The Furious Spinner

June 14, 2004. ...helicopters flew overhead and Portland news channels set up their satellite trucks in the parking lot of the county courthouse, a block from my house. A mother had taken her two little girls into the forest near where we hike. She sat them on a blanket she spread over the wet gravel, and then she shot them to death. Fog sank from the clouds, shrouding the dead children until the mother led the police to them.

Above the judge's bench in the Skamania County Courthouse are the words, "Justice is Truth in Action." I've sat in this courtroom many times, watching the members of my community come and go.

For most cases, the prosecutor, defendant, and defense attorney stand at a kind of bar, in front of and down below the judge, and present their cases. The prosecutor usually speaks in a voice barely above a whisper, so I can't always understand him. Most of the time, the defense attorneys are the same four men, rotating quickly from their spot at the bar to the defendant's table , depending upon whose client is up.

If the defendant pleads innocent, they sign a few papers and set a court date. When the defendant pleads guilty, the judge says, in this order, "Is your name Jane Doe?" "What is your date of birth?" "Can you read and write the English language?" "I have a document here..." "Have you seen it? "Have you gone over it with your attorney?" "Did you understand it? "Did you indicate that you understood by signing it and is this your signature?" "Do you understand you are charged with..." "This is the possible sentence you could get..." "You are charged with...." "To the charges 1-6, what do you plead?" "Do you understand by pleading guilty you are giving up your rights to..." (Here he lists several rights the defendant is giving up: jury trial, appeal of the verdict, etc..) "Has anyone threatened you or coerced you in any way to plead guilty?" "Has anyone made you any promises to get you to plead guilty, beyond the plea agreement with the prosecutor?" After these questions have been answered, the judge sentences the defendant. More papers are signed.

Yesterday, August 11, 2004, was juvenile court. One 15 year old boy came to court on an auto theft charge without any adult, beside his lawyer. The judge was not pleased. Later I asked the woman representing the juvenile department if this happened often, and she said it did. The parents either got fed up with the kid, or they just didn't care. It was a day for 15 year old boys. One after another. Marijuana possession. Auto theft—only they didn't call it that. The charge was: "Taking an automobile without permission of the driver." These were settled with plea agreements. The marijuana boy was sent into a drug treatment program. The prosecutor asked the judge to issue a bench warrant for a 15 year old boy who didn't show up for court .

Today I saw older boys (in their twenties) who were accused of illegal possession of firearms. A man in his thirties or forties, accompanied to court by his father, was charged with growing and selling marijuana. When I first saw him, I couldn't help but smile. He looked like an overaged hippy. Long stringy hair. Filthy baggy jeans. Beard. A grin from here to there. I thought, let the man have his damn marijuana. Who cared? His voice was loud, confident. He responded to questions posed to him. Maybe he had poor fashion taste (and who was I to judge), but his mind seemed all there.

One young man pleaded guilty to stealing an ATM card and withdrawing $500 with it. He told the judge it was the worse mistake he had ever made. Karma was catching up with him though, he said, because since then he had had two radios stolen from his truck, plus he had broken his arm. His six days in jail had changed his life. It was his first and only offense, so he pleaded with the judge to have mercy. The judge gave him 30 days work release, which meant he would spend the night in jail but drive to work every day. The man said his boss would probably fire him now. Dems the breaks. I thought 30 days was a bit excessive myself, but since it was over $250, I gathered the sentence was usually stricter.

A woman in her late fifties pleaded guilty to battery in the fourth degree, which was a misdemeanor. Originally she had been charged with domestic violence, which was a felony. She stabbed her boyfriend with a knife; however, the prosecutor agreed to drop it down to a misdemeanor when he discovered the boyfriend had had a shovel. Apparently he realized then it wasn't a fair fight. (Ain't love grand?)

We recessed for a few minutes while the prosecutor and defense attorney went over to the jail. A few minutes later the judge returned, and the clerk turned on the TV, and we saw the prosecutor, defendant, and attorney sitting at a table with their backs to the window and a shuttered view of the Gorge. The judge started asking same questions he posed of the defendants he had seen in the courtroom. One man was accused of stealing a car. Another had violated a protection order. Neither had money for bail, and both pleaded not guilty. They weren't going anywhere. When that was over, the lawyers returned to the courtroom.

A man and his wife along with about ten other people—relatives I supposed—waited in the courtroom for a long while. The man was handsome, his wife was not. They held hands, and he often had his arm around her shoulder. Something about him made me a bit uneasy. When he finally came before the judge, the prosecutor said the man wanted to get a judge's order changed. I couldn't tell for certain—because they never said—but I believe he had been served time for some kind of sexual offense, maybe statutory rape, because he was not allowed to have any contact with minor children. He wanted the order changed so that he could reside with his wife and children. The judge changed the order. The man cried. Everyone hugged.

But this was all after the first two hearings of the day—the hearings which packed the courtroom with photographers and reporters. When I first arrived about 8:45, I was surprised at how many people crowded the hallway leading to the courtroom. Then I had to be "wanded" before I could enter the courtroom, which was unusual. The guard usually asks me if I have any knives or a cell phone—equally heinous objects. I say no, and he lets me go. Today, my purse kept making the "wand" beep. I handed him my keys. Still beeped. "What else do you have that's metal?" I pulled out my inhaler. Still it beeped. "I've got another inhaler. I'm having a bad air day." Finally he waved me into the courtroom where I joined a lot of men in gray suits. I've never seen so many lawyers—or men in gray suits for that matter—all in one place.

I sat near the front. I worked on Lady Liberty while I waited for court to begin. I felt a bit like a voyeur this morning. I knew any good reporter would look around the court, try to figure out who everyone was. So I did, briefly. The on-camera reporters were easy to spot—too much make-up for 9:00 a.m., plus the huge phallic microphone was a big clue. Print reporters had their notebooks in hand, little make-up. One sat next to me and tried to see what I was writing. I moved my leg, so she couldn't read it. Cops in brown uniforms stood in every corner and against the wall. One butch-looking woman—mid-thirties, dressed in a white shirt and burgundy jeans—stood with the uniforms, a gun on her tiny hip. She looked tough, cool, absolutely in charge of the room. I wanted to be her.

I looked back at my manuscript, then suddenly flashbulbs were going off. I didn't register what was happening right away. I looked up and saw a woman walking toward me. I was struck by how serene she looked, like a Bodhisattva, or an angel. I don't often think of angels, so the image surprised me. Her face glowed. Then I realized who she was, and I felt startled by my own reaction. This was the woman who had killed her two baby girls.

She was dressed in the white and apricot-striped uniforms of the jail, with a chain around her waist, her hands cuffed. One of the uniforms told her to sit in a jury chair, which she did. Another officer sat next to her. The woman stared straight ahead. She no longer glowed or looked serene. The judge came in and we all rose, then sat again. The woman and her attorney went up to the bar.

I watched the woman's back and thought about how small she was. How might her life have been different if she had gotten the help she needed. What if her husband had understood she needed a doctor and medication, not more scripture? Perhaps medication could have quieted the voices and made her realized waiting for the "rapture" was part of her mental illness. The babies had been buried only two days ago, even though they had been killed nearly two months ago. Apparently the husband had tried to get evangelists to bring his dead daughters back to life. When they refused to try, he asked if he could see his babies and touch them, apparently believing his touch might revive them.

The prosecutor and defense attorney agreed to a mental health evaluation. I wondered why that hadn't already happened. She had been in jail for two months. I couldn't hear the woman's voice any better than the prosecutor's. The judge asked her to speak up when she answered yes or no to his questions. Five minutes after it all started, the uniforms led her away.

We all stood. The judge left. The courtroom emptied. Only the editor of our newspaper and I remained. We talked a bit. A few minutes later the courtroom filled up with press again. I was surprised and wondered why they had come back. We stood. Sat. The judge said bring in so and so. A young pasty-faced man, chained and handcuffed, dressed in the striped jail uniform, shuffled into the courtroom and went to stand before the judge. He was the boy who went off his medication and killed his mother last weekend. I felt slightly ill seeing him. What was going on in our little burg? Why weren't these mentally ill people being cared for? If they had been, three lives would have been saved.

People say our justice system has failed. I don't know if that's true or not. Business certainly gets done on the days I observe. But they're mostly cleaning up after some other kind of failure, aren't they? The failure of families, economic failures, medical failures, failure of conscience, failure of self control, failure of good sense. If that mother had gotten good medical treatment somewhere along the way, her children would be alive, wouldn't they, and she would have had no need for the justice system?

The judge ordered a psychiatric work-up for the man who killed his mother. He shuffled away. The press left the courtroom. The district attorney stood in the hallway surrounded by cameras and reporters. I couldn't hear what he said. Soon the hall cleared out, and I returned to the courtroom.

Later, as I left, the man who had been given a chance to live with his wife and children was embracing his family members down by the entrance. One of his relatives was trying to push the door open. "It's hard," I said, helping her.

"A few months ago my grandson ran right into this door, went through the glass, cut his neck."

"Is he all right?" I asked.

She shrugged. "He's got a scar that looks like a 'z' on his neck. Like Zorro."

Like Zorro, the masked man who rode through the countryside defending the weak and oppressed? What would a real Zorro do today? Create a society whose members believed in caring for her most vulnerable citizens? Justice is Truth in Action.

"Just a few weeks ago I fell right here," I said. "Maybe this place has a hex on it."

"Could be," she said. "What if it had been a deputy?"

I failed to see how that would have been worse, but I nodded.

"That's true," I said. "It could have been anyone."

I headed toward home and didn't look back once. 0 comments

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