On September 30, 2005, 14-year-old ShaQuanda Cotton attempted to enter a school building to take a prescribed medication before classes began. An encounter with a teacher’s aide on her way to the nurse’s office that morning led to her arrest, and months later the teen was adjudicated delinquent by a Lamar County court for assault on a public servant.
What began as an ordinary day at school resulted in her being removed from the care of her mother and sentenced to an indeterminate term of up to seven years in a Texas juvenile detention facility. Cotton, now 30, recently published a personal account of the ordeal after years of being subjected to rumors and vitriol in the small town of Paris, Texas.
Cotton’s story made world headlines in 2007 after local and national media reported on her detainment as well as the racial disparities within the Lamar County criminal justice system that many suggest played a role in her harsh sentencing. Just months prior to Cotton, who is African American, being sentenced, the same judge sentenced a white juvenile to probation for a more serious crime. Cotton had no prior criminal record, whereas the white teen did.
