CRIMINAL BUSINESS

A fluorescent gloom pervades the courtroom for Criminal Business of the Third District Court of east Middlesex Country. The ceiling lights have the grayish-white color of dirty institutional bed linen, and colors are sapped, dulled in this civil service twilight. The chalkboard looks olive drab, the cheap wall veneer blends into the dusty browns of the portraits. Even the well-tanned private lawyers look wan and pasty.

Perhaps the gloom is appropriate. Justice is practiced wholesale here, with five to ten cases pushed through hour after hour, day after day. This room on the 13th floor of Middlesex Country Courthouse witness the administrative grinding of the American judicial system; arraignments first and then pre-trial conferences in the late morning and afternoon.

The action centers, naturally enough, on the judge, who sits behind his desk in the front of the room. The assistant clerk, the probation officer, and the lawyers buzz about the judge like workers attending the queen bee. They all mumble, and it is difficult to her the proceedings when sitting in the benches behind the railing that divides the judicial arena from the waiting area.

The courtroom is a study in waiting. This is not high drama. This is high not high drama. This is high tedium, even for the consumers. In the benches in the rear, a few manage to read a newspaper, but no one can concentrate enough to read a book. There is, of course, no talking, as the bailiff is quick to remind anyone who happens to forget. One ends up simply watching, and waiting.

The judge says, "Let's make a deal," and a day begins.

"You were driving an uninsured, unregistered vehicle without a license and you ran red light. Your maximum exposure in this case is 1400 dollar. You can have a trial by jury, you can have a trial before me. But I'm telling you right now that you're not going to jail. I'll dismiss this case for 600 dollars."

A deal is struck.

The defendant agrees to enter a guilty plea, and the judge recites the required litany: "Do you decide to admit to this of your own free will? Do you have a mental disease? Are you under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication? Did anybody force you, threaten you, or give you something to make this statements?"

There is more: "Do you understand that you are giving up your right to a trial by jury? Do you understand that you are giving up the right to have a witness testify in your behalf?"

The defendant always understands, of course. He has a limited set of options. He can demand to continue with the case, and take more days off from work, and pay more court fees, and spend more days waiting in the dimly lit back of the courtroom. Or he can pay the fines, do the community service, enroll in the treatment programs, meet the probation officer to lean what a suspended jail term means, and end the case. The unknown is less comfortable than the known, and most defendants choose the latter.

The clerk calls the next defendant. The representative of the Commonwealth tells the judge, "Your honor, after he was stopped by the state police, he refused to hand over his license and registration. He said 'You are going to have to chase me.'"

The defense jumps in, ?"He was angry because there were many other cars passing him, Your Honor, and he felt he was being discriminated against because he was driving a BMW, He is a lawyer, and this is not his normal mode of behavior. We respectfully ask for a continuance without a finding for six months."

The judge gives the defendant a long, cold stare and seems about to strike out with an icy lecture on the responsibility of the Bar and the necessity of upholding laws, but instead he says, "The court finds the defendant guilty. One-hundred dollars, plus 30 dollars in court costs."

Not many of the defendants here today drive BMWs. Most qualify for legal representation at the expense of the public, and many are unemployed.

The cases range from the petty to the serious: traffic violations, larceny under $250, trafficking in cocaine, assault and battery with a deadly weapon. Some crimes don't sound like crimes at all. Possession of burglary tools?

A woman rises, charged with driving under the influence, a common enough crime, and the murmuring in the back continues. Lawyers walk to the hallway to confer with clients, the assistant district attorneys shuffle papers. The Commonwealth presents, its case, a fairly straightforward one; she couldn't walk the straight line, she couldn't touch her nose, she admitted she was drunk.

The defense attorney says, "Your Honor, that evening the defendant was the victim of a violent assault. She was terribly upset and drank too much. She is willing to enroll in a treatment program. She doesn't usually do this, it was a one-time occurrence. You can still see the bruise on her left eye."

Suddenly, the court is quiet. The talk stops and those dozing in the rear wake up. Sometimes, once a day maybe, reality intrudes here in this funnel of misery, where the unhappiness and despair of three cities is channeled. But the interest evaporates quickly enough. The license is suspended for 90 days, then she will be able to drive again. She will enroll in the treatment program. The next case, please.

The process continues, and there are not windows of clocks to mark time. The probation officer off each defendant's record, and they all sound the same; shoplifting in 1983, disorderly person in 1984 continued without a finding, 1986 driving after suspension, default in 1988 on a possession of Class B. He is wanted in Somerville on two warrants.

When bail is set, the bar advocate will respectfully request a reasonable cash bail, and the assistant district attorney will respectfully submit that the defendant is flight risk and ask for $100,000 credit or $10,000 cash.

The forgers of checks, the disorderly persons the possessors of class D substances with intent to distribute, the minors carrying alcoholic beverages, the passers of counterfeit bills, the right turners on red, the utterers of forged instruments--each gets his five minutes of attention. Only the lunch break punctuate the continuum.

In the park outside, a courtroom guard smokes. His girth betrays a career of inactivity; his eyes, nose, and mouth are adrift in an ocean of flesh. He says, "In that building, there are no secrets. If some judge is balling the secretary, everyone knows, it.

"One time they sent all of us to one of those awareness training sessions. There was one of those tweed ladies, you know, with the tight tweed coat buttoned up to here, like this, and she say in this mincy little voice, 'You are going to say some things that might make other people uncomfortable, but I want everyone understand, anything you say in this room stays in this room.'

"I told her, 'Lady, look. Anything I say here is going to be all over that building before I even walk back there.'

"You want to know what I do? Treat everybody equal. You know what I do with the Blacks? Look them in the eye when I pass them in the hall, say 'hello,' make them feel part of the system."

Thanks to a Cambridge ordinance, smoking is banned in the building, and this tower, like offices all over the city, has its share of addicts grabbing a quick drag right outside the front doors. There is something not quite right about this. Bureaucracy and fluorescent lights should be complemented by cigarettes and bad coffee with instant creamer.

Even a non-smoker expects to find cigarette fumes in the hallways and conference rooms where the lawyers huddle with clients. The non-smoker expects to have the throat irritated and the nose burn. There is something unsettling about a courthouse that does not run on nicotene.

The answer lies in the stairwell. In this center of legal enforcement for three cities the ordinance is regularly flaunted, and the stairwell is filled with smoke. "They're all low-life scum, assholes. They are definitely breaking the law, and I could arrest them," the guard says.

Why doesn't he? "Because they're my coworkers, and I would piss the whole building off. Even the judges smoke. I've even seen a judge smoking a cigar in the elevator."

The bulk of the day is spent non on oratory, not on discussion of the facts, not on objections and overrulings, but scheduling. Every time a case is sent to pre-trial conference, or a witness is missing, or the prosecution isn't ready, or he defendant had to go to the hospital, the judge and two lawyers open their calendars and set date, usually three or four weeks away.

One lawyer will be out of town in late May, the other will be out of town in the first half of June. The witness is leaving the country. There are no pre-trial conference openings on that date. The discussion goes on and on.

"Your honor, I asked for the 26th of May."

"That's since, I've given you the 19th."

A man returns from lunch a half-hour late Unfortunately for him, his case came up before he got back, and because he was gone, he defaulted. The judge is not patient with defendants who default. If there is time today, the case will be heard again. Otherwise, tough luck.

In the hallway you can hear snippets of conversation that reveal the substance behind the smooth facade of the courtroom.

"It says that you held the knife in a threatening manner."

"No, no, I just slashed the guy's tires."

And: "I was too weak to do it alone, I couldn't get myself together, but then I found the Lord Renee is doing it too. She's an entirely changed person, she's dropped all her old associates, that's what you have to do."

And: "she could get me off if she wanted to but she wants me to do time."

A defendant complains that he has shown up twice for a traffic violation and the police officer has not been present. "This morning there was nobody there." But the judge wonders how the case got forwarded.

"Well, the magistrate was there." But the magistrate cannot give testimony. "The representative for the cop was there too, but the cop didn't show up again." Come back in a month, says the judge.

Next case: an immigrant from the Ukraine has violated a restraining order which bars him from seeing his ex-girlfriend. He rang her doorbell and she called the police.

Through an interpreter he says, "we do not have this law in my country."

The judge: "But you do have government orders which prohibit certain things, is that right? This restraining order prevents you from seeing that women. Do you understand?"

The man agrees to plead guilty, but the judge is not satisfied that he understands his rights, so the case is rescheduled.

Next case: the defendant, currently in custody, is escorted in by the police. The defense says, "Your honor, the victim in this case does not want to testify. She went to the district attorney's office twice and they did listen to her. She had told me that if she does into want to be called in front of a grand jury and if she is called, she will not testify. Since the victim is the only witness we ask that the case be dropped."

The assistant district attorney objects strongly, although he admits he has not talked to the woman. The judge asks why he hasn't taken the trouble since the woman has been here all day. The case is rescheduled until the Commonwealth can catch up.

The lawyers and court offices huddle together at the front of the room, turning the crank on the cases The judge is clearly in charge, but if you squint it's hard to see any differences in status between the bailiffs, the clerks, the lawyers and the judge. All of them are of the system. confident in her grey-faced roles.

The faces in the back of the room change every day, but waiting is always the same.