too," he told Martin. "Adults are using the kids to deal drugs. They believe that if the kids get caught, they will only be put on probation."
Before Martin was sworn in, he had visited the homes of the troubled and violent. He had learned that detention homes are almost always crowded beyond capacity.
And he had learned the hardest lesson, and learned it fast. There are limits to what he will be able to do.
"People believe that judges can solve everybody's problems," he said. "We're only human."
by CNB