[Mpls] Judges and jails

[Michelle Gross]

As someone who hangs around the courts a lot, I see judges and juries send 
plenty of folks to jail (and other sentences, too).  Of course, that's only 
certain kinds of folks.  Generally Black folks, Latinos and poor 
folks.  Most of the folks I've seen are first-time offenders.  Lots of them 
are representing themselves.  When we talk to them afterwards, they explain 
that they are working so they can't quite qualify for a public defender but 
they also can't afford a private lawyer.  (I won't even go into the public 
defender issue--some do an admirable job with few resources but some do a 
rotten job and pressure their clients to take bad deals.)  Some of them 
tell us they didn't do what they are accused of but they take pleas because 
they can't make bail and they need to get out of jail and get back to work, 
families, etc.  Some of them are mad because they got beat up by cops and 
then arrested and charged to cover the beating.  They know there will be 
little they can do about it so they take a plea so they can move on with 
their lives.

It may be because I spend most of my court time in room 1156, the 
arraignment courtroom, and not as much time in the drug courtroom or in 
other kinds of trials.  What I see is sad and it reminds me of a "mill" 
where people are cycled through with little thought to whether justice is 
being served.  Most of the time when the city attorney offers the person a 
deal and they accept it, the judge doesn't even make time for the person to 
say anything before handing down the sentence.  In one case I saw recently, 
the man protested his innocence but said he's taking the deal to get back 
to work.  The judge still continued through his rote speech of "do you 
accept responsibility for what you did?" to which the man replied "yes, 
but" and the judge cut him off and said "I sentence you to" and that was 
it.  One woman was given 270 days in the workhouse (minus the 50 days she 
had already spent in jail) for arguing with a city bus driver because she 
said she paid the fare and the driver said she didn't.

So maybe it is low-level "offenders" who are doing time, not actual 
criminals.  But seeing this stuff in action is a real eye opener.  I would 
strongly encourage anyone interested in this issue to take a little time 
and just go down to the government center and sit in on some hearings and 
trials.  Start in room 1156 and move around from there.  I think you would 
see that people are spending time in jail--probably just not the right people.

Michelle Gross
Bryn Mawr
At 10:09 AM 8/5/03 -0700, Barbara Lickness wrote:
Maybe we should gather up all the criminal rap sheets
the neighborhood folks have and put them in a notebook
and send them to the legislators and and ask why these
people have never spent a day in prison? Maybe it
would outrage them enough to do something. The
neighborhood activists working on this stuff have been
outraged for a long time.
TEMPORARY REMINDER:
1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.
2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject 
(Mpls-specific, of course.)
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