(Author's note: My last blog about high school set off a lot of discussions, including some with friends I haven't talked to in a very long time. This, in turn, brought up a lot of memories about stuff I haven't thought about in a very long time, reminding me of where I got some of my most firmly held convictions about life in general. The following story about a day I spent in criminal court back in college is one of those stories, and I've tried to make it as interesting (and short) as possible. Even so, it takes a little while for me to come to the point of this blog, but I hope readers will find the payoff at the end worth the time it took to get there. If you don't want to take the time to read the whole story, you can skip down to the part marked "Conclusions and takeaways". If you DO choose to read the whole story, I apologize for the lack of names. I have forgotten the names of some people and the names I do remember are of people who might not want their names repeated in public.)
Many years ago, when I was in college, I was over at a friend's apartment one evening watching a movie. About midway through the movie, my friend picked up the remote, hit the pause button and announced that he had to go the bathroom and it would probably take a while. He invited me to join him, and that joke was as funny as it had ever been, but I politely declined and instead went over to the window to get some fresh air.
As I was standing there looking down at the parking lot below us (my friend's apartment was on the third floor) I noticed someone coming along the sidewalk. As this person got closer, I realized it was a girl who was in my extended circle of friends, but not someone I knew very well. She was cute, though, so I kept my eyes on her as she began to pass underneath the window, because the alternative was to go back to sitting on the couch, staring at the paused movie on the TV screen, and that wasn't very exciting.
As she came closer, I noticed that she wasn't walking very steadily and she almost fell a couple of times, making me wonder if maybe she was drunk (it was Friday evening, after all) and then, when she was almost under the window, and I was just about to call her name and maybe even invite her to come up and join us to watch the rest of the movie, she did something terrible. She picked up a brick that happened to be sitting there on the grass and threw it into the windshield of a car that was parked there. It didn't shatter the windshield but it damaged it, and the car's alarm began to go off. I had just enough time to think to myself that she had better run away as fast as she could, but then she picked up the brick and threw it at the windshield again, damaging it in another spot and also dinging up the hood of the car a little bit when the brick bounced off and landed there.
I was riveted, of course, and I continued to watch in amazement as a campus security guard ran up and saw the damaged car and the brick, which was still where it had landed on the hood of the car after bouncing off the windshield a second time. As he'd been on his way, he'd also glanced up and seen me standing there in the window, so I couldn't duck back inside and pretend I hadn't seen anything. I continued to watch as the security guard tried to ask her what was going on. I couldn't hear what she said above the car alarm, but it was obvious that he had started out very angry and whatever she was saying in response to her questions just made him angrier.
Long story short, the security guard called the cops, she was arrested, and I had to make a statement, even though I'd always been one of those people who said I wouldn't rat out my friends (in this case, I didn't see any point in doing otherwise).
As I was to find out, she had been stoned when I saw her, and she had thrown the brick at the car because she had hallucinated that there was some kind of gremlin on this car, which was trying to attack her. When the guard showed up, she tried to tell him she had just been passing by and had no idea why the car was damaged, but that obviously wasn't true.
The amount of damage to the car was just a PINCH less than it needed to be for her to be charged with a third-degree felony, but she was charged with three first-degree misdemeanors, including a drug-related charge, and a few lesser crimes. She was offered the chance to plead guilty to just one of these first-degree misdemeanors in exchange for all the other charges being dropped, and she would have had to spend ten days in jail and go to drug rehab. Because the crimes had happened on campus, she was also suspended, and they were considering the possibility of expelling her, but that was the least of her concerns. If she didn't take the deal and tried to fight the charges in court, but lost, she was looking at spending almost a year in jail.
It couldn't have been more obvious what she should do, but as her mom would tell me much later, she decided to fight the charges in court because her lawyer told her that the case against her rested almost entirely on my willingness to testify against her, because I was the only one who had seen her actually throwing the brick at the car. The security guard was also called to testify, but he hadn't seen her actually commit the crime. She was foolish enough to believe that I wouldn't testify against her in court because I had a crush on her, as she assumed most of her male friends did. Her lawyer and her parents tried to tell her that this was a very bad idea, and that she should take the plea agreement that was being offered. But she was one of those people who just has to learn things the hard way.
The prosecutor in the case called me in to go over my testimony a couple of times as the date for the trial drew near, and he said there was no way a jury would fail to convict her.
I felt really bad for her, but I was also cautiously hopeful that the shock of going to the Big House, even if it wasn't for very long, would help her make better choices in the future.
On the morning of the trial, as I was heading to the courthouse, I made sure to wear dark blue Dockers pants, a white dress shirt, black suit jacket and a light blue tie.
However, it would be a massive exaggeration to say that I was wearing a "suit and tie" that day.
The elements of my outfit had all been acquired separately and were not even remotely part of any kind of set. In particular, the tie was just the first one I'd seen when I went over to the men's section at KMart. It cost $4, as I recall, which was all I felt like spending for something I'd probably only use once. I'd assembled this outfit because I had watched enough TV shows about courtrooms to know that this was the way to dress when you went to court, whether you were a defendant on trial, or a witness, or a lawyer, or whatever. I owned a few other ties, but they were all kind of loud and flashy, and no one in any of those shows I'd seen ever wore a loud tie to court, so I figured I'd better not do that either. This hunch was later confirmed, but you'll have to read to the end to see how.
I had been told by the prosecutor to be there at the court house at 9 AM sharp, because that's when the day's legal business got started. There would be other trials that day (hearings for misdemeanor charges and even trials usually only lasted a half hour or less, so several could happen in one day) and he didn't know for sure when the trial I would be testifying in would happen, so it was best for me to be there early so I'd be available whenever I was needed.
I got there at a quarter before 9, just to be on the safe side, and entered the building. The prosecutor's assistant was standing at the front desk filling out some paperwork. She smiled when she saw me and told me where to go, telling me she liked my tie (I had a hard time taking this seriously since there was absolutely nothing to like about it, but later I'd learn otherwise).
I walked over to the doors, went through them, and entered the courtroom. There were already several people sitting there in the visitors' section, and most of them looked really unhappy. These, I assumed, were the people who were there because they were facing charges of some kind.
They were all embarrassed and uncomfortable. They didn't want to be there, and they were worried about what might happen to them. Some were scared, crying softly, while others looked angry, like they thought it was unfair for them to be there. Others just looked numb and exhausted, like they hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, or maybe for the previous several nights.
A few had people sitting next to them who were obviously there to offer moral support, mostly their mothers. There were also a couple of defense lawyers sitting there, and it was pretty obvious who they were because this was just another day at the office for them, and it showed.
When I walked in, several of these people looked up at me and I heard one middle-aged lady ask the young man next to her, probably her son, if I was his lawyer. He shook his head no, but I was flattered to think that I looked sharp enough that someone thought I was a lawyer. I didn't think my appearance was THAT amazing, but I was about to gain a better understanding of why this woman had made her mistake.
I sat down and a short time later, the security guard also came in dressed about the same way I was. He sat down next to me and we chatted in low voices until the prosecutor and his assistant came in through one of the side doors. They sat down at their table and spoke quietly between themselves, going over some papers they had brought with them. It was obvious that for them, this was also "just another day at the office." After a few moments, he turned around and caught my eye, so the security guard and I stood up and leaned over the rail while he told us that the trial we were there for was second to last on the docket for that morning, so we might have to sit there for a while. But then again, sometimes things go very quickly, as he explained.
The security guard was annoyed but the prosecutor assured us that we'd almost certainly be done before the lunch break. He also advised us to learn what we could from watching the other hearings and trials. Maybe it would make us want to go to law school, he said half-jokingly, adding that we both "looked the part."
The security guard sat back down wordlessly while I smiled politely because that's how I was raised, and also because at that point in my life, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for a career, and this wasn't the first time someone had suggested that maybe I could go to law school. The security guard, for his part, was just months away from graduating with a degree in criminal justice and he had already been accepted to the training program for the State Troopers, but that was just a stepping stone. His long-term ambition, so he told me, was to be a detective for a big city police department. I respected this ambition, and I was sure he'd make a good law enforcement officer.
At that exact moment, the young woman whose trial we were there to testify in walked in with her mom. She looked at me talking to the prosecutor and gave me a look which said "how could you?! I thought you were my friend!" Then she flounced over to a chair as far away from me as she could get and sat down in a huff, burying her face in her hands and crying. Her mother looked at us with obvious embarrassment and went over to sit next to her daughter, looking like she just wanted to get it over with.
A few moments later, just like in the TV shows, a bailiff said "All rise!" and everyone in the room stood up as the judge in his black robe came in and sat down, after which everyone else did. The bailiff then went through the routine, saying that the court was now in session, with the honorable Judge so and so presiding. The trials and hearings then started and, just like the prosecutor said, they went quickly. I must admit I was fascinated, but also very saddened, by what I saw and heard that morning.
Most of the people who were accused of crimes were there for hearings in which they would plead "guilty" or "no contest" to whatever they were charged with. The prosecutors had offered their lawyer a deal which would see them plead guilty in order to spare the court the time and expense of proving them guilty in exchange for the prosecutor asking the judge to go easy on them in sentencing. But one guy was there for such a hearing, and he arrogantly told the judge he was not only pleading not guilty, but he declined his right to legal counsel and planned to defend himself at his upcoming trial. This guy was dressed in blue jeans and a polo shirt that wasn't even tucked in. I remember thinking it was probably one of the dumbest presentations, in any kind of circumstances, I'd ever seen up to that point in my life. But other defendants also did things which visibly irritated the judge, and I was amazed at their foolishness.
But in particular, a pattern seemed to be coming into focus whereby the sentences the judge meted out that day were a result of what kind of mood the judge was in at the moment he handed them down, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that his mood seemed to be affected to a large degree by the clothes the defendants were wearing.
The most obvious example of this was a man I actually felt sorry for as he took the stand in order to enter a guilty plea on a drug-related charge. He was probably in his mid-fifties but looked like he could have been older. He had definitely seen some hard times. During the brief statement his lawyer tried to walk him through, which apparently had been rehearsed, he wandered off the script more then once, expressing confusion and talking about the drugs the police had found on him, like he had no idea it was illegal to possess them because when he was a younger man, he'd used drugs like that with his friends and they'd never gotten in trouble for it. He said some other things which made it obvious that heavy drug use had been part of his life for a long time. His poor lawyer had to actually interrupt him a couple of times because it was getting really awkward, and he was making things worse for himself.
But in the end, despite the fact that this was not his first offense, the judge gave him a suspended jail sentence and ordered him to go to rehab. I was amazed at this leniency, but by this time, I'd begun to understand a few things, especially the fact that this judge felt sorry for this man, just as I did.
It wasn't just his confused speech that evoked pity; it was the way he was dressed.
Simply put, he looked like one of the most pathetic human beings I had ever laid eyes on. His brown, polyester pants were pulled up almost to his belly button. His torso was covered by a stained, faded yellow dress shirt that was at least one size too large. But it was his catastrophically tacky, polyester tie that made me feel most sorry for him. It looked like something that had been a bonus prize someone got for buying two cartons of cigarettes at the Pigley Wigley store back in 1952, and it had been sitting on the clearance rack at a second-hand store ever since. It was just so heartbreakingly stupid, and to make things even worse, it was tied incorrectly so that the smaller end was hanging down below the level of the larger end.
But on the other hand, at least he was trying. At least he HAD a tie, and his shirt WAS tucked in, and his thinning hair WAS combed neatly over the bald area in the middle of his skull.
I couldn't be sure of course, but I got a very strong sense that this honest effort he was making by wearing this tie, keeping his shirt tucked in and having his hair combed is what prompted the judge to go so easy on him.
Anyway, like the prosecutor had told me, most of the hearings and trials went quickly, with only one taking more than a few minutes. I was fascinated by everything I was seeing but in particular, I couldn't help but notice it more and more as one hearing followed another, that the clothes people were wearing seemed to have a direct effect on the kind of sentence the judge ended up giving them.
I began to wonder if I was the only person who had ever watched those TV shows.
Finally, it was time for the trial that I was there to testify in, but just before it started, the defense lawyer, who had already represented clients at three hearings that morning, asked to approach the bench and the prosecutor did also. I looked over at the defendant and her mom, but they both just looked down at the floor. After a few moments, the judge called a ten-minute recess, and the security guard and I looked at each other, both wondering what was going on.
When the court was called back into session, the judge asked the defense attorney if he was ready to start. The defense attorney replied that his client had decided to waive her right to a trial and take a plea deal that the prosecutor had offered, whereby she could plead guilty to two of the misdemeanors instead of just one, in exchange for the other charges being dropped and him only requesting 60 days of jail time at a minimum security facility, during which she'd be enrolled in the drug rehab program. Also, she would need to pay for the damage to the car and another fine, as well as court fees. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was not a small number. Her mom, who would probably have to pay most of that money, closed her eyes and sighed heavily when she heard it.
However, the judge said a few things to the defendant and her mom about this being an opportunity to kick the drugs and otherwise take back control of her life, and then he issued his sentence which was almost exactly what the prosecutor had asked for, and that was that.
Apparently, the lawyer and her mom had convinced her at the last possible minute that she needed to change course or she was going to end up losing any chance she might still have of salvaging her future.
The security guard, who had dozed off a few times that morning, was fully awake now and he was NOT happy, but he didn't get up and storm out right away.
After the next hearing, which only lasted for a few minutes, the judge ordered the court adjourned until after lunch and the prosecutor, who could see that the security guard wanted to talk to him, invited us to join him at a restaurant near the courthouse for lunch.
It was a decent place, and after we'd ordered, he asked the security guard to tell us why he was so upset.
The security guard said he'd WANTED to testify because he WANTED her to get sent to jail for a long time. He was also angry because, in his view, he'd wasted his morning and missed two classes he needed to pass in order to get his degree. The prosecutor and I both sympathized with all that, but I said that although I had also missed a class to be there, I felt like it had been very educational so maybe it wasn't a complete waste of time. The prosecutor seemed very pleased with this statement, and the security guard readily admitted that I wasn't wrong about that, but he still wasn't happy about how things had gone down.
In an obvious attempt to change the subject, the prosecutor then turned to me and asked me where I'd found the tie I was wearing. I told him the truth, that I'd paid $4 for it at KMart and he laughed hard at that, which broke the tension because the security guard also laughed. I asked what was so funny, but the prosecutor just shook his head and said it was the PERFECT tie for the occasion because it was the kind of tie that a sincere, down-to-earth, honest person would wear, which was exactly what he'd wanted the jury to think of me when I was on the stand testifying. He pointed to the security guard's tie and said it wasn't terrible, but it's not the kind of tie juries liked to see witnesses on the stand wearing.
This made me ask him about the tie the pathetic man had been wearing and my theory that this tie had played a role in the judge's decision to go easy on him. He replied that I was absolutely correct about that, and also the broader point about how the clothes people wore to court played a role in the kind of sentence the judge was likely to hand down to them. At this point, the security guard declared that he had a hard time believing that a judge or a jury would take the clothes people were wearing into account. I replied to that by saying that, before I'd seen what I'd seen that morning, I would also have been skeptical about this, but I couldn't deny what I'd seen and heard.
It got quiet at the table for a moment as the prosecutor took another bite of his sandwich, washed it down with a sip of his Coke and then took a deep breath before beginning to speak once again.
I don't remember precisely what he said next, but it was something like this.
"Boys," he said, "it may seem hard to believe, but the way a person dresses has an enormous impact on the way other people perceive them. If you go to law school, or if you go into law enforcement, one of the first things you'll be taught is that the clothes people wear is also a VERY good indicator of a person's state of mind, and THAT is considered a legitimate reason to judge how credible they are, and not only on the witness stand. A person who dresses casually will have a casual attitude, and that will affect their behavior, but there's more to it than that. Most groups in society have uniforms they wear, not just the Army. If a person is wearing the clothes that a certain group always wears, it affects their image of themselves, and that plays a role in how they act, especially if they think people from that group are watching them.
That's why offices have dress codes that require workers to dress a certain way. It's not just aesthetics; employers know that if they want their workers to think seriously, they have to be dressed seriously, and they have to be surrounded by other people who are dressed seriously. The military knows that too. Everybody knows that.
The way you two are dressed today showed everyone in that courtroom that you meant business, ESPECIALLY that defense lawyer. He knew he was gonna lose as soon as he saw you this morning, and he immediately told your friend to stop being stubborn and take a plea deal."
Turning to the security guard, he added "I gave her a fairly good deal because I don't want to ruin her life. She didn't deserve that. She's a stupid kid who made a mistake, then she made another mistake by not taking my initial deal. There needed to be consequences for that, but again, I didn't want to ruin her life. I've got kids too, and I know EXACTLY what her poor mother was thinking today. When you're a cop, remember that the people you're chasing are only human. Unless they do something truly evil, the goal should be to help them learn a lesson so they don't screw up again, not crush them so badly they can never recover. The law's the law, and sometimes you can't be flexible. But sometimes you can, and you need to use your judgement."
I looked at the security guard to see how he'd react to that but he had a perfectly neutral look on his face, which seemed to indicate that he hadn't been very impressed by anything he'd just heard.
We finished eating, the prosecutor kindly paid for our food and then we went our separate ways. I never saw the prosecutor again but I saw the security guard around campus a few times before he graduated. He told me that my "friend" had indeed been expelled, and he was glad she'd been expelled.
As I said before, I also spoke briefly with her mom a few days after the trial, and she filled in a few blanks for me. I was left with the impression that her mom didn't blame me for anything, but she was very distressed that things had gone the way they did, although she also knew it could have been much worse.
Conclusions and takeaways
Well, I didn't go to law school as that prosecutor obviously wanted me to, but I DID take a single class on Constitutional Law as a General Education elective and I would later go back to court a few times just to watch the proceedings, keeping in mind everything he'd told me, especially about clothes. Once, just as an experiment, I went there wearing one of my loud ties and got some DEEPLY unamused looks from everyone including the clerk at the front desk, police officers I passed in the hallway on my way to the courtroom and even the judge, who I was almost worried was going to hold me "in contempt of court" despite my just being in the visitors section.
What I learned from all his can be boiled down to a handful of points.
First, there's a wide variety of attitudes in the criminal justice system. There are street cops, prosecutors, attorneys, judges and others who are so traumatized, horrified and disgusted by the evil they confront on a day-to-day basis that they just want to punish anyone who steps out of line even a little bit, in order to terrify the entire population into strict obedience. That, they figure, is the only way to keep everything from getting totally out of control.
The security guard, who I assume later became a State Trooper, is an example of this mentality. I don't agree with it, but I see the point. Human nature has some really dark aspects and people certainly do need to be kept under some kind of control. The innocent must be protected and society must have order. As Romans 13:3-4 tells us, "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil."
However, and this is the second point, many people in the criminal justice system are not very concerned with society in general, and are more interested in protecting individual people and their "rights". Sometimes that even includes protecting people from the consequences of their own mistakes, even if doing so risks them not learning a lesson and becoming more dysfunctional and perhaps even becoming a violent threat to society.
I don't think the prosecutor quite got to that point, but he was leaning in that direction. He definitely thought the rights and interests of individuals were at least as important as the rights and interests of society, unless, as he said "they did something truly evil." As I've gone through life and seen several examples of people who did truly evil things, I've occasionally had occasion to wonder if they were evil enough for that prosecutor to be willing to really go after them. I sure hope so.
As I said before, the judge I saw in the courtroom that day seemed to be very open to suggestions, including the suggestions given to him by the clothes people were wearing. His mood shifted considerably over the four hours of that morning's court session, and in the subsequent court sessions I attended, I saw a similar pattern with him and also other judges who presided over the courtroom proceedings I observed later.
Although I understand why these things happened the way they did, it was very frightening for me to think that if I ever found myself in legal trouble, the result of it could end up depending on whether or not the judge in my case was in a good mood or not on the day I was to be sentenced, and I would probably have no control whatsoever over the factors which would determine what kind of mood he or she was in.
Finally, what the prosecutor told me about the effect the clothes people wore had on their own attitude, and the attitude others took toward them, has never left me for one moment in all the years since. I often catch myself judging people, or at least evaluating them, based on the clothes they're wearing. I'm sure others are doing the same to me, and I'm careful to wear clothes that actually DO communicate to casual observers what I'm trying to communicate and not just leave it up to chance.
On this note, I have one last thought to share with anyone who is still reading, and it goes like this.
When we go to church, or kehillah, or fellowship, or whatever anyone wants to call it, we should not dress casually. We should remember that we're going to meet with God, who is the judge of all the Earth and the King of the Universe.
You would never go to meet with an earthly king, or judge, dressed the way you dress when you're going to the movies with your friends. It's not a "casual" event to go to meet with God, and you shouldn't dress casually because that will give you a casual attitude about it, and it might also influence others who are there to have a casual attitude, which will be a mistake.
So, if you don't think God minds that you show up to your meeting with Him wearing casual clothes, maybe you're right. But you should still make an effort to dress formally for a meeting with Him, for your own sake, and for the sake of the other people who might also be there. It's a formal, dignified occasion, and it deserves to be approached with a formal, dignified attitude that is not possible if you and I go to it wearing casual clothes.
I know this blog was longer than usual, and I want to both thank and congratulate anyone who read the whole thing. I hope it blessed your life.
Oh, and one more thing. If you own a loud tie, get rid of it. Trust me, that's the best thing to do.