The Road to Damascus

Every once in a while there's a high profile parole hearing, where everyone gets geared up on one side or the other.  (And yes, we just had one up my way.) They're usually murder cases, sometimes horrific.  There is press coverage, rehashing the crime in all its gory details.  The family (usually) protests vociferously to any parole.  The character witnesses for the prisoner are generally considered either bleeding hearts and/or easily gulled and/or sincere but mistaken. And usually the prisoner is not released.  Contrary to the television world, I would say that 90% of all violent offenders do not get released their first time up for parole, or second, or third.  And many violent offenders do not and perhaps will never get released.

This may not be a bad thing:  Charles Manson leaps to mind.  He is currently 80 years old, still residing in Corcoran State Prison in California, and that's fine with me.  The members of his "family" who participated in the Tate-LaBianca Murders (mostly tried in 1970, one in 1971) were:

• Susan Atkins - 17 parole hearings, all denied; 22 years old going in; died at 61 in prison.
• Patricia Krenwinkle - 13 parole hearings, all denied; 23 years old going in; currently 67 years old.
• Tex Watson - 14 parole hearings, all denied; 25 years old going in; currently 69 years old.
• Leslie Van Houten - 19 parole hearings, all denied; 19 years old going in; currently 65 years old.

Everyone agrees that they were manipulated by Manson; that he masterminded the horrible murders; that they were under the influence of drugs.  All had/have, over their 40+ years in prison, claimed to become born-again Christians, and/or worked with AA, NA, and other organizations, and/or transformed.  It is extremely doubtful that any of them will ever be paroled.  The crimes were too horrific (although no more horrific than others that have been committed against less famous people) and received too much publicity.

Okay.  So what about these cases?

• A 16 year old tried as an adult, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole for shooting a taxi driver in cold blood in order to get the taxi and use it to flee from the scene of a robbery the kid had just committed.
• An 18 year old Native American killed another man in a drunken brawl and was sentenced to life without parole because "he would never be a decent member of society."
• Any of the many "three strikes and you're out" life convictions for committing three felonies.

What if they clean up their act, sober up, get saved, whatever, study, work hard, participate in AA, NA, and other organizations, and/or were transformed in various ways?  Two questions:

1. Is there really such a thing as repentance and transformation?
2. Does it matter?

First one:  Can people really repent, change, transform? You would think, given the title above, that everyone who claims to be Christian would say yes.  However, after years working in the judicial system, I can tell you that most people don't believe it, at least not for certain crimes and certainly not for others.  Why?  Well, here are a few options:

1. They've - we've - all been taken one too many times; we've all been screwed big time and haven't gotten over it.
2. They can't imagine another person's life, much less that life actually changing.  How can someone, anyone, think/feel/act differently than me without being dangerously crazy, and in need of serious treatment and/or incarceration? (Well, that's what fiction is for, to explain it.)
3. Life is much easier when you maintain the "once a ___, always a ___" attitude.

But okay, say we do believe that people change.  Comes the second question, does it matter?  In other words, what is punishment really about?  I've read that it's a three-fold concept, incorporating

1. retribution and/or incapacitation (as in Old Testament/Sharia law); 
2. deterrence (although there have been studies that prove people aren't deterred by the severity of punishment; certainly in Restoration/ Victorian England, where people were hanged for stealing a handkerchief, there were still plenty of thieves because poverty was so endemic); and 
3. rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation is the interesting one:  if rehabilitation (i.e., transformation) is the goal, and if people are capable of rehabilitation, does that mean we still execute them and/or keep them incarcerated for life? And if they are rehabilitated/transformed, shouldn't we let them out, to try again, to live again?  Or is rehabilitation, while a sweet dream, an ideal outcome, irrelevant to punishment as a debt that must be paid, using time instead of money?

(Although, speaking of debts, we all know, don't we, that prison is extremely expensive? Which is part of the push towards private prisons which, frankly, scare the hell out of me, because private prisons have quotas for occupancy...  And then there's the whole thing of trying to pry all the costs for our court system out of the accused and arrested - whether or not they are found innocent.  And then there's the infamous case of the woman who died in jail because her children skipped school and someone had to pay the truancy fines and they didn't have the money, so she got to go to the equivalent of debtors' prison in Pennsylvania.)

Look, I believe in rehabilitation.  I believe in transformation.  I am not the same person I was in my teens (thank God).  And yet, I have no answers, just questions.  There are some crimes for which I'd lock people away for life.  But they may not always be the same crimes that someone else would lock a person away for life.

And then there's Saul.  He was guilty, at the very least, of accessory to murder (he held the coats as Stephen got lynched), and he was going to kill as many heretics as he could find.  And then Saul got knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus, and became a believer overnight, blinded and restored to sight by a miracle.  He eventually had to leave Damascus - in the middle of the night - and went to Jerusalem, with a new name - Paul - but that didn't fool anybody. The disciples didn't want anything to do with him, because they didn't believe that he had changed.  It was a big risk. They took some convincing.  So do we. So do I.  The question is, when is the risk worth taking? Is it worth taking? How do we know?

The Court Reporter's Tale

            One of the many problems I have with courtroom dramas (let me count the ways!  and I probably will, as time goes along) is that they ignore court reporters.  They're there, taking notes, saying nothing, and vanish whenever anything happens.  And yet they're a pivotal, important part of any court.  

            Now, I admit I don't know how it's done in New York City, but in smaller cities and rural areas, every judge has his/her own personal court reporter.  These are long-lasting relationships - some for decades.  Always symbiotic; sometimes strange; usually very professional; sometimes not; and once in a while the kind to make any court administrator wake up in a cold sweat, with the words "sexual harassment law suit" running through their minds.  And court reporters are human beings, too:  I remember one court reporter who started dating one of the witnesses, surreptitiously, who later turned out to be heavily involved with the drug-dealing defendant.  That got wild and wooly:  the court reporter got shot one night, and the only reason the court reporter wasn't fired was that the judge used all of his considerable clout to prevent it.

            Judges will use their clout to protect their court reporter, because one of the worst things that can happen to a judge, other than being caught in a motel room with a minor the day before elections, is to lose their court reporter of long-standing.  This is hell for a couple of reasons:  (1) most judges depend on the court reporter to keep track of  everything for them and (2) they're going to have to break in a new court reporter, and no one - let me repeat, NO ONE - wants to be around while that's going on.  (http://www.stus.com/stus-cartoon.php?name=Court+Reporter&cartoon=blg5807)   There's also the problem of getting transcripts, but we'll get to that in a minute.   

            It's the court reporter who makes sure that the judge's life runs smoothly.  First of all, he/she keeps the judge's calendar.  That's a lot of clout right there.  You want an early hearing?  Or a delay?  Does the court reporter like you?  Know you from Adam's off ox?  Let's just say that any smart attorney keeps in very good with the court reporter. (Note this website about "gifting" - http://promotionholdings.com/legal/court-reporter-gifting-and-lawyer-ethics/  Not that it happens very often, of course.)  By the way, when the judge calls everyone into his/her chambers for some reason?  The court reporter is there.  When the judge goes golfing?  Court reporter often goes along.  When the judge is in chambers, thinking?  The court reporter is the guard dog on the threshold. 

            Other things on a court reporter's plate:  making sure the courthouse is set up to the judge’s personal specifications.  There's a whole list of things, from proper beverage on - or under - the bench, to the various requirements of life in the judges' chambers.  Hint:  When the court reporter tells you the judge wants M&Ms or Diet Seven-Up or only blue pens, get it before the fit is pitched.  Often the court reporter is also the judge's chauffeur, driving them to and from court (and here in South Dakota, that could be a considerable distance for a traveling judge).  Court reporters are also secretaries, valets, servants...  There's a wide range of duties.   

            Oh, and yes, they also take notes.  Either the very old fashioned way by hand (Bogie movies), 

or the old fashioned way (stenotype machine), or the new paperless way. 

Now the court reporter is hired by the state or the federal government (depending on judge’s level); but the government doesn’t pay for the court reporters’ equipment (which costs about $4,500).  This means that while the court reporter is paid for taking down the hearing or trial in court, the actual notes technically belong to the court reporter, and he/she is paid again for actually transcribing them.  “Double-dipping!” claim the accountants.  “Pay for our equipment!” cry the court reporters.  “No way in hell!” scream the bureaucrats.   And the situation continues.  By the way, in case you're wondering, transcripts currently cost around $2.00-$2.50 a page, or $1.25 a minute of court time, whichever costs more.  A court reporter who works for an active judge can make a pretty good living.  It's the free-lancers who are often close to starving...

 Let's talk for a minute about the records.  The old stenotype machines have only gone the way of the dinosaurs fairly recently.  They produced a stack of paper, about 3 inches by eternity, on which the transcript is coded; this code is in shorthand, and each court reporter had his/her own shorthand on top of that.  It could be very hard for one court reporter to read another court reporter’s notes.  (And that wasn't entirely by accident:  it's called job security.)  In the old days, the court reporter would read the paper tape and type it on a typewriter.  Then a computer.  And, finally, software was developed that could take those notes and format them into a word processing mode, but, since this requires translation from the shorthand, even this gets tricky.  For example, the words “their”, “there”, “they’re” and “the air” are all coded exactly the same.  So the court reporter has to both program the software to match his/her shorthand, and also remember what was actually said in the hearing.  Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes they're not around because they're retired.  Sometimes they're dead.  

And that's when it gets tricky.  Because not all court notes get/got transcribed right away, or soon, or at all.  Think of all the hearings and trials that are held every day in every town and city:  they don't get transcribed unless they're specifically asked for.  Joe Blow pleads guilty to a DUI and gets sentenced to, say, a year's probation and time served .  Jill Smith gets caught robbing a casino, and gets 2 years.  There's a dispute over the construction of a driveway that goes to trial.  (I remember congratulating the judge on his ability to sleep with his eyes open on that one.) There's a jury trial about a possible child abuse case, and the person is acquitted.   Or one in which they're found guilty.  The paper is there, on tape, on record - but it may or may not ever be transcribed, because the real reason for transcription is a dispute over the verdict. That doesn't always happen.  Or at least, not right away.  In my days with the circuit court, I remember seeing stacks and stacks and stacks of tapes, dated and semi-labeled, that had never been transcribed, and probably never would be.  

Unless...  And what if...