by David Feige
In the morning heat, the line seems unusually long. Maybe it’s the sticky summer air, or the additional apprehension of knowing that somewhere there is a warrant out for your arrest, or because having finally decided to plead, to capitulate, you’ve become like everyone else in the line: ground down by the system, beaten by it. And now, having joined them, everything feels different. You shuffle along with the same distracted gait that everyone around you sports. The building seems grayer somehow, the chatter darker. The constant barrage of barked orders from the dozen uniformed court officers manning the magnetometers seems more ominous, more controlling, the inevitable argument or ejection, or the occasional arrest, seems profoundly part of a vast regime of calculated brutality.
Inside the courtroom, the court officer looks at you with raised, impatient eyebrows.
“I h-have a warrant,” you stammer, “and, uh, my lawyer told me to tell you and give you the docket number so I can get it taken care of.”
Scribbling the docket number on a scrap of paper, the court officer looks at you with utter indifference.
“Take a seat” is all he says.
The day drags on with the usual rhythm. One after another, the people surrounding you on the benches get up for their forty-five seconds with the judge. Your lawyer checks in once, late in the morning, and explains that because you’re a warrant, the DA’s office doesn’t have the file --you can try to see the judge and then come back another day, or wait until the afternoon, when, if you’re lucky, the DA’s office will be able to have someone find your file in the warrant room and bring it down to the courtroom.
“Let’s just get it over with,” you hear yourself murmur, agreeing to come back at 2:15.
You skip the fast-food offerings of the food court across the street. Hungry or not, it’s better to just spend a few hours quietly reading in the hallway rather than deal with coming back into the courthouse after lunch, and so you sit, waiting as the building empties out, recently released inmates bounding down the stairs, their orange jail-issue slippers flashing in the midday light, lawyers by twos and threes chatting animatedly to one another, dejected girls with tear-streaked cheeks muttering, “No, Mommy, he ain’t comin’ home today” into their cell phones.
The doors swing open around 2:20, and you are swept into the courtroom with the tide of lawyers and defendants eager to have their cases called first thing after lunch. There’s no judge on the bench; she doesn’t arrive until about ten minutes after the floating sea of humanity has settled down, and in the meantime lawyers and cops fill in the front row, a kid with an oversized Pelle Pelle jacket and dreads slumps defiantly in the last, and everyone else spreads out evenly in the six rows in between.
Your lawyer strolls in, sees you, and waves. “Hold on,” he tells you, “I need to make sure the DA’s office got your file. You still wanna just get this over with, right?” You’ve rarely wanted anything so much in your life.
“Please” is all you say.
Your lawyer and the ADA slip outside through a back door, the one the judge just came in. You get a quick glimpse of a ratty, unembellished hallway beyond, and then the door closes and the first cases of the afternoon are called. Finally, the ADA and your lawyer reappear, and your lawyer strides purposefully out through the swinging gates, hitching a finger at you, beckoning you out into the public hallway.
“There’s good news and bad news,” he says, starting abruptly. “The good news is that if you want this over today, we can still do that, and do it without pleading you guilty to a crime.” He looks at you soberly and then, plowing forward, explains: “The bad news is that we can’t get the conditional discharge back --the ADA is being all stupid about the warrant and about why it took you so long to take the plea, and so she’s back to a day of community service.”
You feel your face start to flush as the futility of trying to fight begins to sink in. You’re already imagining yourself in one of those jumpsuits, cleaning a park with one of those weird, pointy sticks designed to skewer garbage, a nasty woman with a Queens accent pestering you to hurry up; you can almost feel the shame and humiliation, the damp, cool air on your skin, the depressing view of the tumbledown urban park, the idling minivan waiting to take you back to the pick-up point, and you’re back to thinking, To hell with this --let’s go to trial, when your lawyer continues: “But she’s agreed to a fifty-dollar fine instead.” The building knot between your shoulder blades starts to subside; all of a sudden, paying the money seems like a relief --the fine like some kind of oasis, a link to a familiar world far from the lunacy of this building. A fine you can do. A fine’s fine. You almost feel grateful.
“Oh, one other thing,” the lawyer explains as he makes an undecipherable notation on his file. “With the mandatory court costs and victim services fees, that’ll actually come to almost one hundred fifty dollars --I just thought I should let you know so you’re not surprised.”
Well, you are surprised, but you’re also kind of limp, exhausted from the process, feeling as though if you could just be done with this, just get it over with, you can go back to your life, put the whole thing behind you, forget that the Bronx Criminal Courthouse even exists.
“I don’t have that much on me today,” you explain.
“Oh, no problem.” He shrugs. “You’ll have three months to pay it.”
You agree and return to the courtroom; now that it’s 3:30 or so, the audience has gotten thin. Without much ado, your case is called.
The judge starts in on you before you have a chance to say anything.
“Where were you the other day?” she demands.
You weren’t ready for this --it’s one of the only times the judge has ever addressed you directly --and you notice that just behind you, a court officer slides into place, blocking your exit, gently unsnapping the little black leather belt pouch that holds his handcuffs.
“Ah, Y-Your H-Honor,” you stammer, explaining the situation, the words tumbling out, “I called my lawyer in advance and tried to explain. I can show you proof.” The judge obviously couldn’t care less about any of it, and it feels as if things are getting out of control, when your lawyer interrupts.
“Judge,” he says calmly but firmly, “we have a disposition of this case.” This seems to back the judge off, and she turns to the ADA.
“People?”
“The People’s offer is a 140.05 and a fifty-dollar fine,” says the ADA.
The court officer seems to relax slightly.
“Your Honor,” your lawyer says, a practiced staccato rhythm taking over, “after consultation with my client, I have been authorized to withdraw all previously entered pleas of not guilty and to enter a plea of guilty to a violation of penal law section 140.05 --that’s trespass as a violation, not a crime --in full satisfaction of the docket. We’ll waive allocution and stand ready for sentence with the understanding that it’ll be a fifty-dollar fine.”
The judge listens impassively, scribbling a seemingly more complicated note on the file. “People?” is all she says.
“That’s correct, Your Honor,” says the ADA, with barely a nod in your direction.
“Fine,” snaps the judge. “Is that what you want to do?” she asks you. “Plead guilty in this case?” Her voice comes to you from far away. It’s hard to believe you are doing what you’re doing, and as you stand before the judge pleading guilty, agreeing to pay a fine for a crime you didn’t commit, there is a strange disjunction, a disconnect between your brain and your mouth.
“Yes, Your Honor,” you manage to croak.
“Now, did anyone force you or threaten you to make you plead guilty to this charge?” the judge asks. Once again, flashes of the mountain of blue slips, the interminable delays, the stress, the warrant, the lines. Your lawyer glances over at you, sensing your momentary hesitation.
“No, Your Honor,” you murmur quietly.
“And are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?”
And there it is: the ultima
te question. The judge hasn’t even looked up. In some crazy way you want your lawyer to stop this train, to pipe up and insist here and now that you take back this horrible plea, that you, an innocent person, demand your trial; you want him to protect you from what’s happening. Just like the judge and the ADA, he is simply waiting for your answer, for the moment when, under oath and in a court of law, you admit to a crime you didn’t commit.
Another moment of hesitation, and it’s just then that the judge looks up and raises her eyebrows. The air is heavy; the court officer behind you seems alert again; the prospect of coming back is too much to bear. You’ve come this far; you’re on the spot and seconds from having the whole thing over. Just do what you have to do, you tell yourself, swallowing hard.
Your lawyer turns to you, whispering, “I thought you wanted to get this thing over with?”
And then, taking a lungful of air, you grit your teeth, square your shoulders, and say it: “Yes, Your Honor.”
You barely hear the judge as she pronounces, in the same monotone you’ve heard her use a thousand times over the past year: “I accept your plea and sentence you to a fine of fifty dollars --mandatory surcharges are imposed. So, that’s one hundred forty-five dollars payable at the cashier on or before October twenty-first. Next case, please.”
And that’s it. The judge tosses --literally tosses --the stapled sheaf of papers that represents your criminal justice nightmare into a wire basket on the side of the bench, next to where the clerk of the court sits. You’re mesmerized by the slowly spinning, airborne file. The court officer melts back, allowing you to walk out, following your lawyer, who, smiling kindly, hands you a slip of paper with the amount and payment instructions, shakes your hand, wishes you good luck, and, in a single, smooth gesture, turns smiling toward yet another waiting client.
- - - -
And that’s how it goes. Day in and day out, the rage and frustration, the volume and delay, grinding people down until the only plausible option for most is to opt out of the system entirely. That’s the goal, of course: realistically, the system can only try one of every hundred cases, which means there has to be a way to make the other ninety-nine cop out. When arrest rates for minor infractions are as high as they are (in the Bronx alone, there are more than fifty thousand misdemeanor arrests a year, and citywide that figure has been as high as a quarter of a million --almost all of them tiny infractions like trespassing, train hopping, disorderly conduct, or possession of marijuana), the system must be rigged to coerce pleas. Judges know this. Everyone knows this. When the NYPD makes 62,691 marijuana arrests in a single year, there can’t possibly be enough judges, public defenders, and courtrooms to create a just hearing-and-trial system. The only alternative is to make exercising your rights functionally impossible.
Of course, the people like you --those pleading guilty to the noncriminal offenses --have it easy. As frustrating as the waiting is, it does not begin to compare with the experiences of those who are actually in jail --the more than fifteen thousand New York City residents (many of whom are incarcerated on misdemeanor charges) who on any given day are not perched on the benches where you sat, but are instead sitting in the steel cages just behind the scarred metal door at the other end of every courtroom, waiting, in jail, for their turn in court.
- - - -
I have four things left to do --four courtrooms left to visit before the day shift is done. And so, after jumping the line, passing through the metal detectors, and loping down the escalator, I’m once again juggling the probabilities and wait times, hoping that I can see everyone who needs to be seen and do everything each of them needs me to do. Cassandra’s case is to my right, Najid is to the left, Hector waits in AP-10 on the third floor, and just below that is Jaron and his drug felony.
Time to get to work.
T e n
2:37 P.M.
Tap-1 is always packed, so I figure I’ll go there first, sign in Najid’s case, and then try to sneak over to either the arraignment part to get Cassandra out or up to AP-10. As I approach TAP-1 it’s easy to spot Najid. He’s outside the courtroom in a huge, puffy lime-green down jacket. With his shaved head and expressive face, he looks like Gandhi at a fruit-themed costume party.
A charming, impish man, Najid holds an advanced degree and an enthusiasm more befitting someone about half his age. A tiny, wiry Persian with dancing eyes and a perpetual grin, he is well known as a green-space activist in the South Bronx, where he transubstantiates weedy abandoned lots into green oases of community commitment. Along with a ragtag crew mostly composed of recent college graduates, Najid runs the More Gardens! Coalition.
Najid doesn’t actually live in the Bronx --he has a small apartment in the East Village, which is often used by some of the vaguely itinerant activists who pass through his organization. Older than the bulk of his group, Najid is a kindly leader whose calm and purpose seem to animate the younger tattooed or pierced kids who come to keep the Bronx green.
The former headquarters of the More Gardens! Coalition was less than a block from our office, in a beautiful flowering garden presided over by a huge bright-yellow sunflower sculpture and a small cinder-block casita where Najid led classes for local elementary school kids, teaching them about seeds and vegetables and gardening. One rainy fall morning, the city bulldozed the casita and plowed under the garden. Najid had known that this might be happening. Though he’d helped to negotiate a large citywide agreement on the preservation of certain community gardens, he’d lost several battles over specific gardens near our office. For weeks there had been rumors about the destruction of the garden with the casita in it, but as the days passed without a bulldozer in sight, it seemed less and less likely that the city would actually destroy one of the more charming green spaces in the South Bronx.
But they did. Looking to make room for some housing they’d long been planning --two family homes that would sell for several hundred thousand dollars --the city had quietly decided that the garden had to go. The fact that there were seven large vacant lots within a block of the casita seemed to have no impact on the decision.
With negotiations at a delicate stage, and a creeping sense that the city and the developer might not be playing completely straight about their plans for the little garden, Najid often slept in the casita, hoping he wouldn’t wake to the sounds of the police or heavy machinery. But when he did, he was ready. Quickly climbing to the roof, he managed to send out a cell phone distress call just before chaining himself into a specially prepared cinderblock cylinder, in what is known in civil disobedience circles as a “sleeping dragon.”
A sleeping dragon is a length of steel pipe with a rod welded into the center. A spring clip attaches the protester’s hands to the rod in the center, making it nearly impossible to remove his or her arms without breaking them. Usually the police are forced to carefully cut through the steel pipe at the point of the weld in order to unclip the hands and remove the arms. In Najid’s case, the sleeping dragon was actually built into a cement portion of the roof of the casita, so that the police would have to cut away the concrete flute as well.
Unfortunately, when I pulled up that morning --just after 9:00 a.m. --that was exactly what they were doing. A huge crowd stood across the street, held back by fifteen or twenty policemen.
“Save our gardens!” the crowd chanted in the rain.
“Fuck your gardens,” one of the patrol cops muttered, pissed off at being stuck doing crowd control in the cold rain.
I walked up to the nearest captain, introduced myself, and explained that they had my client up on the roof --I’d done some work for the coalition in the past and had agreed to be Najid’s lawyer if anything like this ever happened.
“Well, Counselor,” said the captain, his voice making it clear that in his view Najid might as well have been a serial killer, “your client is about to get himself arrested.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s exactly why I’d like to talk to him.”
From t
he captain’s face it seemed that the only life-form lower than that of a protester was that of a protester’s lawyer.
“Not ’til we get him to the station,” the captain said curtly.
“Actually, I’d like to talk to him now, please,” I said. “He’s unarmed and alone up there, surrounded by a dozen armed men. I won’t be interfering; I’d just like to go speak to my client as I have a right to do.”
The captain seemed to consider this for a moment, and then, waving over a nearby patrolman, he hitched a thumb at me. “Make sure the counselor here stays across the street, would ya? I don’t want him around here.”
“Sure, Cap,” the patrolman --a thick guy with an Irish name --said with evident satisfaction, and then to me: “Let’s go, Counselor.”
Right or wrong on the law, they had the guns. I went.
For nearly six hours Najid held off the combined forces of the New York City Police Department. Police choppers hovered overhead, dozens of officers cordoned off the area, and two television stations shot footage of the tiny lone man chained to the roof of the little casita. All the while, community members continued chanting. “Save our gardens! Keep the Bronx green!” I found out later that the officers up on the roof were doing everything they could to break Najid. They’d crowd around him, pushing and shoving, threatening to break his arms and discussing at length all the things they were going to charge him with and the many years he could spend in jail. Several of them heaped insult and obscenity on him. Throughout it all, as they shouted into his face, Najid would smile gently and say to them, “Officers, I respect you greatly, and I know that you are good people. Be professional. Do your job. I am not going to let go, and I’m not going to come out. So do what you have to do, as professionals, and what happens to me will happen to me.”
