Original subtitles

Courthouses are supposed to be places of calm

and dignity, where order is maintained

and justice is served.

But often, when stakes and emotions are at their highest,

cool heads don't always prevail.

Coming up...

All of a sudden you crazy now?!

...a father's grief and rage unleashed.

You gonna murder my son, man?! For nothing?!

A famous Las Vegas magician

is forced to reveal his secrets.

I can't answer that as a yes or no question.

Copperfield would rather disappear right now.

He'd rather be anywhere else.

And an angry disabled man

turns the tables on the judge.

Strength comes from places that you can't imagine.

How can you say the things that you're saying?

All the jaw-dropping moments,

plus insights from our team of crime and legal experts...

Custody battles are some of the most contentious

hearings that you will find in a courtroom.

...on "chaos in court."

27-year-old lukace kendle is in a pretrial

hearing to determine if he's mentally competent to

stand trial.

He's accused of shooting 35-year-old Michael smathers,

leaving him paralyzed from the waist down

and for the murder of 29-year-old kijuan byrd.

Dawson: The defense attorneys are trying to set out whether

or not their client has the mental capacity to actually

go through a trial, or if he's insane,

they're trying to establish that as a defense.

Lukace kendle was a security guard at a Miami strip club

and sports club by the name of club lexx.

Kendle was hired as armed security

and carries his own licensed gun,

and after pulling into the parking lot to begin

his shift one night in 2012,

the former bodybuilder spots two African-American men

sitting in a truck next to his.

Kijuan byrd and Michael smathers were best friends.

They went to the club to go relax,

play pool, and catch some of the Miami heat

during the playoffs.

Michael was in the driver's seat.

Lukace kendle approached the truck as kijuan

and Michael started to get out.

Kendle stated that as he approached the car,

Michael and kijuan were allegedly looking at him in

a threatening way and that either kijuan or Michael said

something along the lines of, "I'm going to kill you,"

and that one of the men was pulling something upward.

Feeling threatened, kendle whips out his gun

and begins shooting into the windshield,

striking Michael smathers four times.

Kijuan dives out of the passenger side of the truck

and attempts to crawl

to safety under the truck to get away from

the barrage of bullets.

Lukace kendle continued to fire into kijuan byrd,

firing multiple times into his back.

He was shot eight times, four times in the back.

Kijuan byrd is pronounced

dead on arrival at the hospital.

Arlene: Kijuan was a sincere person.

He was very funny.

He had a good heart.

He has two amazing kids,

but they were very young when their father was killed.

They don't really remember a lot about their dad.

Meanwhile, his good friend,

Michael smathers, is in critical condition

about to undergo surgery.

Michael had a really thriving life

before he encountered lukace kendle that night.

He had a construction company

that was really growing and successful.

He had his whole life ahead of him,

and now he is confined to his bed.

He's paralyzed from the waist down.

Kendle says he opened fire in self defense,

but the evidence doesn't seem to back up his claim.

Rendelman: When the investigators arrived

at the scene to investigate the death

of Mr. Byrd and the serious injury of Mr. Smathers,

one thing they notice is neither of them were armed.

Lukace kendle was relying on a very controversial law

we have here in Florida called stand your ground.

Bryant: Stand your ground means just that -- you do not have

to flee in the face of some sort of threat.

You can stand your ground and defend yourself.

Stand your ground is something that was brought

to national attention based on the trayvon Martin case,

and it only happened a few months prior

to this incident here.

Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old

unarmed African-American,

was shot to death while walking home by

George Zimmerman, a white man on neighborhood

watch patrol in his Florida neighborhood.

Zimmerman claims that trayvon reached into his pocket for

what he thought was a weapon and felt threatened.

All trayvon Martin was doing was

walking through the neighborhood

and being black.

George Zimmerman was acquitted in the murder of

trayvon Martin using the stand your ground law.

Lukace kendle was going to use the same playbook to get

himself out of trouble.

Rendelman: After the shooting, investigators begin to learn

quite a lot about the defendant in this case.

Bryant: Prior to working at the strip club,

where they're supposed to check on your background to

make sure you're fit for the job, he had

a number of duis, he had some disorderly conduct problems.

Mercy: Lukace kendle was in the Navy but was discharged.

He had many alcohol-related offenses,

so he was not good enough to be in the Navy.

But unfortunately, they thought he was

good enough to be a security guard.

Florida doesn't require security guards to

undergo mental health evaluations

or checks for substance abuse,

a common practice for law enforcement officers.

Bove: His background check should have had red flags.

He should not have gotten the job

or the license to carry a firearm.

Rendelman: After his arrest, Mr. Kendle is

diagnosed with an array of behavioral issues.

He is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder

as well as impulse control disorder.

Pearson: Mr. Kendle was examined by

multiple mental health experts

that were court-appointed, and in their review of his history

as well as his current mental state,

they determined that he was competent to stand trial.

Bryant: It's important not to confuse the idea

of being competent to help

in your own trial and being insane, criminally insane --

very different.

All you have to do to be competent to assist in your own

defense is to understand

the charges against you and be able to assist either yourself

or your attorney in your defense.

Good morning, your honor.

Jane Anderson with Gary Winston on

behalf of the state of Florida.

Kendle's pretrial hearing begins in April

of 2014, two years after the murder.

In the courtroom are the family members of

the two victims in this case, specifically Donald byrd,

who is kijuan's father, is in the audience,

along with several family members.

Kendle's lawyer, Carlos Gonzalez, argues that

due to his client's behavior,

he should be kept under observation at a mental

hospital rather than behind bars.

When Mr. Byrd hears the defense talking about

the mental health of the defendant,

he becomes outraged.

My son is -- he needs to go to prison!

He don't need to be laying in no mental hospital.

He need to -- he need to go to prison, man!

It's heart-wrenching to listen to Donald byrd as he sits there

yelling at this defendant,

talking about the fact that at the time he shot him dead,

he didn't have the mental illness

that he's talking about now.

He needs -- he needs to go to prison, man!

He gonna play crazy!

He went crazy when he killed my -- murdered my son, man.

He wasn't crazy then, but he crazy now!

As this father gets more and more angry,

he's getting louder and louder,

and the bailiffs sense, you know, this could be ugly.

All of a sudden, you crazy now?!

You wanna lay in a mental hospital?

You murdered my son, man, for nothing?!

When he was trying to get away from you?!

You -- you -- he was trying to get away

from you, man, and you kept shooting him

while his back was under the truck!

You kept shooting him, man.

You kept shooting him in his back!

His back was turned to you, man!

Bryant: If they can't calm down this grieving father,

you have to get him out of the courtroom.

And they do -- they slowly back him out

so that this proceeding can move forward.

He was trying to get away from you,

and murdered him, man, like that!

You murdered him, man, like that!

Why you do it like that, man?!

And you want to play crazy, man?!

It was his daughter and my nieces

that helped him out of the courtroom.

This has been very hard for me, through the trial,

even this interview,

I have to relive the story over and over again.

But I felt the pain. I felt the pain.

I felt hurt. I felt angry.

Kendle is ultimately found competent to stand trial.

Rendelman: The irony is that after he's found competent,

he makes a decision, which many attorneys would think is

kind of a crazy decision.

Um, the next issue, your honor, is the charge adjudicated,

and competent,

judge: Sir?

Judge: Okay. You want to,

represent yourself for the purpose of the trial?

Usually, characters like Mr. Kendle feel that they are

the smartest people in the room

and they feel like they know everything.

It's incredible that kendle, in his defense, goes from

claiming he's potentially incompetent to stand trial to

representing himself.

The presiding judge in the case advised the defendant

multiple times that representing himself

was a very bad idea.

Will you understand that you will not get any special

treatment from the court just because you are

representing yourself?

You will be required to abide by

the rules of criminal law and criminal rules of procedure.

-Do you understand? -Yes, ma'am.

But kendle is adamant, and the judge ultimately rules

that he will be allowed to represent himself at trial.

Have a seat.

Kendle's murder trial for the shootings

of smathers and byrd begins in 2015.

Mr. Kendle's defense evidence was pretty thin here.

You know, he basically cross-examined the prosecution

witnesses but didn't have much more

to support his defense that,

as he said, he felt he was forced to defend himself

in that parking lot.

That account is turned upside down by the testimony

of a star witness,

kendle's surviving victim, Michael smathers.

The most powerful moment in the trial, and one that will

always sit with me for the rest of my life,

was bringing in Michael smathers on a hospital bed

to testify and share his story with the jury.

What did you say in response when you saw his gun?

Don't shoot.

Michael smathers, in his testimony,

completely contradicts

the story of the events that the defendant

presented to police.

He made it very clear that he was sitting in his truck.

He was confronted by kendle at gunpoint.

He raises his hands and is like, you know,

what's the problem, you know, why are you doing this?

And kendle opens fire on him,

paralyzing him right there where he was seated.

In my experience as a homicide prosecutor,

we've seen individuals shoot and kill someone

because they didn't like the way they looked at them.

So we'll never really know exactly what went down

that triggered lukace kendle on this day.

Ultimately, the jury believes

Michael smathers' version of events.

Lukace kendle is found guilty of second-degree

murder with a firearm and attempted murder.

He is sentenced to life in prison.

Arlene: Had they did a background check,

my son would be here today.

I spoke to the mayor of dade county.

They honored my son with a resolution stating

that all candidates

for a security guard must have a background check

and a mental evaluation.

I will continue to fight

for gun laws to be changed because

I know I'm doin' somethin' good for others.

And I'm also honoring my son.

Man, he was trying to get away from you!

And you murdered a man like that!

You murdered a man like that!

Coming up,

a disabled defendant wreaks havoc in the courtroom.

You can see that the frustration is building.

And later,

David Copperfield wishes he could disappear.

I can't answer that as a yes or no question.

Woman: On the docket, people versus Jeremy schuh.

39-year-old Jeremy schuh requires a wheelchair

to get around.

A series of strokes has left him with limited use of

his arms and legs,

but he still must face a judge for prior crimes committed.

He's in court for a pretrial hearing on charges of

home invasion,

criminal possession of a controlled substance,

and a string of theft and vehicle break-ins.

How would you like US to proceed?

Judge: Proceed with a motion.

Jeremy schuh is trying to kick the judge off the case,

a motion to recuse the judge

who he thinks has treated him badly in the past.

That normally happens when a defense attorney can make

the argument that

a judge has some type of inherent bias based on

interaction with the defendant

on a prior occasion.

Schuh's defense attorney, Walter white,

wants judge David swartz kicked off the case.

Judges are faced with all kinds of personalities,

all kinds of defendants,

and in this situation, this judge was faced with a man

who doesn't like him,

who talks back at him, wants a different judge.

Not surprisingly, the judge rules against him.

He is not going to remove himself

from this defendant's case.

The judge is staying.

Dorsey: When that didn't work, the attorney didn't want

to be accused of ineffective assistance of counsel,

and he went on to say,

I want out of here, too, judge.

He finds Mr. Schuh to be uncooperative,

and he's not able to effectively represent him.

And because all of these things are being denied,

you can see that the frustration is building.

This is not unusual.

Happens a lot with defendants who believe that, you know,

a few months at the prison library

turns them into Perry Mason,

they can handle the case better than anybody else.

What the court does here is says to the attorney,

"if you need to step in,

"if you need to advise, you're there to do it,

you're there to protect the defendant's rights."

When Jeremy schuh hears that, he is instantly angry -- why?

Because now he has to represent himself,

and the judge is not gonna give him the time he thinks

he deserves and needs to get prepared for his trial.

Dorsey: He's just not gonna cooperate,

and he's not gonna be quiet,

and so just before he's completely removed from

the courtroom, he kinda

is able to get the strength from somewhere...

He flips over the defense table.

Everyone was taken aback to see him bolt up like

a Jack-in-the-box and then have the strength to overturn

a significantly-sized table -- strength comes

from places that you can't imagine.

This is not something you would expect from

a guy that comes in feebly sitting in a wheelchair.

It's superhuman.

In most courtrooms, the tables are actually nailed down,

and the reason they're nailed down is to prevent something

like this from happening.

Bove: Even though a defendant like this comes in

in a wheelchair, you can never let your guard down.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt in

the incident except for a microphone.

But let me tell you, as a judge in that

particular situation,

I would find him in contempt of court.

Judge David swartz does hold Jeremy schuh

in contempt of court on a $50,000 bond.

Dawson: I understand he had strokes.

He's in a wheelchair, but you cannot conduct yourself

that way in a courtroom.

In San Diego, California,

60-year-old Regina Johnson has been

convicted of a horrific crime and is about to receive

her sentence.

Regina Johnson is accused of killing her husband

and her 14-year-old daughter.

But Johnson continues to insist she's innocent.

Judge, how can you say that?

-They never proved anything. -Judge: Mrs. Johnson...

Nobody ever said -- they never even had a motive.

Why? What? How can you sit there

and say that I killed my daughter?

How? You have no -- how can you say

the things that you're saying?

Five years earlier, in the spring of 2012,

it seemed like Regina Johnson had it all,

including a solid job in financial services.

Her husband, Reuben, and daughter Aaliyah,

were the center of her world.

Reuben is former Navy and now works in the security industry.

Aaliyah was very popular.

She was a cheerleader at a local high school.

The whole family lives in a very

nice condo in a San Diego suburb.

But somewhere along the way,

things started to turn dark behind closed doors.

On June 2, 2012, Regina calls her sister-in-law in a panic.

Regina called to tell them that Reuben

and Aaliyah were dead.

After an investigation,

Regina Johnson is arrested and charged with both murders,

but she insists it's a terrible mistake.

When her trial begins September 18, 2017,

she admits to the jury that she killed her husband, Reuben,

in self defense,

but only after he killed their daughter, Aaliyah.

I didn't kill my daughter.

Whitmore: Johnson testified in court that there was

an altercation between she and her husband,

at which time their 14-year-old daughter stepped in between

the husband and Johnson.

Johnson reports that the husband then

shot the 14-year-old daughter.

He killed my daughter.

That was his daughter, too, but he killed her.

I lost her. I lost everything.

He shoots and strikes the daughter,

and then he sets the handgun down,

according to Regina.

Johnson: When he put that gun down, and I picked it up,

I mean, I panicked,

and I was afraid, and I thought, if I don't

pick this gun up

right now, he might try to kill me,

so I picked it up, and I k--

I shot him.

But the prosecution argues that what really

happened on may 29, 2012, is very different.

Mental health evaluations reveal Regina's been

taking medication for severe depression

since losing her job a year earlier.

First, there was evidence that Johnson had been

struggling with depression and paranoia

shortly before the shooting.

She had also been incredibly angry and jealous

because she believed Reuben,

her husband, had been cheating on her.

Whether Reuben's cheating was

real or imagined, is jealousy

what led Regina to shoot her husband?

If I was angry at Reuben, and I wanted to shoot him because of

the affairs he was having,

I would have shot Reuben a long time ago.

Regina Johnson is on trial in San Diego, California,

for killing her husband and her teenage daughter.

Rendelman: While Johnson claimed that she had killed her husband

in self defense and had not shot her daughter,

the evidence presented at trial

did not support her story.

Whitmore: Investigators found through different pieces of

evidence that the daughter

was actually shot even before the husband arrived home.

Aaliyah wasn't yet dressed for school,

and the autopsy proved she hadn't eaten breakfast.

Reuben's cellphone data reveals that he was still at

a doctor's appointment when his daughter was killed,

execution-style.

Her mother shot her in the back of the head,

killing her instantly.

She was 14 years old.

The prosecution alleges that

after shooting her daughter,

Regina then waits several hours for her husband to come home,

and when he walks in, she ambushes him,

then shoots and kills him, too.

Then you have the fingerprints.

The only fingerprints all over the weapon --

they're Ms. Johnson's fingerprints, and then just

the trajectory of the bullets in the home shows that

it wasn't the husband that did the killing,

that Ms. Johnson actually did it.

In one of the most shocking revelations

at the trial,

the prosecution says that Regina told investigators

she covered her daughter's body

with a blanket and lay next to it for days.

Aaliyah -- she was the love of my life.

In fact, not only -- not only was she the love of my life,

Aaliyah was my life.

It was just the two of US, like this.

There's something incredibly sad when

we listen to Ms. Johnson talking.

I don't think there's any question that anyone

watching believed

that Ms. Johnson loved her child and cherished her child.

The condition of the body reveals that Regina called

her sister-in-law three days after shooting her daughter.

If the husband actually killed the daughter,

she would have called the police immediately.

When police arrive at the home,

they find a hand written message in the bathroom.

She allegedly scrawled on a mirror in the bathroom

in lipstick to the doctor,

you knew better. It's your fault.

You should have never prescribed this medication,

so, I mean, it sounds like

she's already creating a defense, right?

She's blaming everybody but herself for this.

After a 15-day trial, on October 3, 2017,

the verdict comes in.

Regina Johnson is convicted of two counts of

second-degree murder for killing her husband

and her teenage daughter.

The facts are terrible.

There was only one place Regina Johnson was going to go,

and that was prison.

Just over a month later,

Johnson appears before judge Joan weber for her sentencing.

She reads a letter to her daughter.

Aaliyah, mommy has been trying to figure out why am I here.

Aaliyah, you know how much your mommy loved you.

I should have protected you on that day

when your dad took you away from me, I snapped.

I took his life.

Often a judge is looking for someone to express remorse

and regret for

the crimes they have committed after they've been convicted by

a jury of their peers -- Ms. Johnson did not do that.

What Ms. Johnson did was express the love she had

for her child and continue to claim her innocence.

After the closing argument,

judge weber delivers her sentence.

How can you say the things

that you're saying? Because I wrote

on the wall, I wrote on the mirror,

this is all your fault?

I didn't confess to killing anybody.

Despite Johnson's tearful arguments,

judge weber sentences her to 80 years in prison.

Judge, you are not a fair judge.

Mercy: She says that the judge was being unfair.

How can you even sit there and say the evidence?

-What evidence? -Unfair.

After murdering her child.

But she's not fair. What kind of judge is that?

Dorsey: And again, she fails to take

responsibility for her actions,

but clearly

Regina was placing blame everywhere except

for where it squarely should land,

and that's on her.

I have no respect for you as a judge now.

Mercy: She was being dramatic there,

and she was being dramatic in court.

Now she could be dramatic in prison.

World-renowned magician, David Copperfield,

known for getting himself out of tight spots,

finds himself trapped not in a chained-up box but inside

a Las Vegas courtroom.

When you think of David Copperfield, you think

of Vegas, you think of the magic,

you think of the glitz, you think of the glam.

What you don't think about is

having this great magician in a courtroom.

David Copperfield is being sued civilly.

This is not a criminal matter.

He's not -- he's not going to jail for being a bad magician,

you know, felony bad magician. It's not a thing.

He is being sued for negligence.

Copperfield, along with the mgm grand,

is being sued by Gavin Cox,

who claims he was seriously injured during one of

Copperfield's shows.

Whitmore: This 58-year-old man is visiting from Kent, england,

to Las Vegas,

and he is a audience member in the David Copperfield

magic show.

During the performance,

Gavin Cox is selected to participate in one of

Copperfield's most famous tricks, the lucky 13.

They take 13 people from the audience,

and they put them in this cube,

and then David Copperfield, like, covers the cube up

with, like, this big old drape.

And then he walks around the cube,

showing that there's nothing connected to the cube.

And the trick is they are going to disappear.

The participants then magically reappear

at the back of the audience.

Bravo! Bravo! It's a miracle.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

But the miracle, of course,

is just an illusion,

and in order to defend himself against Cox,

Copperfield will be forced to break the golden rule.

A magician never shares his tricks,

unless there's a subpoena.

-David! David! -That's very valuable.

World-famous magician David Copperfield

is being sued by 58-year-old Gavin Cox for injuries

he claims he sustained during one of Copperfield's tricks,

the lucky 13.

Dorsey: During the court trial,

David Copperfield was certainly sorry that, you know,

anyone would have been injured in the midst of his trick.

Woman: If somebody participated in the 13 illusion,

and they were injured,

it's their fault, not yours, yes or no?

I can't answer that as a yes or no question.

It would depend on if we did anything wrong.

But Cox's lawyer, Benedict morelli,

isn't letting Copperfield off the hook.

We're not gonna get along if you keep doin' this, okay?

I'm just tryin' to tell the truth.

Next question.

Copperfield really would rather disappear right now.

He'd rather be anywhere else, but that ain't the case.

During the course of the trial, Copperfield's manager

is forced to reveal how the trick works,

exposing secrets any magician would hate the world to know.

Once the curtains close, Cox and the other 12 participants

exit through a trap door

and then are ushered through a series of hidden hallways.

But there was no magic for Mr. Cox.

Dorsey: Gavin Cox said that there was some construction dust

on the floor,

and that's what made him slip and fall, and in so doing,

he sustained some significant injuries.

Cox claims he suffered brain and other injuries

to his shoulder that required hospitalization.

Rendelman: So when Cox allegedly fell,

he insisted that his medical bills amounted to

about $400,000.

Like the master escape artist he is,

Copperfield won't be cornered into taking the blame.

All I'm asking you for is answer my questions.

-No speeches. -I'm trying to help.

Okay? You're not helping.

I'm trying to give a complete answer.

Now it's up to the jury to

decide who's liable for Gavin Cox's medical bills.

Mgm grand 0%,

David Copperfield, 0%,

Gavin parks 100%.

In an interesting twist,

the jury came back finding David Copperfield,

his company, and the resort had no liability,

and that it was Cox that was 100% responsible for

the injuries he incurred.

Popovich: It appears to simply indicate what we had argued,

which is this is an unfortunate accident.

We're sorry he got hurt on the property.

Copperfield won the case,

but he had to give up the secret to

one of his most popular illusions.

In some ways, it's kind of sad that we're able to know exactly

how this trick was performed,

and to that end, David Copperfield no longer does it.

I think that David Copperfield did do magic to

the jury because he made that liability just disappear.

In Portland, Oregon, 26-year-old dequise hammick

is embroiled in a contentious custody battle

with her ex-boyfriend.

Hammick sits in the jury box in plain view of her ex.

Dequise hammick is, at the time,

homeless and is addicted to drugs,

and in the courtroom is her ex,

along with his attorney.

Sitting in the back of the courtroom are

their two young daughters,

who are already living with foster parents.

This courtroom appearance may determine their futures.

She is here listening to her ex

talk about her child-raising abilities.

Why? Because the court is examining whether or not

this woman should have her kids

or should custody be ultimately removed and given to

somebody else?

Custody battles are some of the most contentious

hearings that you will find in a courtroom.

Just the fact that you're fighting for custody of

children heightens

your emotions and causes the possibility

for chaos in a courtroom.

Dorsey: Her ex is speaking about her in

a way to the judge that she finds offensive.

She finds it probably a little bit humiliating.

So dequise pops up, wanders kind of slowly but

deliberately to the table where her ex is testifying,

has a word with him, and then speaks with her right,

I believe it is.

She decks him.

Her children actually had to be removed

from the courtroom so

they would not witness this behavior and be in harm's way.

The frightened children are taken down

the hallway and out of the courthouse,

but dequise hammick is still in a rage.

She's still out of control despite the fact

that they're trying to get her under control.

In a Portland courtroom,

26-year-old dequise hammick has already

punched her ex during a bitter custody hearing,

but she's still fighting mad.

Bryant: They bring a deputy in to remove Ms. Hammick from

the courtroom, and he puts a cuff on her,

gets her halfway through the door when she decides, hey...

Why not punch him, too?

Bove: She just turns around with her free hand

and also hits him in the face.

But the deputies are on it,

and they did a excellent job at de-escalating the situation.

Dorsey: Usually, when you have aggression in a courtroom,

seldom, if ever, do we see women acting out violently.

And so that's, I think, what caught everyone off guard.

It takes two deputies to get her into handcuffs.

Dorsey: If the goal is to get your children back,

why would you, while in court,

engage in a physical altercation with not only

your ex and then engage in

similar activity with the deputies?

It doesn't bode well if you really want the court

to believe that somehow

you are deserving and should be given your children back.

Mercy: She had a long history of cocaine addiction,

which probably contributed to her actions in court that day.

The judge orders hammick removed from

the courtroom and continues the hearing without her.

She was then placed in

a wheelchair to remove her from the courtroom.

As she was being wheeled out,

her behaviors, again, continued to escalate.

Dawson: As she's being wheeled down the hall,

she grabs for a deputy's belt,

basically reaching for his gun area.

So again, she's still out of control, despite the fact that

they're trying to get her under control,

at least so the hearing can take place and they can

move forward.

Order is finally restored,

and fortunately, no one is injured.

At the end of the day, I feel that

Ms. Hammick felt she had nothing more to lose,

and she was going to lose her children.

Hammick is charged with assaulting a public safety

officer and sentenced to 364 days behind bars.

After serving her time, she makes another

court appearance.

Now sober, she apologizes to the court.

She had been on drugs, she said at the time,

was using cocaine that day,

and now she's, you know, cleaned up her act, literally,

and so I think it did come off as sincere.

The apology was truly heartfelt.

Hammick is no longer incarcerated

and still hopes to one day

regain custody of her children.

18-year-old Avery white appears before

judge Michael cicconetti in painesville, Ohio.

He's accused of painting graffiti on the caboose

of a train owned by the grand river railway.

This is really a pretty straightforward case

of vandalism.

He paints a little graffiti on the side of this train car.

Well, the train car is privately owned.

The company who owns this train car

is not gonna just let this thing go,

so they bring him to court.

This is a small business you have pretty much, isn't it?

Yes, 2.5 miles of railroad.

The prosecution brought the actual owner of the caboose

that Mr. White is charged with vandalizing with his graffiti.

Cicconetti: It's not one of these cross-country ones.

This is when the local ones goes back

and forth between the docks and then to the plant.

So you know, they don't have a lot

of money, and it's not a large corporation,

but they wanted to have that corrected.

And they wanted something done with the young man.

People tend to believe that the railroad

property is not private property but public property.

I only laugh because I know that

to be true, and that has to stop.

Dawson: You can actually see on his face

that he felt bad, he was embarrassed, and he really was

ready to get this all behind him.

I'm gonna ask you right now, anything you want to say

before we go ahead with sentencing?

I'm not saying what I did was right,

no way it was, but i'm owning up to it, and I'm taking

full responsibility for it.

I could see that he was remorseful -- by the time

he came up there, I've already reviewed

his criminal history, which was zero.

So the judge is quite creative in how he

punishes the defendants that come in front of him.

In another graffiti case,

the judge sentenced a man to mow a school's entire lawn

with a push mower.

Judge cicconetti is the man who wants to send

a message to the defendant as well as every offender

in the community.

There's -- there's consequences to be paid.

You can't go around destroying property just for the fun

of it.

Dawson: White is listening to judge cicconetti talk about

the sentencing, to talk about the crime,

and I believe he's really scared at that point.

I think he's sitting there, and he's shaking in his boots.

You know, we get so much destruction in here,

just vandalism anymore,

and there's no accountability for it.

I said, now what am I gonna do?

Earlier that week, I was walking in front of the court,

just kind of out for my daily walk,

and I'm looking at the handrails.

We were looking yesterday at those railings right

out in front over here with...

With Dave,

and they really need painting.

They're in horrible shape, they have rust on 'em.

The judge says, look, here's the deal,

ten days in jail, which must sound

very enticing for some 18-year-old kid,

or you can paint the railing out in front of the courthouse.

You're gonna go head out there and do the railings.

You're gonna scrape 'em and then paint 'em.

Only difference is -- you wanna do fine arts --

you're gonna paint 'em with this.

So you take your choice. What is it?

White: I'll take the second option, your honor.

And so Avery opted for the --

I'll take the toothbrush for 200, judge.

Cicconetti: My goal every day was to be sure

that we got a laugh in the courtroom.

You have to laugh.

You have to have a sense of humor if you're on the bench.

If you don't, you'll go crazy.

Seeing this kid actually

undertake the punishment is satisfying.

You know, here's a guy that was defacing private property.

Now he is helping enhance public property.

You know, in theory, that's the perfect solution.

White: I walked in there fully expecting to go to jail, sadly,

but I was very relieved when I found out that he was gonna do

a creative sentencing option.

My number one rule, my philosophy is --

always has been --

everybody is entitled to make one mistake in their life.

I don't want to destroy a person's life for one thing

that they've done, especially

if they admit it, and they're remorseful.

Judge cicconetti is a legend in Ohio.

All of US judges,

we look up to him, not only because he's a nice guy,

but he's also an intelligent judge.

And these creative sentences have really helped people,

as opposed to always sending people to jail.