Yoda, talking doing we are. Fun not this is. arrgggh.
We wanted some posts about the issue of Judges “punishing” Defendants who elect to go to trial.
Anonymous wrote:
Judges seem concerned only with finishing early so they can leave the building and go about personal business. It is therefore necessary to charge "rent" for the courtroom, and hammer any one found guilty of anything. If word got out (god forbid),that you could loose at trial and get the same sentence offered before trial then everyone might want a trial. Holy 6th amendment Batman! Can’t try cases all day and still pick up the kids from private school at 3pm. It used to be that most Judges were older folk who had made tons of money and actually were taking a pay cut to become a Judge. They felt that they were giving something back, and had real world experience. It seems many judges now are young and got a large pay raise when they became a judge, along with much shorter hours(it's good to be a king),. They often rule against the defense so the Herald won't get mad and give an opponent ammo in the next election.
Rumpole Replies: We remember the days when the 5th floor was comprised of the following judges: Fast Gerry Klein, Mort Perry, Alfred Nesbitt, Robert Deehl, and Arthur Winton. DUI and Traffic Courts (which were separate then) had as Judges Henry Oppenborn, Arthur Rothenberg, Fred Moreno, and a few other floaters.
See any trends there? All men, all white, all older except for Fred Moreno. In fact, we seem to vaguely remember Katie Pooler as one of the first female DUI Judges to hit the building.
Now a days, the trend is clearly towards younger judges from all walks of life. That has to be a good thing. Certainly there is an argument to be made that many people aspire to be judges because of the security and the problems of being in private practice. Certainly we could do without the incessant collect calls from jail and the problems inherent in visiting a client in jail (take off your shoes, now your belt, now your watch, now your glasses, now your socks, ...wait 40 minutes- shift change- please leave and come back in 2 hours and start all over again.) Of course, maybe we should just do a better job at the bond hearing.
The issue is does a multi- cultural judiciary give the impression of either fairness or a better ability to understand where a defendant is coming from? Our belief is yes and no. A person who is Asian may initially feel happier if their Judge is Asian, but being Asian does not guarantee that the Judge will be more fair than an older white male. Could anyone better fit the model of fairness than Mort Perry? With age comes experience, temperament and the ability to look back. Beyond the issue of race or sex, we feel most confident in a Judge who has had some real life experience.
Personally, we love rising for the defense. We can’t imagine not being able to lumber to our feet, peer at a witness over our reading glasses, knowing, just knowing, we have the lying weasel just where we want them. Is there any better feeling than getting the truth out during a great cross examination?
However, in closing, the commenter has stated that Judges give stiff sentences as a way of warning other defendants not to go to trial. This in turn, reduces the Judge’s workload and lets them leave early. Anyone else believe this to be true?
Of course it's true. But I don't see it necessarily as a sign of laziness. There has to be some sort of "jury tax" to keep a division's caseload down. Even the judges who love trying cases have to do it, or else everyone will demand a trial. So you have to do it just because of the math of it all. On the other hand, some do just want to get out of there early.
ReplyDeleteThe Judges are not punishing people who go to trial. That is silly. The defendants get convicted, and then they get an appropriate sentence. What IS happening is that people get REWARDED for NOT going to trial by getting a lower sentence than is appropriate. This is entirely fair, and appropriate.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous presents simple logic. simple minded logic. My client doesnt give two shakes about whether the extra jail is a punishment or a "lack of reward". Chargingt rent on a courtroom is a shameless effort to chill basic rights. not in an effort to make the system more fair, the verdicts more relaible, just more "efficient."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Hersch, but to add to the discussion I would also like to point out that it is just as much a disgrace or probably more for prosecutors to ask for harsher sentences than they offered prior to
ReplyDeletetrial. I think its even worse than the judges actions, since atleast the judges can say they did not know all of the facts prior to trial. The prosecutor on the other hand knows all the facts and yet asks for 20 years after trial when they had offered 10 prior to trial.