Judge Dread: Michael Kwan 

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Carrot & Stick
Taylorsville Drug Court’s origins lie in a tragedy: the suffering of a black child in a Salt Lake City burn unit in the mid-1980s, when Kwan was a burn tech. The young girl repeatedly came in with burns inflicted by her grandmother. “I could either keep treating her wounds or get off my butt and try to do something,” he says, referring to a legal system that allowed the continued abuse and, eventually, the girl’s death after her grandmother put her head through a wall and crushed her skull.

Kwan got a law degree at Whittier College School of Law in Los Angeles. In 1996, he started as a Salt Lake City district court prosecutor.

In 1998, Kwan was chosen by newly incorporated Taylorsville to be its first justice court judge. However, former Taylorsville Mayor Janice Auger says what started off as a court responsive to code enforcement and traffic issues that “generat[ed] enough revenue to cover the expenses of administering law enforcement,” then shifted to include Kwan’s pet projects—a drug and domestic-violence court.

Mayor and judge clashed, at times. Auger was frustrated by what she saw as Kwan’s refusal to be a team player, while Kwan says that Auger “wanted less of a judge and more one of her department heads.”

Miller was Taylorsville’s prosecutor for 11 years, joined in the first years by his wife Lohra, now the Salt Lake County District Attorney. The Millers were skeptical of Kwan’s plan to open a specialty court offering DUI offenders the opportunity to keep their license and have the conviction removed from their record if they completed court-supervised treatment. But after six months, the Millers were won over by the positive impact it had on defendants’ lives. Ice Princess
Auger’s problems with drug court, which she saw as a social program funded in part by taxpayers, extended to Kwan “unilaterally” using treatment provider and probation agency Judicial Supervision Services. “For some reason, the court says we will work with an agency, and nobody gets to know the hows and whys,” she says now.

JSS is a growing, muscular presence in courtrooms throughout the Salt Lake Valley, with 1,300 clients last year. JSS assesses defendants’ treatment needs, provides for those needs and reports back to the court on compliance. Despite its reputation in the treatment community for making money, owner Jackson says that, in the past, she’s gone a year without paying herself a salary. “I’m working my ass off for little so [defendants] can succeed,” she says.

Jackson jokingly describes Kwan as the defendants’ patriarch in court, while she’s their matriarch in the outside world. “Mom is the one who doles out discipline,” she says. She’s been called “bitch” and “ice princess” by bitter clients, but doesn’t blink. “I will not allow minimizing or manipulation.”

Jackson says when a defendant agrees to a plea deal, he or she has effectively “dug a deep hole.” The judge gives them a sentence, a rope, and she, as probation officer, tells them to hold that rope tight. “The defendant can pull themselves out of that hole … or they can put that rope around their neck.”

Growing Up Fast
One person who Jackson says “hung from that rope by her arms” was Deuel. Deuel grew up in the world of addiction, learning tricks of the meth trade as early as age 7, when she was taught to strip the strikers off match heads, a key ingredient in the meth-making process. According to Deuel, her grandfather hooked most of his children and grandchildren on meth.

Deuel, however, steered clear of meth and disdained alcohol, although she enjoys pot, which, she says, her sister first gave her when she was 8. Deuel did six days in a detention center when she was 16 after being busted for smoking pot. “It helps me cope, numbs the pain,” she says. “But I’m fine with quitting it.”