Justice Served

A gavel is a powerful tool.

Last week, I took my second visit to the county courthouse in hopes of observing on a closer level the type of people, business and proceedings that happen there. What I found was somewhat shocking, but also reassuring.

I spent much of the first hour of my trip looking through the records for my public profile. I wanted to find documents that would help me paint a picture of my person’s past, but I also wanted to go through the public records process to see what was good about it and what needed to be changed.

To my surprise, the people in the records department were extremely outgoing and helpful to me while looking for different types of documents. It wasn’t a difficult process, and I actually the employees seemed genuinely interested in helping me find things that I needed, even if I didn’t necessarily always know what I should be looking for.

The second thing I wanted to achieve in my visit to the court was to examine and observe the people that were there. I wanted to see what people said, did, wore and how they interacted with other people there. I wanted to see how people acted while they didn’t think people were watching.

I made my way up to the cafeteria, and I grabbed a seat next to the glass railing overlooking the entrance. In my half hour eating and “people-watching,” I saw a person wearing a tall t-shirt with a picture of Elmo on it. He headed to the trial part of the building. I saw a woman with seven kids pick one of her children up by the leg and drag them to the escalator. I saw blacks, I saw whites, I saw young and I saw old. I noticed that people take the court system in different ways.

I saw people there in suits with lawyers and I saw people in pajama pants and sunglasses. I think what I learned is that the court system gives everyone their opportunity to express their side of a story, and an opportunity to apologize and make up for their wrong doings.

After observing the courthouse, I wanted to see the judicial system in action.

I headed to the felony trial court.

In the court, I listened to a couple of trials, but I wanted to see one that I thought could make a good public record story.

After a few cases, I listened to a trial of a middle-aged white male who was using public records to determine which houses he wanted to rob. He was a former UPS worker who was laid off, and needed income. Instead of finding a new job, he would log onto the internet and find out the property values of houses, and he said, “I would rob from the rich.”

The current-day Robin Hood was sentenced to 15 years for many cases of armed robbery.

Criminals, meet the gavel.