Move over, Judge Judy

Meanwhile, in far-off New Haven
    By Ben Smith

Just a couple of blocks down Elm Street from Old Campus is New Haven's best free theater. The seats are rickety and uncomfortable, the lighting terrible, the intermissions long and arbitrary, and your fellow audience members tend to be, well, criminals. Still, as the producers of Court TV recognize, the criminal justice system is a reliable source of drama.

On Tues., Mar. 30, I arrived at the massive, marble courthouse in the early afternoon. One of New Haven's few monumental structures that doesn't belong to Yale, the courthouse's bright exterior gives way to hand-lettered signs reminding the visitor to leave her gun at home, then to a metal detector operated by bored sheriffs and a high-ceilinged central atrium. The combination of natural and fluorescent light makes the place look utterly filthy in a permanent, yellow sort of way. Giving up any pretense that I belonged there, I wandered from courtroom to courtroom, peering through the doors until I saw a room full of people I took to be spectators.

Of course, they weren't spectators. Nobody comes to watch at New Haven's criminal courts on a sunny afternoon. The room was full of addicts, criminals, and the accused innocent, a few of them with their ankles cuffed together, all waiting for drug court to begin around 2 p.m. The run-down courthouse, which looks all the worse for its ambitious architecture, doesn't feel like a site for the spectacle that the court system has been and should be.

All rose for the entrance of Judge Simone from his chambers behind the marble bench. He sat down hurriedly, and began the session of New Haven's drug court with "Damas y caballeros, ladies and gentleman..." Then came the parade of offenders: first, a neatly dressed black woman with carefully arranged hair. The judge noted that she looked well, skimmed the "meditation" she had written for her rehab program, and forced a little drama into his voice to threaten, "If you think your addiction is the beast, you mess up and I'm going to be the worst beast you've ever seen." He then dismissed her and went through a roster of old acquaintances, his mood shifting for each one.

Judge Simone belongs to another era. He tried valiantly to inject the requisite drama into an atmosphere dominated by cliques of bored lawyers and tense, depressed clients. To a young, preppily dressed man who had violated his curfew, the Judge played the angry father, threatening him with real jail time if he didn't change his attitude. A middle aged guy in a sweatshirt who had admitted a weekend relapse into drug use heard the friendly, confidential tones of a concerned friend. A construction worker asking for permission to go to New Jersey on a job, which would cause him to miss mandated counseling sessions, heard the judge behave like an easygoing, removed administrator. The entire group of 10 or 15 offenders sat through the entire hour's proceedings, and through the judge's remarkable set of quick changes. Between offenders, Judge Simone rubbed his eyes and angrily rebuked the public defenders for mispronouncing their Hispanic clients' names.

The New Haven drug court isn't the best place to be a spectator. The vaguely green carpet, the rust-colored stains bleeding across a stucco ceiling, and the institutionally thick air combine to create a dull sensation. The decorative marble clock permanently reads 3:36 and has been superseded by a bland plastic timepiece that hangs on the wall next to it. In an anti-theatrical setting, the addicts alone benefitted from the Judge's solo performance. I was the only audience member in the room, and I felt like an intruder.

American urban justice is in a crisis of racial inequality and public alienation. While courts are theoretically open to the public, we remain suspicious of putting justice on display, and the gallery tends to be empty. Maybe public justice reminds us too much of public execution, maybe we like to take our voyeurism without the moral trappings. But the drama of the court isn't so much the voyeuristic thrill of watching strangers' problems as the fascinating spectacle of public power on display.

Court is theater, court is spectacle; and that's when it's at its best. Repressive regimes from China to Latin America have specialized in secret trials, and recent "anti-terrorist" legislation has raised that specter in the United States. I don't know how to solve the problems of American justice, but I suspect that full courthouse galleries would be a step in the right direction, or a sign that we are doing something right.

Recent Herald Columns by this Columnist:
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• The Jesuits and us, 3/4/99
• Shooting for jobs, 2/19/99
• How to break into a Toyota Corolla, 2/5/99

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