Verdict Is Still Out on Folk Courts

The bloodshot eyes?

He had been working for 10 hours straight.

The wobbly walk? Bad knees, that’s all.

The flunked coordination test? Cataracts, acting up again.

John Boddie, a big man in a worn flannel shirt, ran through his explanations fast. The judge listened, sympathetic. But he had other evidence to consider: The slurred speech. A brewery odor. The wildly weaving Ford. Boddie could not explain them away.

And so, the judge said: “I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re guilty.”

Guilty of driving while intoxicated. Fined and stripped of his license for months. Boddie shambled out of the courtroom, looking angry, shaking his head and muttering. Yet a moment later, he was smiling.

No, the judge had not bought his story. But, gosh darn it--and here Boddie paused, trying to come up with just the right word--the judge seemed so very personal that it was hard to stay miffed for long. “He took my feelings into consideration. He did a real good job.”

And he did it with almost no knowledge of the law.

For the judge in Boddie’s case wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t, in fact, a real judge at all.

A marketing executive, David Foubert, had been elected four times to serve as the mayor of this artsy little village near Dayton. By Ohio law, that alone qualified him to preside over Boddie’s trial--and to pronounce judgment on other drunken drivers, along with petty crooks, pot smokers and locals who violate municipal codes by letting their cats run wild or their yards turn to weed.

Friendly, home-grown justice, some call it. Biased, incompetent meddling, others snort. Either way, it’s been an Ohio tradition for close to 200 years: Mayors in towns small and large hold court to render judgment on misdemeanor cases.

A few of these makeshift judges are lawyers by training. Others have only high school diplomas. They are carpenters and grocers, pharmacists and ministers. They’re also, of course, politicians.

Their professional colleagues on the bench are not so sure they always do right by defendants. So a good many of the 450 or so “mayor’s courts” across Ohio are shutting down, forced out by a federal court ruling last summer that found the system rife with potential for abuse.

The U.S. Supreme Court has several times upheld the concept of mayor’s courts, although mayors may be sitting in judgment over friends and neighbors, even bosses, not to mention the voters they hope will support them in the next election.

The latest ruling does not strike down the system but significantly narrows the use of mayor’s courts. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, when mayors control the town budgets, they may have an incentive to find folks guilty because the fines they levy go right into municipal coffers. Rack up a few dozen speeding convictions and, presto, you can collect enough money to repair some potholes or put a new roof on the senior center.

Furthermore, the federal court found, when mayors are in charge of police forces, it may be tough for them to remain impartial if an officer testifies.

Tradition Raises Questions of Fairness

As Gus O’Neil, the attorney who challenged mayor’s courts, put it: “The mayor may be the most wonderful guy in the world, but wouldn’t you question whether you could get a fair trial from someone who’s not only the [town’s] chief law enforcement officer but who also appointed the chief of police and the arresting officer?”

Apparently, many folks wouldn’t.

Like Boddie, they appreciate mayor’s courts for giving them a chance to tell their side--and tell it to someone willing to listen, someone who isn’t sitting up high in a stern black robe, rushing through a crowded and anonymous docket.

Most defendants appear in mayor’s courts without lawyers. They question witnesses themselves, if they want to, and can present evidence without any procedural rigmarole. (If a defendant requests a jury trial or a public defender, the case is transferred to municipal court.)

Often, they simply plead no contest and ask for a second chance, trusting mayor’s courts as the last vestiges of neighborly, we-can-work-this-out justice.

“It was actually a privilege to get a speeding ticket here,” said Mike Hittle, 31, a Cincinnati resident nabbed by Yellow Springs police. (He said this after he was found guilty, as he paid the $105 fine.) “It seems like you’re on the same level [as the judge]. He wants to hear your side.”

The Yellow Springs court has continued to operate despite the recent federal ruling because the mayor has no power over the budget or the police; he doesn’t even attend City Council meetings. He earns his $2,500 annual salary by cutting ribbons, performing weddings--and presiding over the twice-monthly mayor’s court.

It’s a job Foubert relishes.

His judicial philosophy: “Let them vent.”

As he fumbles through the three-ring binder that passes as his legal library, Foubert keeps his court sessions chatty and informal--befitting a just-this-side-of-hippie community like Yellow Springs, with its organic grocery, hemp products store and public bulletin board that offers a 1971 Volkswagen bus for sale.

Foubert, like all mayor-judges, has the power to send offenders to jail for up to six months, fine them $1,000 and even issue arrest warrants. (Defendants can appeal his decisions to municipal court.) But the mayor of this town of 4,000 prefers to give folks a break. In his view, court should be “a forum where we can turn people around and set them straight so they can become valuable members of the community.”

That’s how many mayor’s courts work. Defendants accused of passing bad checks, for instance, are often given two months to settle their debts. If they do, the case against them is dismissed. Same with people caught driving without insurance. They get a chance to get legal. If they do, they’re off the hook.

Even dog-ate-my-homework excuses can win reprieves for defendants in mayor’s court, where case law doesn’t matter as much as empathy and where keeping community peace is the guiding judicial principle.

Jennifer Walker, a Yellow Springs mother of three, recalls with gratitude how one mayor in a nearby town cut the fine for her speeding ticket in half after she explained that her wailing baby had distracted her.

And in the booming Columbus suburb of Gahanna, Mayor Jim McGregor is proud to recount how he saved a respected local businesswoman from jail after she fired a gun at her abusive boyfriend. Rather than charge her with attempted murder, local police took her to mayor’s court, where McGregor sentenced her to 100 hours of service in a nursing home. “This lady was no danger to anyone else,” he reasoned. “We all do stupid things.”

To McGregor, such cases demonstrate that mayor’s courts retain a “love of mercy” that’s missing from the mainstream judicial system.

But where he sees compassion, others see incompetence and excessive leniency, even corruption.

Every critic can point to an ugly example of cronyism, like a recent case in which a mayor reduced a drunken-driving sentence for the son of a local bigwig. To one critic, who sits on a commission studying Ohio’s judiciary, mayor’s courts reek of “good-old-boy politics.”

O’Neil bluntly calls them “bogus.”

And the Akron Beacon-Journal, noting that every state except Ohio and Louisiana has long since done away with neighborhood courts, despaired in an editorial: “The law deserves better.”