March 2006
Reading Around
March of the Plea Bargains
A book review by William L. Downing
Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, by Steve Bogira (Knopf 2005, Vintage paperback, 2006)
The American courtroom is both a simmering venue and a venerable symbol. It is frequently and aptly described as a stage, a crucible, and an arena. It has also been called the centerpiece of our ordered society.
The truth and the whole truth is that a courtroom is nothing but a room with wood paneling, flags, and water pitchers until you add in the humans who, within its confines, regularly act and are acted upon.
In Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, journalist Steve Bogira chronicles an intense 12 months spent among the human actors, subjects, and combatants in one particular Chicago courtroom. Like a dedicated explorer, he dwelt among the inhabitants of that world — the defendants, deputies, clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judge — and he recorded every detail of how they experienced their reality.
It may be a good idea for those filming a documentary in Antarctica to keep their ears and torsos well bundled. This was decidedly not the approach of Bogira who put his finely tuned ear and heart to good use. To the wind-tossed, the windy, and the finger-in-the-political-wind, he listened patiently, and he presents their stories movingly. Bogira allows the dope-sick and dazed defendants, the beleaguered families, the frazzled attorneys, and the ambitious judge to speak in their own voices, and their stories ring true.
A jail commander speaks of the occupational hazard of getting "a stiff neck from looking the other way" as his deputies are (man)handling prisoners. A prosecutor refers to a death case as "a weird little murder." The relieved mother of a defendant admits, "I'm glad when my kids is locked up." And, outside of court, lawyers speak freely about the complementary "trial tax" and "plea discount."
Courtroom participants may not be as predictable as Antarctic penguins, but they do have discernible patterns of behavior. Bogira has the good luck or good judgment (my guess is the latter) to have selected a steady stream of illustrative incidents to recount.
Like the reality it depicts, the book includes a couple of big trials ("heaters," as they are called in the Windy City) along with a smattering of small ones, but it is the negotiated resolution of cases that is at its heart. In Courtroom 302, a threatening avalanche of criminal cases forces compromise on all participants as well as on justice itself. Many who came to legal careers inspired by Atticus Finch now see their daily jobs as "to move cases." The judge's output of "dispos" is monitored as if it were widgets being produced.
Bogira spent his year of study primarily in one room in one building in one city. Let us assume that some phenomena described are fairly unique to Cook County — such things as the creative uses of electroshock to obtain confessions and cash to obtain favorable judicial rulings. Most, however, are common to any big city court, differing only in degree. No American jurisdiction is free of the impact of racial disparities, local politics, caseload pressures, and the revolving door of drugs and petty crime. Through specific examples, Bogira explores each of these and presents valuable lessons for our society and for all who toil in its busy urban courts.
One not very shocking but still insightful revelation of this book is that — for good and ill — humans, not computers, administer our justice system. Lawyers, court staff, jurors, and judges all bring to their tasks the human capacity for empathy and understanding. Unfortunately, they also bring the human tendencies toward laziness and self-interest. It takes an outsider like Bogira to remind us of the extent to which a "get along/go along" dynamic can develop among supposed adversary advocates and to which a judge may bend in the political breezes wafting invisibly through the courtroom.
One of Bogira's several metaphors for the courthouse is that of the "mill" or "factory." He employs this primarily in discussing the operational pressures for quantity over quality in the production line. But, like millworkers, those laboring in the courts can get worn down, and they do. "The system is run by people, but it often seems the other way around. The courtroom staff works, as it must, reflexively not reflectively. The workers have no time to give much thought to any but the most extraordinary case, or to examine what they are doing." In the wonderful quote from G. K. Chesterton that he uses as an epigraph, Bogira gently warns that all courthouse regulars run a risk of getting to the point where they "only see their own workshop."
Bogira writes in a lively, journalistic style, carefully describing people and events as a witness but generally avoiding the bold pronouncements of the expert witness. He certainly has his opinions, but he prefers to broadly hint at them through sprinkling his narrative with the occasional statistic, historical note, or study result. When a feckless con is sent off for an eternity-plus-five, for example, expect to learn what's on the public price tag.
Another fine technique is the layering of the story. A deft example of this is in a chapter called "Good Facts, Bad Facts." We first see the attorneys, as proper advocates in court, playing up one and playing down the other. Then, shortly after a scene in which the judge comments on why he doesn't consider poverty or a deprived childhood as sentencing mitigation, Bogira inserts the same judge's sad tale of how paternal abandonment led his Uncle Vic to membership in the mob.
Only once does Bogira come close to climbing squarely onto a soapbox. In his prologue, he suggests the book is about "how justice miscarries every day, by doing precisely what we ask it to." Some have read into this that the book is an "indictment" or "condemnation" of our criminal justice system or that the courts have been "found guilty." In fact, Bogira's point is more sophisticated than this.
If we in society truly expect our criminal justice system to cure, or even transcend, our manifest social ills — the ravages of racism, inadequate education, and inequality of opportunity — then that system is indeed a failure. That this is an irresponsibly unrealistic measure is readily apparent to the reader of this book. While some may cling to the notion that arming police and judges with ever stricter laws will cure what ails us, those who believe the criminal sanction is an effective way to end drug addiction and its attendant criminal activity have not been paying attention for the past century.
What we ask our criminal courts to do is to process the mounting volume of cases that result from society's refusal or inability to meaningfully address the root causes of crime. And we ask that this be done with resources so limited that no more than a small fraction of those cases could possibly be fully adjudicated on their merits. At the end of each court day, it may be that the right amount of net punishment has been dispensed, but it has been arbitrarily distributed among the various defendants based on any number of odd extraneous factors. The justice system has done what we have asked of it, but neither the process nor the end product stands as a shining example of our society's values.
Beyond this societal message, the book also delivers a vital lesson for those inside the court system. Bogira notes in passing that it can be difficult to make out the sculpted figures high up on the grimy courthouse walls. It would be a healthy exercise for all court workers to pause in their labors and periodically lift up their heads to these cold stone icons representing wisdom, truth, and justice. By reminding themselves daily of purposes more noble than "moving cases," judges and lawyers could better serve the flesh-and-blood figures that occupy their attentions day in and day out.
The parade of humanity passing through the courtroom is not simply made up of actors, subjects, and combatants. Steve Bogira saw more than that and so should we. Each is an individual who, for a brief but always important moment, is occupying the centerpiece of our ordered society.
William L. Downing is a King County superior court judge. He is chair of the YMCA High School Mock Trial Program and the Washington Bench-Bar-Press Liaison Committee.
