Kenneth King

Kenneth King, a judge on Detroit's 36th District Court, is facing a formal complaint from the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission over his conduct during an August 2024 courtroom field trip presentation for high school students. When one student fell asleep, King woke and chastised her; when she fell asleep again, he ordered her removed, handcuffed, and changed into a jail uniform. King was livestreaming the presentation on YouTube at the time and demanded the girl publicly state her name, home address, grade, and school. When she was brought back into the courtroom still handcuffed and in the jail uniform, King threatened her, saying "I'm going to sleep tonight while you're sitting in the juvenile detention facility," then staged a mock "contempt of court trial" and had her own classmates vote on whether she should spend the night in jail. The Commission's complaint also cites a separate incident in which King ordered an attorney handcuffed and detained for several hours over a procedural disagreement. The complaint states King's conduct "brought disrepute to himself and the judiciary." King was suspended for several weeks following the incident and now handles only traffic-division cases; he and the girl's family are separately engaged in civil litigation.