PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC PLACES : Pity the Docile, Pity the Innocent

The new court buildings rise from Van Nuys as the church once did from a medieval village, as if the Valley’s spiritual center. How could so much crime, so many legal doings have created these tall buildings amid such ordinariness?

Outside Department R of the Superior Court, families and loners sprawl on benches. Backs ache, babies doze, bewildered men wait, trusting the system will find them. Department R’s hours are a mystery. Sometimes the court meets at 9, sometimes later. Perhaps lunch is at 12; one day, it goes from 11:25 till 2. If there is a pattern, outsiders, sparse of language, can hardly see it. Insiders treat it as a club, walking at will through the swing door into the court’s inner sanctum, whispering, chatting, greeting other lawyers, regardless of whose future, whose life is in dispatch. Between cases, the clerk takes delicate bites of pastries. The sweetness of life on the right side of the door.

One moment a man is free; the next he is sent to a place of detention forthwith. Rights are gabbled, warnings given, as children gabble their prayers. How cozy, how deep the grooves of the system.

What is it that churns the stomach? That men in ties and jackets deal so smoothly with one another? District attorney, public defender, fixing and agreeing, and, to one side, the prisoner in jail overalls--mark of the criminal, dispossessed of identity, costumed in guilt? How monstrous that men must appear thus to be tried. “L.A. County Jail,” the association of crime, marked across their backs. If such things matter not, why clothe the judge in the majesty of office?

Pity the innocent who knows only the trusty knights of television: the furrowed brow of the devoted defender, the deep gaze, the trusty handshake. Watch the overworked defender, touching no man, looking round the courtroom blankly for clients he cannot recognize. The Spanish interpreter appears. Lawyer turns to him, talks to him, official to official. The exchange of a man’s freedom for prison, of innocence presumed for guilt untried, is negotiated without personal contact.

Docile men appear: They plead guilty, make their arrangements, acquiesce without question in the deals, speeding the system, a few days more here, a year less there. Do they know, all these clean, tidy people making their jokes as other lives are dispensed, the district attorney flicking her long nails, the clerk maneuvering dinner party arrangements on the phone with her daughter, prospective jurors in computers and insurance--do they know what life is where those blue-and-white overalls come from, the ferocity of jail?

The men who come from lockup, innocent until presumed guilty, sent back again, their rights to a speedy trial given up with a confused nod to the gabbling of prosecutor, papers missing, papers messed, defenders overworked.

And then, suddenly, one man challenges the system. LA 002823-01-1: 21 years old, small, broad shouldered, white, a wisp of beard on hollowed and spotty face, charged with murder. He has been in jail for eight months and has brought this hearing himself, demanding to be declared mentally competent, fit to stand trial.

Psychiatrists come to the stand: One talks of paranoid schizophrenia, the other cannot be sure and talks of drug psychosis, possibly temporary, at the time of his interview, two hours taken from a life, months ago.

The man insists on taking the stand. At last, the endless whispering ceases. Quietly, eloquently, he talks of drugs, dementia, fear, confusion, of medication in jail (“I was so heavily sedated I was a zombie”), of depression and endurance.

Skin-crawling suspicions: Not cooperative? Because he refused medication in jail? Insane? Because he received Jesus Christ, his spirit, his voice? Paranoid? Controlled by others? In a city of crystals, out-of-body experiences, televisual healing, film stars who once were Marie Antoinette--who has delusions? Who is to define the exact madness in which we live?

And suppose he had not fought--pugnaciously, insanely perhaps--for his right to bring his case? Suppose he had not had the chilling use of words that begged not to be sent to state hospital, buried there, restrained there probably, that pleaded to stand trial before more months had gone by and evidence faded?

Suppose, just for the sake of it, that he might be innocent. Until proven guilty. And justice for all.

Case LA 002823-01-1: hung jury. To be reheard.