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Deliverance Invades our Legal System
Here in my part of the world, New York state, the New York Times has uncovered a slew of abuses and outright incompetence in the court system, primarily in the rural parts of the state. The slide show, which depicts many of the courts —some of which look like broken-down trailer homes — is fascinating in and of itself. But, the Times 8-page exposé is well worth the read. In it, William Glaberson uncovers a lot of damning information about these 1250 courts, several which are not even run by lawyer-trained judges (some are sewer workers or truck drivers, and at least one didn’t even finish grade school).
The anecdotes that Glaberson offers are outright shocking, including one high-school educated judge who said of a woman seeking a restraining order against her husband that, “Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.” Another judge denied an objection when a black man was described as a “colored man,” and convicted him anyway, noting “I could understand if he would have called you a Negro, or he had called you a nigger.” Yet another judge took a 17-year-old’s not guilty plea and then, instead of sending the homeless girl to a shelter, he brought her home.
Perhaps most disconcerting about these abuses — beyond the financial mismanagement and the power anointed to people with little or no education — is the countless numbers of abuses and discretions that can’t be uncovered. Why? Because the state doesn’t require that most of these courts even maintain records or transcripts of hearings. And when you can’t even rely on the law to protect you, or even refer the indiscretions to a higher court when there are no records, living in rural America has got to be plain scary.
