Courtroom 302 Read Free

“Guess we’ll just have to lop off a finger.”
    “What’s with you?” asks another deputy, of the trembling middle-aged man he’s searching.
    “I have MS,” the man mumbles.
    “Oh, he has PMS ,” the deputy announces, to his comrades’ snickers.
    There’s a method to the deputies’ malice, Sergeant Thomas says later: it’s to let the prisoners know immediately who’s in charge in the courthouse. “Control is something we cannot relinquish,” the sergeant says. “If we did that, we’d be fucked up right away. Extremely.” The twenty or so deputies who work a bond court shift are watching at least sixty and sometimes more than a hundred prisoners. The deputies carry no weapons, to eliminate the risk of a prisoner seizing one. “We’re armed with gloves, handcuffs, and attitude,” Thomas says.
    But the deputies’ tone also expresses their sentiments about the prisoners. Those marched into the basement are cloaked in the presumption of innocence—in theory. The prevailing wisdom down here, however, is: if they’re so innocent, why’d they arrive in handcuffs?
    “We get the dregs of humanity here,” says Lieutenant John Hopkins, tonight’s watch commander in the courthouse. “If these people moved in next door to you, your lawn would die.”
    Hopkins believes in the golden rule. Treat the prisoners respectfully, he instructs his deputies, and don’t get rough if you’re not provoked. But some of his deputies are a little too eager to do unto others, he concedes, believing “that the only justice is at the end of a good right cross.” Hopkins doesn’t spend much time in the basement, allowing Sergeant Thomas to run the show down here most evenings. Hopkins says an occupational hazard of his job as watch commander is “the stiff neck you can get from looking the other way.”
    Sergeant Thomas, a tall, muscular African American, says the deputies threaten violence a lot more than they deliver it. Every now and then, though, certain prisoners require “a little— positive reinforcement ,” he says with a chuckle.
    When the deputies have finished their pat-downs and the prisoners have been allowed to retrieve their coats from the pile, Thomas strides to the center of the group—the head coach with the final pregame chat, now that his assistant has warmed up the team. “I want to have a nice, quiet night,” he tells the prisoners. “I want to get done, have a drink, and go home. Gentlemen, your situation’s fucked up enough as it is. You don’t need it any more fucked up.”
    It’s time to move these first twenty-five men to a bullpen around the cornerto make room for another batch at the door. Bullneck instructs his prisoners to follow another deputy down the hall—single file, hands behind their backs, of course. Shoves and shouts from Bullneck and his colleagues chase the line of prisoners on their way: “Get the fuck going!” “Keep moving, dick head!”
    A different deputy gives the welcoming speech to the second bedraggled collection, reminding these men “what a fucked-up bunch of smelly motherfuckers” they are. There’s never a lack of volunteers among the deputies for the honor of delivering the welcoming talk, with each succeeding speaker trying to outbadass the last one. “Some of ’em get off on it more than others,” Sergeant Thomas says.
    A prisoner at the entrance complains of dizziness. He fell and hit his head shortly before his arrest, he tells Thomas. Thomas surveys the man’s head for cuts or swelling, finds none. Almost every night the sergeant has to do a diagnosis such as this. Anyone who insists he needs medical care will be taken to nearby St. Anthony Hospital—Holy Tony’s, as the deputies call it. But Thomas discourages the trips when he’s not convinced of the need. He knows some of the prisoners are merely trying to postpone their date with jail. The regulations require two deputies to accompany each prisoner who goes to the hospital, so Thomas