Byron Pepper

Farther, stage left, built next to the wall, the tank holds 12 prisoners.

The courtroom door swings open. The eyes of the family of Julio Hernandez (felony case number 107301) lock on the tall man - tie swinging, jacket flying - who veers toward them. Never quite breaking into a run, he feints past a No Firearms Permitted sign, zigzags between tight knots of men and women crowding the county courthouse second floor hallway, and stops, smiles, puts out a hand, and at 9:45 on this summer morning, gazes down into ten brown eyes, and in British-accented English says, “I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you."

Bailiff Cesar Cisneros: "Once they start to move their arms, you know pretty soon they’re going to start yelling."

Byron Pepper

The white-haired mother, her two sons, daughter, daughter-in-law have waited outside the door marked Felony Arraignments since the courthouse opened at 8:00 (even earlier, when the sky was turning pale gray, they huddled near the formidable West Broadway entrance and watched pigeons twittering along the walkway, pecking garbage).

Courtroom entry

Byron Pepper

The mother grips a grease-spotted sack. The younger woman’s belly rides high under a maternity smock. All wear Sunday clothes. What, the family asks Office of Public Defenders’ Robert Carlin (everyone talks at once), has Julio done? Why is Julio here? We do not understand. He is a good boy. Any day, a father. It must be a mistake. Is he hurt? Can we see him?

The white-haired mother, her two sons, daughter, daughter-in-law have waited since the courthouse opened at 8:00.

Byron Pepper

Weariness shadows Carlin’s deep-set eyes; he appears dangerously, cadaverously thin and also loose-jointed, somebody who exercises, an athlete. Cataracts of Brit English spill into halting Spanish as London-born Carlin explains the arrest, charges. Office of Public Defenders, the jail, courtroom procedure, bail. The family looks perplexed. Carlin turns to the mother. “Mr. Hernandez perhaps will be able soon to leave jail. Perhaps soon.”

Public defender Robert Carlin turns to the mother. “Mr. Hernandez perhaps will be able soon to leave jail. Perhaps soon.”

Byron Pepper

Mrs. Hernandez passes the sack to the son next to her, whispers in his ear — hair newly, rawly cut, his ear appears huge. He bobs agreement, turns back to Carlin, “She has brought Julio’s clothes, some food.”

Judge Knoepp: “I think the time to prove yourself may be coming soon."

Byron Pepper

“No, no,” Carlin protests, he can’t take the clothes, food. Anguish twists his features. “Soon,” he promises, Mr. Hernandez’s case will be called. “Soon.”

Judge Knoepp: "I will look at the defendant and try to get some feel for who this person is."

Byron Pepper

Julio Hernandez’s pregnant wife bursts into tears. Carlin winces. Puts out a hand toward the family. Promises. Right before Mr. Hernandez is brought into court, he will come out to get them. “Soon.” Carlin bites his lip. Turns away. The eyes follow him as he strides rapidly bade into the courtroom.

Milly Durovic: "Did it ever occur to you the reason he’s in this system is he doesn’t have any hope?"

Byron Pepper

Quick glimpse past the No Firearms Permitted sign, into felony arraignments court (“FA,” lawyers call it) reveals a vast, ill-lit, windowless, achingly ordinary room. A uniformed marshal patrols the wide aisle. The aisle divides the spectators’ section into two ranks of seven rows. In each row ate six wooden-backed chairs with fold-up seats. Almost all chairs are filled. The room smells foul: women’s perfumes, sweat, aftershave, grease from fast, cheap breakfasts and stale tobacco smoke and maybe, fear.

Ronald Pancoast: “I am paid for my time, so I’m able to spend more time with the case, it’s as simple as that."

Byron Pepper

A wooden bar, the Bar of Justice, separates spectators from judge’s bench, from tables for prosecution and defense, from a glass holding tank, from clerks of the court and court reporter. The bench looms at the room’s far end. A platform sheathed with wood paneling, the bench elevates Municipal Court Judge Terry Knoepp six feet above the floor.The U.S. flag’s red, white and blue and California’s bear offer the room’s only color.

Deputy D.A. Jay Coulter: "Before, working as a D.A. was almost like being an intern in a hospital.”

Byron Pepper

Below, the bench, stage right, is the prosecutor’s or People’s table; stage left, defense. Between the two tables stands the podium from which defense attorneys plead in behalf of their clients. Farther, stage left, built next to the wall, the tank holds 12 prisoners. Stage right, bookcases line the wall. No books. All this resembles a hastily erected set for a high school play — sketchy, partial, sufficient only to compel suspension Of disbelief.

Papers in hand, Robert Carlin strides from defense table to podium. A marshal takes a husky male to Carlin’s side. As ordered by the marshal, the prisoner tucks his hands deep into navy-blue jail pants (along pants’ outer seam, in white: SD JAIL). His plastic jailhouse flip-flops scuff floor. He scans spectators, row after row, eyes stop at two women, one all gray curls and the other Monde. Gray curls puts arm around Monde. Prisoner blinks, lowers eyes, turns, feces judge. Prisoner’s hair is wet-combed into a ducktail. Neck, no-sun white. Across back of navy-blue shirt: SD JAIL.

At the podium, the marshal positions himself directly opposite the defendant, eyes pinned on him. Carlin speaks into the prisoner’s ear. The prisoner nods. Cariin squares his shoulders.

Again the sonorous Brit English, meted out in musical, scandalously resonant tenor: “Your Honor, Robert Carlin, Public Defenders Office, on behalf of Gregory Allen Davis, whose name is as it first appears on this complaint. Mr. Davis has been advised of the charges against him and has read the complaint and has been advised of his Constitutional rights and signed an acknowledgement form to that effect. He will be entering a plea of not guilty and re-questing court-appointed counsel. There will be no time-waiver, Your Honor. He will submit on issue of hail and waive bail review.”

Judge Knoepp responds. “Not guilty plea entered. There will be no time waiver. Bail will be set at $10,000.” The judge’s voice also resonates, consuming courtroom silence, and his enunciation, like Carlin’s, makes thee most of each word.

The calendar clerk, seated on the bench at a lewd lower than the judge, announces, in pleasant sing-song: “Public Defenders appointed!” From the People’s table, a deputy district attorney intones: “One hour.”

Restating the People’s estimation of trial time, the calendar clerk calls out: “One hour!” Gregory Allen Davis turns his head toward the two women, fives a Mazing glance. Frowning, the marshal hurries Davis into a stage-left door.

Then, as if to introduce the next — perhaps more amazing, mote daring— act in a glitzy vaudeville, the calendar clerk sings out: “Page 2, item 5 of the ID o’clock: calendar. John Mclntire, arraignment.”

Marshals wearing plastic gloves half-lead, half-carry Mclntire to a chair near the bench. A tall man who can’t weigh 100 pounds, Mclntire crumples on the seat, head drops onto his chest. He is dressed in a hospital gown. His dark skin appears powdered with ash, his hair frizzes out every which way. He groans.

Mclntire’s attorney, dapper in pinstriped navy blue, turns to the bench. “Your Honor, my client waives formal reading of the complaint, pleads not guilty, waives reading of the additional allegations.”

Judge Knoepp: “Not guilty plea entered.” The attorney speaks: “Your Honor, Mr. Mclntire will not be able to hear you. You will have to speak three times louder than you are speaking.”

Mclntire groans, spasms shake his frail body. His lawyer looks to Judge Knoepp, “Your Honor, back in the hold, I had to yell at him before he could hear me. I did go over his status with him. Mr. Mclntire is willing to waive time for the purpose of getting the 90-day continuance and does request an OR release.” Judge Knoepp returns, “Ninety-day continuance, OR release, granted.”

Calendar clerk, ebullient still, proclaims: “Page 3, item 1 of the 10 o’clock calendar...

A white male, wiry thin under blue jail shirt, stands accused of repeatedly bashing his father’s head against the dining room door frame. The deputy district attorney diffidently notes recurring complaints of domestic violence against the defendant. The defendant yells out, “I’m stunned; these are lies.” Judge Knoepp’s eyebrows rise, twitch. The defendant yells, louder, “Lies, they’re all lying.” The marshal, gripping handcuffs, steps up to restrain the defendant who again cries out, “Lies. Judge, this woman,” he points toward the deputy, “is repeating lies about me.”

The courtroom door swings shut for a moment, then opens again as two attorneys, briefcases in hand, plunge into the hall. They stop, two pairs of gleaming cordovan wing tips lock toe-to-toe. One man says to the other, “This is make-a-deal day. You give me what you have, I give you what I have.”

The second lawyer cocks an eyebrow, smiles a smile with a lot of teeth. “I am only speaking hypothetically, you understand.” His next sentence vanishes into whispers.

“I’m a reasonable man,” notes the first.

To which the whisperer responds, purring, “They’re rare these days, reasonable men.”

Tacked to a bulletin board outside the courtroom, computer printouts announce the day’s cases. Page 1, item 7 of the 10 o’clock calendar lists defendant Kathy Elias, charged with six counts of forgery (PC470x6), and one count of prostitution (PC647fbJ), and four counts of forgery of a credit card (PC484f[2Jx4). PC stands for penal code; the numbers — 470, 484 — represent numbers allotted these statutes by the legislature.

In California a felony is any crime that is “prison-presumptive,” punishable by state prison or death. A person arrested for a felony normally will be taken to jail by the arresting officer, booked, placed in custody. Once a year, Superior Court judges gather to set booking bail. When a person is booked into jail, his bail will be set according to that schedule (if the arresting officer does not agree with scheduled bail, he can file a supplemental form for increase). If the arrested person can make bail, he can get out of custody; if he can’t, he stays in jail.

Within two court days, the arrestee must be arraigned or released (persons arrested Friday evening can be held until Tuesday afternoon, and Tuesday afternoon is FA’s busiest time). During the two court days, police officers file arrest reports, reports are approved by SDPD supervisors and taken to the DA. There, charges are filed and the complaint sent to FA, where the case is placed on calendar or, in courthouse jargon, “calendared.”

A person charged with a felony is brought into FA to be advised formally of the People’s charges. The person — at this point transformed into “the defendant” or, in courthouse parlance, “the D” — through an attorney (court-appointed or privately retained) will plead guilty or not guilty and may argue for bail reduction or release on his own recognizance (OR). If the judge rules against bail reduction, the defense may ask for bail review. The calendar clerk will then set dates for further hearings — bail review, dispositional, preliminary.

If the charge is 187 — murder — and the slaying uncommonly bloody or victim prominent, you will read about it in newspapers or see the crime scene flickering off the television screen: yellow coroner’s tape aflutter across an open door, body bag wheeled on a gurney toward an ambulance, tearful neighbors and next of kin. But most felonies — 500 to 600 per week — that go through FA earn no mention. No one will read about John Mclntire, of whom a man in the hallway whispers: “That guy’s in the last stages of AIDS.” No one will see anything on the evening news about Gregory Allen Davis, whose mother or mother-in-law, and girlfriend or sister or wife, stand in the hallway, the older woman wiping tears off the cheek of the younger. Gregory Allen Davis has been charged with two counts of 459, armed robbery. He has two priors for petty theft and delivery of a controlled substance. “Be strong for him,” the older woman counsels the younger. “Be strong.”

The corridor where the two women stand, where Julio Hernandez’s family waits, stretches 40 feet. Benches line the hall. Over years, hundreds of haunches wriggled nervously, wore wood satin smooth; and under benches, gum chewers have stuck pink wads. Above benches, smeared windows look down onto the courthouse’s C Street back door and across to the jail where prisoners, packed 40 and 50 to a cell, peek out from barred windows.

Nearby, out of immediate sight, parking lots glitter with lawyers’ automobiles — BMWs, Mercedeses, Porsches, Cadillacs, and high-end Japanese models. Copy shops, bailbondsmen’s storefronts, and lawyers’ offices line streets. From these offices, secretaries head for the courthouse, pulling luggage carriers loaded with boxes stuffed with legal briefs. Lawyers hurry to and from the courthouse, carrying briefcases, younger attorneys lugging newer, slimmer models, older hefting worn cases with sweat-stained handles (defendants bring legal papers to court in plastic bags from Thrifty Drugs and Vons).

All this around the courthouse and inside, on seven floors, exists to expedite delivery of defendants — the Ds — the chow, custodies, dirtbags, garbage into the maw of the criminal justice system. FA is the doorway into this system, “a court of first instance.” Its largest task in a number of cases is arraignment, second is bail review, third is sentencing, and fourth is further proceedings — diversion and extradition. Lawyers describe FA as a catchall; say it has a grab-bag aspect. They also compare FA, with its hour-after-hour succession of crises, to an inner-city emergency room.

Inside FA, a middle-row seat, stage right, affords a view into the glassed holding tank or “pen.” Screen wire stretches across the tank’s ceiling, permitting none-too-fresh courtroom air to enter and prisoners to preview, one after another, the five-minute dramas in which they soon will star.

It is 10:30. Eleven males wait in the box — two white, three Hispanic, six black. Some crouch, heads hidden in hands. Some impassively observe court proceedings. One unabashedly ogles female prisoners, who, segregated from males, sit immediately outside the tank on straight chairs. Dressed in jail sweatshirts and slacks, the two black females and one Hispanic appear to chat as companionably as ladies chat over luncheon tables.

Faded navy-blue jail uniforms appear even shabbier when set against standard courtroom dress. For while East County lawyers may show up in cowboy boots and a Mervyn’s blazer and courtroom gossip has it that “up in Family Law court, everybody’s dowdy,” downtown criminal lawyers, prosecution and defense, male and female, in general are gorgeously turned out. Bally loafers, Ferragamo pumps, Armani jackets, Ralph Lauren suits, silk blouses, tailored shirts with French cuffs, and wonderful patterned silk ties as rich as medieval tapestry flow down over shirts. Male hair variously has been brush cut, high on sides, short to long on top. French braids are popular; few women sport short butch cuts. On most, rivers of hair flow gloriously onto and past shoulders, and at least in FA, much of that hair is blonde.

An attorney from the Office of Public Defenders (in courthouse jargon, PDs) addresses the bench in behalf of his client, a black male whose large nose appears twisted to one side. “Your Honor, my client will be entering a plea of not guilty and requesting court-appointed counsel. There will be no time waiver; he will submit on issue of bail and waive bail review.”

Judge Knoepp turns to the prosecution. “What is the People’s recommendation on bail?”

Noting the defendant is charged with two counts of 245A, rape, that he has three priors, the deputy asks for bail in the amount of $1 million. Judge Knoepp nods: “Not guilty plea entered. Bail will be set at $1 million. Bail review waived.”

As the marshal hustles the accused rapist (who shuffles his feet one in front of the other like a man who has spent time in the ring) out of the courtroom, the calendar clerk, voice still spirited, calls out: “Page 5, item 2 of the 10 o’clock calendar. Enrique Armando Ibarra, arraignment.”

At the prosecution table, deputy DA Jay Coulter, team leader for the Municipal Court Division, leans forward in one of two almost majesterial leather chairs and studies case files. The Municipal Court Division fields eight working deputies and three supervisors. As division team leader, Coulter handles felony arraignment in the morning and, in the afternoon, administrative tasks. Trim in pinstriped grey suit, the 51-year-old Coulter’s even features draw together into austere, almost prim expression. Coulter occasionally interrupts his reading to greet one of the deputies come down to court from offices upstairs on one of the three floors that house the district attorney’s staff.

The role of the DA’s office is to represent the People of the State of California in all criminal prosecutions. The San Diego County DA’s office employs some 240 attorneys, working out of offices in Vista, Kearny Mesa, El Cajon, Chula Vista, and the downtown courthouse. The office maintains several special units. More serious felonies — sexual assault, gang violence, domestic violence, child molestation, heavy narcotics charges, fraud — are handled by these units. Deputies in these divisions come down to FA when cases assigned their units are called for arraignment.

In chairs lined up beneath the empty bookcases, deputies, case files on laps, wait for their cases to be heard. Conspicuous camaraderie exists among these deputies. Between defendant’s appearances, they chat quietly or banter and tease, and, when one of their number argues a point, all listen, engrossed.

The county-funded Office of Public Defenders provide an attorney to arraign the defendant if he has not retained a private attorney. From the defense table, at which PDs preside, Robert Carlin, two PD staff members, several interpreters and two county revenue and recovery agents rush in and out of the courtroom. They interview and counsel prisoners before arraignment, coordinate defendants’ and attorneys’ court appearances, prepare the multitudinous in-triplicate forms required by court and county, and take the podium to plead defendants.

PDs field three felony teams; each team is responsible for a week’s duty in FA. Milly Durovic is one of the felony team’s leaders. This is Durovic’s team’s duty week, and Durovic from time to time checks in at the defense table. (Of attorneys who come in and out of FA, only Durovic eschews a briefcase; she carries a day pack — black ripstop nylon — slung over her shoulder. Likewise, Durovic eschews an automobile and almost daily rides her bike from home to downtown. On hot days, she goes barelegged, and when she strides on long legs into court, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear, moving as gracefully in her backless high-heeled pumps as most women do in sneakers, her tanned and smoothly muscled calves do not go unheeded by admiring males.)

At the podium, Enrique Armando Ibarra’s attorney has slipped into the spot held seconds ago by the attorney defending the alleged rapist. The marshal brings Ibarra, a compactly built man on whom the jail’s navy-blue jail pants pull tightly across thighs and buttocks, to his attorney’s side. Ibarra jitters from foot to foot, flinches and starts. The attorney addresses the bench. “Your Honor, Mr. Ibarra has been advised of the charges against him and has read the complaint and has been advised of his Constitutional rights and signed an acknowledgement form to that effect.

He will be entering a plea of not guilty and requesting court-appointed counsel. We will be requesting supervised OR release.”

“Not guilty plea entered.” Judge Knoepp looks down toward A1 Arena, standing at the prosecution table. “Mr. Arena, what are your recommendations for bail?”

Arena taps his pen against an open case file. “Considering he is single, that he has no real family ties, no job, owns no property, I don’t think supervised OR is reasonable. There were 135 grams of meth in the motel room registered in his name. There were scales and packaging material in the room.”

Judge Knoepp nods. “I don’t see an OR. I might, however, reduce bail.”

Arena responds. “Your Honor, this is a presumptive state prison case. The amount of narcotics involved in this case is in excess of 135 grams of methamphetamine. The defendant really has no ties to the community, he has no job except one he listed as a landscaper with someone by the name of Eduardo. Clearly, I don’t think that’s enough at this point to attach any credence to. I think a lack of a job, I think a lack of any family ties, of any ties to the community, the fact he does have a national status with a foreign country, certainly in this situation it would be easy for the defendant to go back over the border and evade the process of the court, in light of the fact he is looking at presumptive state prison for alleged chaises against him. Therefore, I think $20,000 would be appropriate at this time.”

Spectators stare forward with strained eyes. Several fight sleep. Judge Knoepp thanks Arena, sets bail at $15,000, then calls for a 15-minute recess.

At closer range. Judge Knoepp appears particularly youthful for a man in his early 50s. What lines the slender face has accumulated are lines acquired by what must be a genial good nature. Not that clouds do not pass over the face and draw its aspect downward. They do. It is an emotional face, giving away his response to what goes on before him. Now, his features drawn into perturbation, he stands, black robe billowing off his shoulders. Speaking to no one in particular, he sighs: “We still have a long calendar.” He steps down out of the bench, nimbly taking the stairs, and disappears through the door, stage right, into his chambers.

In the hall, I talk with Cesar Cisneros. As bailiff overseeing FA, Cisneros serves as the room’s traffic cop. He is responsible for courtroom security, keeps tab on which attorneys are ready to appear, and confirms that defendants have been brought up from jail.

I ask Cisneros about the man in court earlier about whom I’d heard said he has AIDS. “We’re not allowed to say what that guy had. Something contagious is all I can say. We’re there to assist him, make sure he doesn’t do anything wrong, we use rubber gloves for the precaution.”

Do marshals often wear rubber gloves?

“It’s common. A lot of contagious diseases around. Hepatitis we see more than anything else.”

Were most defendants arraigned in this courtroom housed downtown?

“All the custodies are stored wherever they’re supposed to be. Most custodies that have cases downtown will be housed downtown. We get busloads from South Bay, a busload from El Cajon. So every day we’re getting busloads from different courthouses that come down here to handle their matters.”

Do marshals chat with custodies?

“Depends on how busy we are. Basically, only to start up a conversation. I don’t make them mad; that’s when you have fights. Our job is to be here in case we’re needed. We’re needed every now and then, as you could see this morning, that guy [the man who disputed charges against him of family violence] was about to go off. But he didn’t, we stopped him. Once they start to move their arms, you know pretty soon they’re going to start yelling, then you never know. They want to put in their two cents.

“When we work in the tanks with custodies, we take off our guns, because if there’s a fight, it’s easy for them to take our guns. If there’s a fight in back, we hit an alarm; within ten seconds or so, ten deputies may show up. That’s how most fights are stopped. Everybody jumps in, grabs a person, puts him in handcuffs.

“When we’re in court, we’ll have a gun, maybe a stun gun. We have tear gas that we try not to use. In court you don’t want to use that; everybody will get sprayed.”

Tanned, blonde Brenda Dailey, this morning’s DA duty officer at the prosecution table, walks out the courtroom door, turns to Cisneros, smiles, says, “I’d rather pull my nails out than to be put through another one of these mornings!”

Cisneros returns Dailey’s smile. “Another one of those days.”

Right behind Dailey, Judge Knoepp walks briskly down the hall. “That was quite a morning! They all had problems, some little twist, so rules of thumb did not apply,” he says to Cisneros, adding, “We’ll probably be here until 12:30 or so.”

Does FA always run so slowly? “It depends,” says Cisneros. “Sometimes attorneys talk for a long time, sometimes the judge talks for a long time, sometimes cases aren’t ready, you have to wait for certain attorneys to show up at court. That’s what’s unpredictable. And felony cases tend to take longer than misdemeanor. You got to take your time taking felony cases.” Cisneros points out the No Firearms Permitted sign. “When we have a gang sweep, we have a metal detector out here. A lot of people come to watch the gang matters. We have the guy here with the metal detector; they won’t go in. We can’t say they had weapons on them,” Cisneros smiles, “but they won’t go in.’’ What does he say to friends when he describes his job?

“You say, ‘Do you ever see The People’s Court? Where the guy walks the defendant in?’ ” Cisneros smiles, then turns serious. “Working here, you get to see it from inside. You know the frustration victims have. Because defendants end up having a lot of rights. Sometimes, you know the defendants don’t have rights, you can see their side of the story. A lot you hear is real gory. You can’t let it get to you. Some people can’t take it, hearing the bad stuff in court. But that’s part of the job. If you can’t take it, you gotta do something else. This job opens up your eyes to what’s going on out there. You don’t know how bad it is out there until you’ve been in here.”

Court again in session, the defense pleads for lesser bail for a black male charged with arson. When Judge Knoepp denies his request, a woman in the second row rises. “You bastard,” she shouts at Judge Knoepp. “You goddam fuckin’ bastard! Me and my kids going to be out on the street.” Judge Knoepp swallows hard.

Marshals rush the alleged arsonist out of court, eyes turn on the woman, who wails, tears streaming her cheeks. Two marshals speed toward her. Blonde Jennifer Hart, a PD staff member, jumps from her chair at the defense table and hurries to the woman. Hart puts an arm around the woman, walks her out into the hall. The door shuts. Seconds pass. Even in a middle aisle seat, the woman’s keening can be heard.

Over the next 30 minutes, a black mother of three children is charged with two 459s, noted as having 12 FTAs (failures to appear), and is refused bail; a Hispanic woman is charged with taking AFDC overpayment; a Caucasian male pleads not guilty to a series of car thefts; a Hispanic male pleads not guilty to possession and sale of drugs; a Caucasian couple pleads guilty to taking AFDC overpayment. A Caucasian male charged with possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) for sale pleads not guilty and complains that his money — 18 $20 bills — was taken at the time of arrest. He wishes the money returned. The deputy replies sharply: “The prosecution, being of a cynical bent, wants to make sure that money is not drug-related.”

As each defendant leaves the podium, some gesture of Judge Knoepp’s — brief tightening between eyebrows, a squint, brush of fingertips across his forehead, transient grimace — accompanies that defendant’s departure. Then, ever so slightly, as if to clear thought, he shakes his head, and when the next defendant arrives before him, Judge Knoepp’s attention turns fixedly to that man or woman.

Seconds before noon, Robert Carlin ushers the Hernandez family (white-haired mother still gripping the grocery sack) into the courtroom to hear Julio Hernandez and two co-defendants plead not guilty to delivery of a controlled substance. Carlin is not able to convince Judge Knoepp to release Hernandez on his own recognizance.

FA is not in session again until two. Shortly before one, I go to the Office of Public Defenders’ downtown headquarters in the City Centre Building. I take the elevator to Robert Carlin’s small fourth floor office: littered desk, two chairs facing it. Workout sweats tossed onto carpet, Italian jacket slung with exquisite don’t-give-a-shit carelessness on coathook. Letters neatly printed on notebook paper and children’s drawings flutter on a bulletin board. Carlin has stacked law books in a bookcase, and between books, an electric teapot, a cantaloupe (whose aroma indicates ripeness). Next to the bookcase hang his Phi Beta Kappa certificate, UCLA law school diploma. Postcards with African and Afro-American subjects (Ethiopian children in a food line; starving black child’s shriveled hand; Keith Haring’s Free South Africa poster; and more happily, a picture of Big Bill Broonzy) glut remaining wall space.

“I don’t speak anywhere near as much Spanish as I should. But I was trying to help,” says 34-year-old Carlin about the Hernandez family. “They did not know what was going on, they were intimidated, God bless them.”

Carlin’s fingers tap out da-da-da-dums. “The system is especially intimidating for Spanish-speaking folks... ” the fingers stop tapping “ ... and it’s really, really sad to see. Many are trying to regularize immigration status. Some really have no status. You get them in with traffic tickets, and they will get themselves in a huge mess, perhaps, for not appearing in court for those tickets.”

Carlin is readying for transfer from a misdemeanor team to Milly Durovic’s felony team (each teams fields 16 to 18 lawyers), a step up in PD hierarchy. For now, like other misdemeanor team members, he is assigned a morning or afternoon each week at FA’s defense table.

“As you noted, it’s a busy courtroom, a mill. You probably could have a chimpanzee work it. A chimp could do it. It’s supermarket justice, bare minimum. Before arraignment, defendants don’t get as much counseling as they should. Sometimes I feel terrifically sorry for clients when they are at the podium, because they think you and the judge and DA are talking around and about them with obfuscating legal talk.

“Also, once you’re before the judge, it all happens so rapidly. Before arraignment, I say to clients, ‘Once you are out there, it is going to go quickly; and once it is over, they are going to whip you off, and you’ll be back in the tank, and you’ll be saying to yourself, “This English motherfucker didn’t tell me this or this or this!” So, I want you to tell me now, Do you understand? Do you have any questions?’ ”

Carlin plunges on. “I love what I do here. I am very proud of what I do. Our office and Legal Aid lawyers, ACLU-type lawyers, we all do the dirty work, work no one else wants to do. We do it for clients no one else wants to deal with.

“The DA’s office can bask at least in the gratitude of the public. The public likes the prosecutors because they are perceived to be doing a wonderful job.

“Judges, for the most part, are not interested in our clients. Judge Knoepp is an exception. He maintains his humanity in spite of felony arraignment’s sheer volume. He can’t always accommodate, but he will listen. Some judges might be less willing to listen to you make a pitch for someone; therefore, they may cut you off halfway through. But judges have a different role than defense or prosecution. They have an all-encompassing obligation to the community at large, to the law, to the Constitution, and to the defendants.”

Carlin sighs. “And people on the street? They think we are trying to put bad people back out on the street, which is not the crux of our job.” Carlin leans forward, bolts me with his eyes. “The crux of this work is to protect the system and to protect people from the system. The system should not convict people who are not guilty, nor should it convict people by irregular means. Many think the answer is lock them up and throw away the key. It isn’t. There are people who can be rehabilitated.

“The answer is God knows what. Most people know what the answer is, but it is never going to be put into effect. People don’t want to pay the tab.

“People scream for more jails, more police. So many people out there can’t read, can’t write, are never going to get a job. No one they know has a job. They smoke a little rock. They go to jail for it. They are not hurting anybody. If they are hurting anybody, they’re hurting only each other.

“There are little old ladies in La Jolla terrified these black kids are going to come and beat and rob them to get drug money. That rarely happens; the more frequent victims ate rock-smokers’ brothers, sisters, peers.

“These people — our defendants — are human and sometimes aren’t treated as such, and maybe that’s part of why they are in court in the first place, because not to be treated well is standard practice for their lives, womb to grave. Many people, they say, ‘Oh, these bleeding hearts!’ and T don’t want to hear about this kid who was abused as a child.’ But people are people. Fundamentally, we all operate at the same level of emotion. Tbu take any mother’s son to jail, and that mother will cry, I don’t care who she is.”

I ask Carlin to tell me about die defendants. “You see more men there than women, and some of those guys are going away for a long time. You will find some defendants gregarious, some bitter. Many are very desperate. Many are numb. What will surprise you is how normal they are. You sit on a bench in die tank, and you say, ‘Hello, Mr. Smith, how are youT And you look at the paper, and you discover, ‘Mr. Smith, my God, has beat accused of taking the life of another!’ You would be surprised how very polite and lucid and pleasant many of these people are. They are often quite shrewd. Intelligence and wisdom take marry different forms. Some may not be die most erudite and literate persons, but some are very simp.

“On the other hand, people who have been through the system, done time in the penitentiary, you think would be more world-wise. They have the right not to speak to a police officer without a lawyer present, and yet you’d be amazed how often they spill the beans or their guts.

“Back in the tanks, you can find yourself sitting next to someone accused of murder or 20 counts of rape. They are not handcuffed. I sit there with them as if I were sitting at a bus stop at the comer. I sit down with die person, I don’t sit down with the crime.

“This job can be very sad,” Carlin, a great heaver of sighs, a man who sighs with his whole soul, sighs again. “You see so many people who aren’t bad people, they are really not.”

Carlin tells of a female client he represented on drug charges. She was stunned, he says, “that public defenders took her case to trial. It was the first time anyone had stood up for her.

“She and I were talking. She broke down, said, ‘My father never, ever told me “I love you.” The only time he ever conies to see roe is to ask me for drugs. He never comes and puts his arms around me and says, “Baby; I love you.” ’

“That tore me up, it really did. It tore me up.

“And yes, she’s a fool, and she’s silly, and she’s made mistakes; but she’s not a bad person, she’s sad. There are bad ones, sure, but no one is born bad. All of us make mistakes.

“People forget that. You’d be amazed at the number of offenses that are drug-related. We, the white middle class, easily get self-righteous about drug-related crimes. Yet statistics show the incidence of drug use is higher among white Americans than black Americans. And most white Americans can afford to buy their drugs, they don’t have to steal a stereo to pay for their drugs.

“Some pay a higher price for mistakes. In my work I see things that make me cry. I look at some people, and what has happened to them makes me literally weep.

“The system is cockeyed in its lack of equality. Someone who drives under the influence of alcohol, the first time, their fine is $1000, whether they are a restaurant busboy who speaks no English and makes $200 a week or they’re a lawyer who makes $2000 a day.’’

Carlin’s phone rings. He answers, puts his hand over the mouthpiece, explains, “A client in custody in jail.” Phone back in its cradle, Carlin says to me, “The jail population is human; they have daughters, wives, sons, mothers. They can often be perfectly decent human beings who have made one mistake or two mistakes or who have one certain facet of character that goes off.

“Like, my brother. I have a brother in England who is a sweet, kind, wonderful, funny, beautiful human being. But if someone picks a fight with him, he will invariably make that person regret that decision. He has gotten himself into trouble that way.

“What’s amazing is not that some kids do succumb, it’s that some don’t. Because so many come from homes in which they have no one. They have no one. Their fathers, many the time, they’ve never seen, they do not know them.

“My roots, socially and economically, are similar to the roots of my clients. My dad, while he was around, which was not long, was an absentee father, like the fathers of many of my clients. He was actually a shrewd and smart, charismatic salesman — a con merchant really was what he was. He spent his time and money on his girlfriends. Everything, everyone but the family. I grew up with kids who went the wrong way, and I easily could have gone with them.”

Carlin says he has told several of his clients that he has much in common with them. “One client looked at me so disbelievingly. I could see he was thinking, ‘Not only is this guy white, but he’s 6000 miles from home!’ ”

Carlin leans forward on his elbows, looks pensive. “I spent the day with that client once; I said, ‘Look, you’ve got to understand, where I grew up, you didn’t have to be black to be poor, you didn’t have to be black to feel without and to feel deprived, to be bullied; and I know I have a lot more in common with you than even I realize.’ I don’t know if he believed me. But it’s true.”

Carlin, born outside London, was in his early 20s and something of a vagabond when he came to the States in 1979. That year he enrolled at UCLA and took an undergraduate degree in history. In 1982, still at UCLA, he entered law school, graduating in 1985. After graduation he took a job with a large Houston law firm. “I went to that job also because they had a London office, and I thought perhaps I would go home. They were a full-service firm, very good, very reputable. The money was good. I probably would be making three times what I make here had I stayed. But I hated the work. I quit after two years, I hated it so much. I moved back to Los Angeles. For two years, I didn’t do legal work. I did odd jobs and studied drama. I wanted to act.”

Carlin says he doesn’t want me to misunderstand. He loves what he’s doing. He grins. “I keep myself going. I have a steady diet of rap music going to remind me of where my consciousness should be. I love black American culture. In actual fact, as one after another area is opened up to Afro-Americans, is made more accessible, they tend to excel in that area.” Carlin’s grin expands. “I think that terrifies Whitey.”

Back at the courthouse at two p.m., while spectators and attorneys file back into FA, I talk with the female marshal who earlier was patrolling the courtroom. I say many spectators seem to behave quite informally. She agrees. “They put their feet on backs of chairs, they talk, they eat, they sleep. Which they’re not supposed to do. I give them options: either quit doing this or go outside. And sometimes these people call me every name in the book. It was weird to be sworn at. At first I thought, ‘Gee, no one ever called me that before.’ ” She opens FA’s door for me and says, smiling, “I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

Cesar Cisneros is shuttling two male prisoners into the tank. “A busy tank there this afternoon, Mr. Cisneros,” says Judge Knoepp. Cisneros nods agreement.

Floyd Allen Douglas, 28, black male, corona of tiny braids encircling his head, two prison priors for armed robbery, on probation hold, frowns when he hears bail will be set at $25,000. Parole violator, white male, 32, Lynn Norton Ashburton, muscular arms wreathed in blue tattoos, learning he will be extradited to Washoe County, Nevada, looks at his feet. Randy Carswell, white male, charged with two 470s ..(forgery), demands of his attorney and is given permission to speak directly to Judge Knoepp. Carswell, whose lip is swollen and eyes blacked, complains a gang of Mexicans beat him up in jail; he intends to press charges against them. Vietnamese male, 22, is charged with 451 (arson), two counts. White male, 21, charged with two counts of vehicle theft, with one count of “wet reckless,” with evading police in highspeed chase; the defendant’s parents, in second row, weep as the deputy describes how the police sent in the canine unit to bring their son out of the canyon into which he’d fled.

Clerk: “Page 1, item 5 of the 2 o’clock calendar. Juan Manuel Arreola, Fernando Enriquez Fuentes.”

Two Hispanic males, looped together by chains attached to ankle cuffs, stand at the podium between a female interpreter and the PD’s attorney. The duo is accused of armed robbery of illegal aliens attempting to cross the border. The prosecution justifies its request for $25,000 bail per defendant. “At least four victims, all children, are involved. One is five years old and one is six. One victim is still in the hospital. He was stabbed with a Phillips screwdriver. He is described as having a sucking chest wound. Another victim is being held in MCC. Another victim, a juvenile, 17, is being held at Casa San Juan. They were crossing illegally with their father. This is definitely a prison case, and conviction will result in the defendants’ incarceration. Mr. Fuentes has seven outstanding warrants for 11550 [under influence of a controlled substance]. Mr. Arreola has four 11550s pending. We have seven other police reports with suspects that match the defendants’ descriptions. I have asked for a check with the border patrol to see if any of those victims are still in detention facilities, so as to do line-ups. Therefore, a possibility exists, however remote, that there might be additional charges.”

The defense turns to the bench. “Your Honor, in light of the bail requested, we will request bail review.”

Judge Knoepp: “You are requesting $25,000?” “Yes, $25,000.”

Judge Knoepp: “Bail is set at $25,000 each. Not guilty pleas will be entered.”

Deputy DA: “One day.”

Calendar Clerk: “One day.”

Judge Knoepp greets the attorney who has taken a place at the podium next to an expressionless white male in his late 20s. The attorney returns the judge’s greeting, offers, “Your Honor, I am here on the Clifton matter.”

The attorney pleads his client not guilty. Judge Knoepp inquires of the prosecution, “What is the current bail set at?”

“Twenty thousand dollars, but the People are going to be asking for $100,000.”

“Maybe,” says Judge Knoepp to the deputy, “you could give me some very brief background that supports this increase.”

“Your Honor, this case involves two victims, as the court can tell from the language of the complaint. The female victim is the defendant’s estranged wife. The second victim is a friend of the defendant’s estranged wife, who is also an employee of the place where the victim works. On this particular occasion, the defendant called the male employee at the place where he works — the male employee is a bouncer at a bar — called the male victim and indicated he was at the female victim’s house and had a gun, and he was going to kill her if the male victim didn’t come over to the house right away. The defendant apparently had a score to settle with this bouncer. There had been an altercation several months past.

“The male victim came to the house, responded. There were other independent witnesses to what next took place. The male victim broke the door down, and he verified the female victim was being held at gunpoint by this defendant. This defendant then fired three shots from a handgun to the male victim. The male victim was not injured, although those bullets went through and through to a neighbor’s house. A shot was fired at the defendant. The SWAT team was called. The SWAT team surrounded the house for a while. The defendant held, apparently, a gun to the female victim’s head, threatening he had two bullets left, one for her, one for him.”

Throughout the deputy’s statement, the defendant has looked straight ahead, eyes on the bench’s wood paneling.

Frowning, Judge Knoepp answers. “We’ll set bail at $50,000, and we’ll set this for bail review hearing.”

The deputy DA calls out, “Three hours!” The clerk echoes, “Three hours.”

Tall, blonde, blue-eyed Jennifer Hart, 26, a PD staff member for two years, is assigned to the defense table this week. A recent Cal Western law school graduate, Hart is awaiting word of her bar exam results (“Only 50 percent pass the bar exam the first time they take it,” she says). Divorced mother of a four-year-old, Hart grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, where Hart’s mother, brother, and sister are lawyers. Hart’s voice has not lost the Oklahoma twang, nor have her two years with the PD diminished her capacity for astonishment. In gaps between early afternoon’s flurry, Jennifer Hart talks. “Growing up,” she says, “I loved Cannon and all those great private eye shows and wanted to be a detective. I’m a single mom, and I got a degree in anthropology and couldn’t get a job, so I went to law school. Also, I wanted to help people. But they don’t teach you anything practical in law school. You have to get out in the world to get experience. So, I’m here.”

Friends are surprised Hart became a public defender. “People who know me say I don’t trust anybody. But that isn’t true. I tend to be gullible. I go into the tanks to interview defendants, and I believe all their stories, and often they’re such liars.

“Also, people think we’re here trying to get someone who did a crime out of jail without paying the punishment. Which isn’t true. We’re here to make sure things go by the book. A person does the crime, he should do the time. I’m a mom; I don’t want these people out on the street.”

At the courtroom’s far end, stage left, Hart opens the door into what marshals call second floor holding. This door leads into a cream-colored hallway, off which branch the marshals’ command center, three rooms, and a series of small cells. “I would guess,” says a marshal who stands in the command center reading a computer screen on which prisoners’ rap sheets appear, “we could fit 20 custodies in one of those rooms ”

A sign on the hallway wall:

DO NOT ASK ABOUT

1. Elevator
2. Your Lawyer
3. Lunches

BE PATIENT

NO WAY TO MAKE IT GO ANY FASTER.

Through a door at the hall’s other side are small cells. In one an unshaven gray-haired man, head in hands, waits to be charged with attempted murder. Along his cheeks, white stubble glints under the fluorescent light. The complaint will note that on the previous evening, he shot his wife in the face (she is hospitalized in critical condition). A second cell holds a broad-shouldered black male, accused of killing his wife’s boyfriend with an axe, injuring his wife (she also is hospitalized in critical but stable condition).

Across the hall from the small cells are three rooms. Each is equipped with toilet and metal benches and a locked door, the door’s top half unbreakable glass. At the door at hall’s end, three women’s noses, two black and one white — funhouse rubbery — press against glass. One woman stands accused of repeatedly beating her female roommate with a hammer. Another awaits extradition on charges of parole violation and armed robbery. The third is alleged to have delivered a controlled substance for sale.

Hart sits on a bench in the hall next to a blonde female. The gray jail sweatshirt engulfs the blonde’s slight body. Her face is swollen, eyes red from crying, her tiny valentine-shaped mouth quivers. She looks up into Hart’s eyes from an inch or two away. “Kim, I’m from the public defenders’ office.” Hart smiles. “How are you doing today?”

Kim’s mouth opens. No words emerge. She stretches out her arms, flexes her hands. On both her hands, directly above each finger, washed-out blue letters blur on her pale skin.

Hart cocks her head to one side, gazes sympathetically at Kim. “You know what you’re being charged with?”

A high-pitched moan rolls out from Kim’s mouth. Tears stream down her cheeks.

Twenty-three, Kim is mother to a three-month-old boy. She was 13 when she began to use drugs. “Mostly,” she sobs, rubbing eyes with a fist, “crystal meth.” Across the fist, the blue letters spell out LOVE.

Carrying a diaper bag, a purse, and her baby in its plastic carrier, Kim entered a store where she once had been apprehended for shoplifting. The store manager asked Kim to put down her diaper bag, her purse, the infant carrier. At this point, according to the manager and other witnesses, Kim threw everything, including the baby, to the floor. Kim insists she dropped the baby. She howls. “I didn’t throw my baby!”

A marshal brings a male prisoner into the hallway. “Kiss the wall,” the marshal barks. “Hands behind your back.” The prisoner presses a prominent nose into the cream-colored wall. A long scar runs from his cheek to his chin. He is missing an ear.

At the bench’s other end, a black female charged with grand theft talks to a male PD staff member. “I’m six months pregnant, and I got an eight-month-old and a two-year-old that’s both with my mom, and my mom’s sick; I got to get out of here.” The woman says, further, she receives $560 per month in ADC and from that payment gives $300 to her sister for rent, that she has no money for lawyers, she didn’t steal what they said she stole.

A marshal places Kim back in the room. Locks the door. His massive fist encloses the door knob. A second marshal calls down the hall, “Bring one more chick out!” And the large-fisted marshal leads a black woman, tears sluicing down cheeks, to the bench, sits her down where Kim had sat (Kim presses her face against glass, one tear-swollen eye staring out into the hall).

A marshal walks behind a black woman, wrists handcuffed at her back. She turns to women seated on the bench. “I don’t know where they’re taking me.” She smiles, showing jagged, broken teeth. “I’m going with the flow.” Walking out from second floor holding back to the defense table, Hart confides that when she first started working here, she went into the bathroom every day at lunch and threw up. “The tension,” she says.

In the courtroom, a deputy DA is justifying the People’s request for $15,000 bail for a defendant who apparently, in a drunken rage, broke into his girlfriend’s house when she was at work and “crushed the skull of six little kittens.” Judge Knoepp responds, “The bizarre conduct really concerns me. We will set bail at $15,000 and set this for bail review.”

Over the next few minutes, Hart inspects a diversion form. She explains that in some drug cases a person who meets certain criteria can go through counseling and be diverted from serving charges for up to two years. If the person successfully completes counseling, the case is dismissed.

“We review diversions,” says Hart, “to make sure diverted people are complying. Defendants who have been diverted to drug rehab have to get enrolled in these programs, pay for the programs, and attend them. Many defendants are pretty slack and have trouble getting these things done.

“This guy,” Hart stabs at the form with her pencil, “charged with drug possession, has been diverted to drug rehab. He’s supposed to come in this afternoon and show he’s enrolled in and paid for the program, and he’s supposed to pay $100 in court fees.

“Frequently, with defendants in diversion, the court waives the administrative fee, because if they can’t afford the fees, the court can’t not divert them because they’re poor — that’s unconstitutional.

“If they come in and have some great excuse about how ‘I can’t do this yet; I need one more week,’ even though they’ve had two months, usually the judge will give them another chance. But the DA may get irritated. Occasionally, the DA will even ask that charges be reinstated. Every now and then, someone will get bucketed, taken into custody straight from the courtroom — bucketed.

“You ought to see people when they get bucketed, because they are usually surprised! This morning, down the hall, a woman had finished her jury trial for a narcotics charge. The jury found her guilty, and she got bucketed right on the spot. There she was, in her dress and her hose and her shoes. $he had no idea. Came in this morning to hear the verdict and didn’t know she wasn’t going to see daylight for two years. She was freaking out. Sobbing. Completely irrational. She was chained and handcuffed to the bench. She was going off.”

Hart returns to sorting heaped papers. “Anyway, many people who’ve been diverted will say they can’t pay the court fee. It’s funny, because they get caught with all these drugs, and you know the drugs cost way more than $100.

“I get irritated. It may seem odd for a public defender to say this, but many defendants seem to expect so much out of me, and I paid all that money for my education, and they aren’t even willing to do their part. I talk this way, and people say to me, ‘Wow, Jennifer, you sound like a prosecutor, not a defender!’ ”

Outside the tank, marshals loop together, with cuffs and chains, two black males and one black female. Hart, who earlier counseled the trio, says they’re to be charged with a 459, burglary. The female, exceptionally pretty and, even in baggy jail blues, shapely, smiles at spectators and twirls her section of chain as the trio slogs in lockstep toward the podium.

“That woman,” whispers Hart, “she’s in a lot of trouble. ‘I’ve never been in trouble before,’ she told me. Turns out she’s got some 20 aliases, ten birthdates, six Social Security numbers. Charges over the last ten years in New York, LA, New Jersey. She was sure she was going to get out of here in a big hurry. I told her, ‘Don’t get your hopes up. Because when the judge bangs his gavel and sends you back to the tank, you are going to be mighty disappointed.’ “She said to me, ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it. The guys know it, and they’re going to tell everybody, and they’ll let me go.’ Then I went in to talk to the guys, the two co-Ds, and they told me, ‘Well, she’s gonna take this one.’ In defendant talk, that means she’s gonna cop to the rap for it.

“All three of them are going to get it. They’re all parole violators. And they were caught red-handed. Burglary.”

Arguing for $25,000 bail for each of the trio, the deputy quickly establishes each has many aliases. “They are well acquainted with the system,” she says, “indeed sufficiently knowledgeable and clever to circumvent it through aliases and false Social Security numbers.”

Clerk: “Page 2, item 7 of the 2 o’clock calendar. Arraignment, Willard Edward Barnes.”

As Barnes, a black male, strides to the podium, a young black male seated in the front row in the tank holds up a fist in salute, yells out, “Hey, Barnes!” Barnes turns, smiles.

His attorney having pled him not guilty, Barnes turns toward Judge Knoepp, fixes the judge with a look of easy familiarity. “Your Honor, I know it’s real silly, given all my priors .and stuff like that, to ask you for an OR, but ever’ time I’ve been to court, I’ve always come back; it’s that I didn’t come to court sometimes when I was supposed to come. I guess it is still unusual and kind of crazy; you can do whatever you want, but there’s always a time to give a person an opportunity to prove theirself, and I think I need a chance to prove myself once in my life instead of all the time being smothered by the system.”

Judge Knoepp gazes down at Barnes. “I think the time to prove yourself may be coming soon. For the time being, we are going to have to set bail, Mr. Barnes.” The judge turns toward the deputy. “The People’s recommendation?” “Seven thousand dollars, Your Honor. Mr. Barnes has nine FTAs [failures to appear]. Some of his history includes a 211 [robbery] charge, a487.1 [grand theft], a 266 [inveiglement or enticement of unmarried female under 18 for purposes of prostitution], which is what we’re looking at here again.”

Judge Knoepp sets bail at $7000. Barnes is returned to second floor holding.

A white male, haggard and agitated, is brought to stand next to his attorney, who duly pleads his client not guilty. Judge Knoepp asks the deputy for the People’s suggestion for bail. The deputy answers. “Your Honor, I understand bail is $500,000. The People are asking for a high bail, Your Honor, because this particular case involved an infant child, abducted when he was only a month old. The defendant took the child to the state of Missouri, where he and the child were located by the mother’s family. The child was then returned by the mother to San Diego. After this, the defendant went to the mother’s home, engaged the mother and her parents in a fight over the child, battered those parties, and during the melee, struck the child, who was then two months old and sustained a fractured skull.”

The defense counters. “Your Honor, my client has ties in San Diego. The child in the case is Mr. Weiss’s natural son. We ask bail be set at $20,000. We also indicate there is no prior criminal record on behalf of this client.”

The deputy argues, “The People’s primary concern at this point is welfare and safety of that child. The defendant has indicated in statements that it is his intention again to take the child to another jurisdiction in an attempt to gain lawful custody. So we’re asking for high bail.”

Judge Knoepp agrees. “Mine too. Public safety considerations quite apart from flight risks dictate high bail at this time.”

Next, a black male and female, chained together at the ankles, are brought to the podium. The PD pleads his clients, Benjamin Tucker and Martha Gerard, not guilty, adding, “As for Mr. Thcker, he is on active parole hold; we will submit on the matter of bail. As to Miss Gerard, Your Honor, we will request an OR release in that she appears to have no prior convictions.”

Judge Knoepp turns to the prosecution. The deputy consults her case file. “Your Honor, the People are actually asking for bail increase. Apparently, these two defendants, acting in concert, grabbed a purse from a woman, and when she would not give up the purse, she was partially pulled into the car into which these defendants were located. There will possibly be kidnap charges they could be facing. The defense also indicates Miss Gerard has no record. The beginning of her rap sheet indicates several 211s (robbery) and FTAs. I will be asking $25,000 for each individual.”

“Very well,” says Judge Knoepp, “we will set bail at the amount of $25,000.” The judge calls a 15-minute recess.

You can’t smoke inside the courthouse, so smokers stand or pace or sit outside. At the C Street entrance, I sit on a low wall with a revenue and recovery agent. Before a defendant appears for arraignment, these agents conduct an interview to ascertain if the defendant is eligible to receive a public defender. A handsome 23-year-old, in his first year of law school, the agent says he’s worked for revenue and recovery for six months. “Most of them,” he says about defendants, “have been through this once or twice before. They know the inner workings, so they lie and cheat their way through the filling out of the form.

“We offer three choices: Office of Public Defenders, retain your own attorney, or a lawyer referral service called the Near-Indigent Panel, or NIP.

“Public defenders are $75 for the initial consultation, until you go to trial. If you retained private counsel, they wouldn’t even step into FA for under $500. A high-class lawyer would ask $1000.

“NIP is for defendants who are not poor but almost poor. For felonies, NIP requires an initial retainer of $200; you have to pay that down, straight. NIP’s rates are cheaper than the going rate. People who’ve just come into private practice sign up for NIP because it provides clients, and some people do it as community service once in a while.”

Doing this work, he says, you hear and see everything. There’s the “fish tank, for people who are classified as ‘fish’ either because they mentally can’t deal with other people inside the regular tanks or they’re crybabies, freaking out because maybe they did one thing wrong in their life, now they’ve gotten arrested for it and can’t deal with it.

“You see fights in the tanks. Twenty-five, 30 guys may be in there; I’m sitting right there with them. They look at my watch.” He grins. “But I grew up in New York, so I’m used to this stuff.”

Back in the courtroom, midafternoon, a six-foot-two, broad-shouldered black male, soft deprecating smile on his face, heavy-lidded eyes lost perhaps in some dream of his own, hobbles to the podium. Sweat streams in shining tributaries from his wooly hair down his cheeks. He does not look up at the judge, nor does he speak to the attorney who stands next him. He stares with seeming absorption at his feet. His chest heaves silently.

A marshal leads another prisoner to the tank. The tank door whines as it opens and closes. Judge Knoepp rustles papers. A spectator reaches into her handbag; its contents click the way dice do, clicking across a casino table. She pops a Life Saver into her mouth. The white candy circle rests for a moment on her tongue tip before she closes her mouth and bites down.

Exchanges among Judge Knoepp, the deputy, and PD indicate the 32-year-old defendant, after an argument with his girlfriend, stabbed her in the neck, fatally wounding her. With unusual solemnity, Judge Knoepp turns to the prosecution table, asks, “What is bail currently set at?”

“Your Honor, the People are requesting bail be set at $500,000, the reason being it was a brutal and senseless murder of a young woman with whom, evidently, the defendant used to go out.”

The defendant rolls his eyes upward. Muscles in his jaws clench and unclench.

Judge Knoepp’s brow furrows. “Very well. We will set bail for the present at $500,000. We will also set bail review.”

“Two hours,” the deputy intones.

“Two hours,” echoes the calendar clerk, her voice only slightly less bright than at nine this morning.

New muni court judges are sent for six months on “the tour” — two months each on the bench in traffic arraignment court, misdemeanor arraignment court, and felony arraignment court. Because judges sit on the FA bench only two months, the office assigned that judge tends toward what one imagines as the typical government office in a small, dour, socialist country, perhaps Albania. No diplomas hang on the wall, no framed photographs. A dingy electric coffeemaker teeters at the edge of Knoepp’s desk, his robe hangs off a battered coat rack. What appears to be the total of Judge Knoepp’s “personal effects” is the worn briefcase he’s carried since law school, dropped down by the side of the desk.

We talk about the general air of shabbiness in the courthouse. In 1961, says Knoepp, Home Federal went in at one end of town and the courthouse at the other. “Many a funny tale about the design of the building. They cheapened it and cheapened it. It was originally designed so that in later years it could be expanded by building higher than its original seven floors. But they structurally weakened it to the point they were never able to do this. The foundations wouldn’t take it. Nor would the foundations take proper air conditioning systems. So we have paid for that many times over. Even the second year the building was up, it was tacky, seedy. The Federal building, by contrast, is palatial.”

I ask about the bench in FA, which I have heard has a bulletproof shield. The judge grins, says, “Oh, yes, it does,” and adds, still grinning, “If anything happens I am supposed to dive down. In the panel there’s a blue button I am supposed to push if I have some sort of an attack, if I’m being shot at there’s a red button I am supposed to press.”

Knoepp, 52, born in Pittsburgh and raised in San Diego, graduated from law school at UC Berkeley in 1963. He spent nine and a half years as a San Diego County deputy district attorney and one year as deputy city attorney. From 1975 to 1978 he was U.S. attorney in San Diego. From 1978 until 1989, when he was appointed to the municipal bench, he was in private practice, concentrating on business, real estate, and political law. Of newer muni judges, no one other than Timothy Tower, Mike Orfield, and Knoepp had substantial civil experience, and with a backlog of civil cases in the local court, the three men have been particularly welcome on the bench. (Put simply, a civil case is one in which citizens sue one another and the government is not involved.)

What, I asked Knoepp, is the difference between municipal and superior court and municipal and superior court judges? In general, he says, misdemeanor trials are held in muni courts and felony trials in superior court. “But,” he adds, “it is unique to San Diego County that municipal judges sit on superior court trials and all of us who are muni judges serve also as superior court judges. No other county in the state has its muni court judges sitting by special appointment as superior court judges. Odd, but it makes the job much more desirable.”

I mention to Judge Knoepp that the tone, the “ring,” of courtroom speech, the elevated discourse, and the exchange among himself, defense, and prosecution began to seem like church, even the placement of bench and Bar of Justice were reminiscent of a church’s placement of altar and altar rail. “There is,” he agrees, “this very formal interplay. It’s all very stylized, and to a purpose. And it’s even more so — more formal — than it used to be. I practiced in the state courts up to about 15 years ago and then left and went into the Federal courts. The last eight to ten years I had mostly in civil practice. So I’ve come back to the state courts after 15 years away. And I see more formalism now than I did then.

“Much of this is change in case law. As I was leaving practice 15 years ago, there were a number of Supreme Court cases that required the judge to inquire of the defendant directly whether certain things had or had not been told to him. So a judge now is much more involved in talking to the defendant and going through a checklist, making sure the defendant knows what it is to which he has acceded.

“A number of other interesting changes I’ve seen. The way that bail is set, there’s been a 100 percent improvement in that. Used to be the defendant came in and the defense attorney — public defender or retained counsel — talked with the defendant for a very short while before that defendant appeared for his arraignment. The judge and the prosecutor knew very little about the defendant. The prosecution, then, in most cases didn’t even have rap sheets, because we didn’t yet have the fax or transmission ease we have today to get that information. Everybody was shooting in the dark. Today we have Pretrial Services, which prepares a report on each defendant. [Pretrial Services, a county-funded organization, interviews the arrested person, determines how long he has lived in the community, if he owns property, has a job, a family in the area. This service also runs a record check on the person to determine if he has prior arrests and incarcerations in this or other states, if he has failed to appear for court appearances.]

“Another big change in courtrooms, almost as dramatic a change as race relations in my adult lifetime, is the number of women practicing law. When I first started practice, I can still, in my mind’s eye, hear and see a judge saying, ‘I don’t think women belong in the courtroom!’ and I heard it in open court by a judge addressing a female attorney.

“The overall quality of lawyering is higher. I am very impressed by the increase of the quality in prosecution. On the prosecution side, they used to have rapid turnover. Today, a much higher percentage make a career in the DA’s office. You are seeing that too in public defenders, people stay around.

“The nature of crimes — big change. A murder suspect came in, back then, that was a big deal. Today, sadly to say, murder suspects are a dime a dozen. We get 187 defendants almost every day. Everybody remarks on this. The other day we had five murders and two child-molest cases, and the electronic medu didn’t have the time of day for the murders. Fit teen years ago that would have been big news “And drug cases? Many more. Comparing the present to 15 years ago, the quantity of drugs involved in each case is also much higher than it used to be.”

“So many defendants,” I say, “are black and Hispanic and so few Caucasian.”

“Well, the browns, obviously we’re near the border, I think there are a lot of people who are in Tijuana and do come over and see this as a place to commit crime. I don’t think the majority of the browns we see in this court are the illegal aliens that people seem to be so fearful of. Most of the illegal aliens who are leaving Central and South America to come to the United States are coming here to work, not to commit crime. The ones that we see here in this court are people living or staying in Tijuana just to come over here and commit crimes and go back. They are not the same type people I used to see all the time in the U.S. Attorney’s office who came here to work. Those people wanted to keep a very low profile, they didn’t want to violate the law, most wanted to earn money and go back home.

“Another big change is that we have eliminated nearly all of what used to be sex crimes between consenting adults. There really weren’t that many cases because they just didn’t get prosecuted. I am just theorizing now because I was just a little tiny part of the machinery at that time, a lowly Deputy One and Two, but it just seemed to me that they weren’t being prosecuted because nobody really thought that was the state’s business. I think that’s why the legislature outlawed them finally.”

“And of course, yet another change is in numbers of cases involving sex offenses committed by adults upon children in their early teens, the ‘288-As,’ as we call them.” Judge Knoepp says that he believed that he was seeing so many 288-As that he asked several attorneys and people in the DA’s office why they thought this was so. “They said, ‘Child Protective Services and the doctors and hospitals, all three, are much more attuned to detecting this and reporting it. Yes, you are seeing more child-molest cases. They were always being committed, but the reporting is now much, much higher.’ ”

In recent weeks, almost every day, at least one 288-A, or child sexual-molestation case, had gone through FA. Several cases — that of Ramona physician John DeKock (who committed suicide the night before his preliminary hearing) and Gompers Middle School teacher Sidney Jefferson Loveless, Jr. — received extensive television and newspaper coverage. On the afternoon of DeKock’s bail review, his wife Louise, a frail, gaunt emphysema sufferer, her pale hair carefully coiffed, sat in the spectators’ section next her son from a previous marriage. She wore a pastel green silk dress and in her hand carried a plastic inhaler, from which occasionally she hunched over to breathe. As the marshal led DeKock from holding pen to podium, where DeKock’s attorney Jack Phillips waited, the accused physician kept his face averted from spectators. He was dressed in a navy blue suit that during the days he had been in custody had become overlarge. His hands, like those of other “custodies,” were tucked into the front of his suit trousers, and the trousers were beltless. On his feet he wore jail-issue sandals.

Because their mutual property was being offered to secure the doctor’s bail, Mrs. DeKock also came to the podium, taking a place behind her husband. She stood erect, only her hands’ tremor hinted distress.

During DeKock’s bail review, Deputy District Attorney Eugenia Eyeherabide indicated she had spoken with the detective investigating the DeKock case. She said that even with the small town of Ramona aware of charges against DeKock and therefore likely to be alert and wary, she believed he remained a danger to the community. Eyeherabide based this belief in part on evidence acquired from DeKock’s diary, whose entries indicated “that on an almost daily basis the defendant had contacts, mainly with the victim in the case, but,” she added, her voice focused by deliberate calm, “he contacted other boys on a daily basis, and he has made notations in his diary on days that he didn’t have any contact with young boys or sexual contacts with young boys, how he felt depressed and had a bad day that day because he was not around a young boy.”

Almost daily, other defendants — fathers, stepfathers, a young woman — accused of “child molest” came through FA. These received no press attention. In many instances these were cases in which the defendant hoped to be permitted to plead guilty and be placed on probation rather than sent to prison. In such cases the defense brought in sentencing proposals, which involved the defendant’s treatment, and probation officers testified as to that treatment’s progress. Most often Judge Knoepp delivered a sentence that involved no state prison time and permitted the defendant to remain on probation. But he always expressed concern for victims. To a stepfather charged with child molestation and to his attorney, the judge said:

“I have nothing but the greatest sympathy for the defendant and the steps he has taken, but right now the only concern I have is with the victims in the case. I think if the victims are to grow up to be rehabilitated, as it were, that they not be affected by the crime as they grow up. Step one in their rehabilitation is demonstrating that what was done was wrong and that the authority figure, the defendant in this case, literally didn’t get away with what he did. I’d like to think that the defendant’s punishment or rehabilitation was the only concern, but it’s not the only concern and maybe not even the primary concern any longer.”

In this case the defendant pled guilty, was sentenced to probation. In another, the probation officer reported the defendant was not complying with court orders as to contact with his children. His lawyer, a woman in her 30s, pled mightily for her client’s freedom, noting that she believed no good would come of incarceration and that continued psychiatric treatment was her defendant’s only hope. Judge Knoepp nevertheless ordered the man be taken at once into custody. Marshals stepped up to the podium and led the defendant away.

“You should sit where I do,” says Judge Knoepp. “The shock on the defendant’s face was quite something to see. He faced a ten-year prison term.” About the man’s attorney, the judge noted that “she was really devastated. She is in a brand-new private practice. She has never before had the trauma of representing someone, having them stand right there beside her and then be sent away to prison.

“Before sentencing, I wanted to give her a lot more leeway than I would perhaps normally do to express herself. I could feel she was very upset. She meant what she was saying, and she gave her client a great fight. I was very impressed, I didn’t feel in the presence of cynicism.”

“Again, you should sit up where I am and see the expressions on defendants’ faces. Some of them are trying to con you, sure. But some seem so shattered and so disoriented they seem even unable to make even simple decisions, and some look so bewildered, seem to be asking, ‘How did I get here?’ ”

Knoepp reminds me of an extradition case in which a young man was being returned to prison in Texas. His mother arrived in FA when the courtroom opened and sat among spectators in the third row. She wore sunglasses and kept a handkerchief balled in her hand. Again and again, she tucked the hanky’s corner under the dark lenses, patted tears. Over three hours, the spectators’ section filled and emptied as one after another cases were heard and defendants’ families and friends came and went. At morning’s end, the woman’s son was brought into the holding pen and placed in the front row (the resemblance between the two was striking — same tomahawk nose, pouty mouth, same curly strawberry-blond hair). Through the glass, his eyes found and rested upon his mother. Nothing showed on his face, not even the most infinitesimal greeting. She held her head high, smiled warmly and directly at this huge creature who bore her nose, mouth, hair. Not until the boy had been read his extradition papers and returned to second-floor holding did she cease to smile. She walked up the aisle to the door. Tears streamed from under the dark glasses down her cheeks, dropped onto the T-shirt covering her ample bosom. Judge Knoepp says, “I was thinking to myself, about that instance, ‘This poor lady, after all these years, to arrive at this point. To see your son taken off to prison.’ ”

Knoepp wonders, he says, “What happens to these people when they go to jail. I look at some of the younger ones and ask, ‘How did they get here? Do they know what’s coming?’ Especially the younger ones, they are likely to get beat up, attacked. When I was a DA, I visited most of the state prisons and am sure they’re all much worse today. So I think a lot about what effect jail and prison will have on people who come before me, which is why I’m perhaps more lenient at bail setting than the DAs like.”

Can Knoepp look at a defendant’s face and get a feeling as to the nature of that defendant’s character or personality?

“Oh, yes. That is probably an outgrowth of my trial-court days. A trial attorney simply must make an assessment in a short period of time as to the witness’s character. The really good attorneys develop a remarkable facility, hearing a witness speak very few sentences, to sense where that person is coming from. So I will, yes, look at the defendant and try to get some feel for who this person is. But I don’t think about doing this. Perhaps it simply comes naturally.”

As does everyone in the criminal justice system with whom one talks, Knoepp also believes that some of the strictest judges are former defense attorneys. “They have seen and heard everything from their clients and tend to be very cynical themselves. You will find some of the more lenient judges on sentencing, myself included, are former prosecutors. Your younger ex-prosecutors, they come on the bench, they can be kind of hardline, but over the years you see changes in them.”

We talk about why Knoepp wanted to become a judge. “At this stage of my career,” he says, “it’s very desirable, because I’ve done so many different things that I think I have the necessary background. Also, I like reading, research, the things that most clients can’t afford in private practice. Also, I didn’t like the business end of private practice. I made pretty good money at it, but that was an accident.

“It’s simply the best job our profession offers. If you had to sit and design your own little world where everybody smiles at you even if they don’t want to and say, ‘Your Honor this’ and ‘Your Honor that,’ which gets a little heavy actually, but, basically if you had to design an existence on a little island, would you design anything differently than what I have?”

A judge’s personality, politics, moods, I say, seem to permeate a court. Knoepp smiles, almost twitting and certainly tongue-in-cheek. “As a lawyer I always thought so.”

The Office of the Public Defenders is funded by the county to represent the indigent defendant. Public Defenders has offices in El Cajon, North County, the South Bay, and downtown on three floors of the Centre City Building (233 A Street) and employs, full-time, 182 attorneys.

Forty-two-year-old felony team leader Milly Durovic, born and reared in Chicago, took her law degree at Georgetown University. She came to San Diego in 1985. During the last five years she has worked for both the DA’s office and Public Defenders.

Asked why she chose work as a public defender, Durovic snaps out her response — “I believe in the Sixth Amendment right to counsel” — then adds, “I view the public defender’s role as keeping America free for poor people, keeping us from becoming a police state, making sure rich people aren’t the only people who have decent representation.

“America is a very schizophrenic country. In this community, out of some 8000 lawyers, less than one percent are minorities. I venture to guess that we can give you the same figure for doctors. If you’re a 17-year-old Hispanic or black kid and there’s nobody in your neighborhood who is a doctor or lawyer or engineer and the only person who’s making any money, who’s driving the BMW, is the dope dealer, and dope dealing’s easy money, and you’re workin’ hard, makin’ five bucks an hour at Mickey D’s, bein’ treated like trash, dope dealing becomes attractive. Those rules that say, ‘Dope dealing’s forbidden,’ those are white society’s rules.

“What it is, we have white society, primarily, imposing rules on people,” Durovic puts both thumbs down, “who have been oppressed — poor housing, no food, no hope. I remember when I was a DA, talking to another DA, who shall remain nameless, and he said, ‘Well, we’re going to recommend prison. We’re going to break this guy’s spirit and destroy his hope.’ I said to him, ‘Did it ever occur to you the reason he’s in this system is he doesn’t have any hope and his spirit’s already been destroyed?’ ”

What was his reply to Durovic?

“Nothing, he said nothing.’’

Did she feel someone charged with a serious crime might receive better representation from a private attorney?

“I really don’t. Across the board I think we do better than most retained attorneys. One, we’re doing the same thing every day. You do something, every day, you get better at it, you get it streamlined.

“Everybody who comes here, their first year in the office is a probationary period. You do misdemeanors and traffic court. You have skills training, learn to do cross and direct, opening and closing and voir-dire. The training officer and misdemeanor supervisor watch you try cases, critique you. We have Saturday training, they all come in and have a mock trial with videotapes.

“We go to lunch, we talk. We come up here, we talk, ‘Hey, I’ve got a case with some problems.’ Individuals benefit when you’ve got 20 people on a floor exchanging ideas about ‘This judge did this, this judge did that,’ ‘This guy raised this motion’ and ‘That guy raised that motion.’

“Because we’re part of the system in the sense that we’re always there and they can’t ignore us and because there are so many of us — 182 — judges know they have to deal with us every day, DAs know they have to deal with us every day. They know us and they trust us and they can’t ignore us.”

Public Defenders, I say, seems to embody an institutionalized liberalism.

Durovic agrees, adding, “There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but you usually do associate public defenders with being Democrats. There are individual people in the DA’s office here who are Democrats who are liberal, but that is not the tenor, even though Ed Miller, the District Attorney, is a Democrat. I think if you took a head count over there, you’d find the rank and file are Republicans, that they’re more ‘law and order,’ are proponents of the death penalty. This office, your rank and file are Democrats, they’re more liberal, they’re against the death penalty. I think that’s the difference.

“There are people more inclined to be prosecutors and people more inclined to be defense attorneys. I am more inclined to be a defense attorney. I was a DA. I tried it out. The problem with being a prosecutor is that you’re looking at files more than you’re looking at people.”

I say to Durovic that given the limited time and huge numbers, I was impressed by how well public defenders did in presenting clients’ cases. “Felony arraignments court — any arraignment court, any court of first instance — is like an emergency room. Our attorneys have to learn to make somebody feel special in five minutes. You got to be a short-order cook and make great food! It’s a special talent. There are people who are great lawyers, they do great in trial, but they can’t manage the volume, they can’t negotiate good deals, can’t negotiate great deals, because they don’t have that ability to draw it out that quickly. And there are people who look people in the eyes, they’re captivating, and people trust them and believe them and go with them. So they give them their best.”

Low-grade felonies, says Durovic, “ ‘drugs and cars’ — that is most of what you see down in felony arraignments — drugs and cars and welfare fraud. You argue for bail, you set the dates.

“A person charged with a felony shouldn’t plead guilty, unless in a diversion case. A diversion case is assigned an attorney, the attorney looks at the police report. If it looks like it’s a righteous arrest, no Fourth Amendment issues, then they can apply the person for diversion. Our attorneys used to divert clients right there in felony arraignments, but I thought that presented a problem. Because, as I put it, ‘You are eating up a person’s diversions.’ I suggested, ‘If there is something to litigate, litigate it.’ Because you only get one diversion.”

What does she tell new lawyers when they lose their first case?

“I tell the women, ‘Don’t cry in court, it’s unprofessional.’ I tell women not to let their feelings show. ‘If you’ve got to cry, I say, go in the bathroom to do it.’

“They feel bad, but if they didn’t feel bad, they didn’t put their heart in it. I tell them they should evaluate whether the conclusion of the case was really the right thing, i want them to look at it, because if you don’t, you don’t learn.

“I’ve lost cases and I felt miserable and I walk out of there smiling, because I’m supposed to, and then I go in the bathroom and sob.

“I tell them I understand they feel bad and they’ll get over it, because we have to keep going, we must press on.” Durovic slams a fist into her open palm. The sound is loud. “Keep going.

“My biggest nightmare as a public defender is for an innocent person to be convicted. There are cases where there’s a real question about what’s going on. A misidentification case, that’s one of the worst. Those cases and death penalty cases get to you. As I always say, ‘Nothing gets your attention like hearing someone you’re standing next to sentenced to death.’

“Our work gets to us. You get somebody out, you bust your butt, and six months later the person is back in jail. It’s frustrating. I remember reading Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. This work is like Sisyphus’s life: you roll that rock and you roll that rock and you see that person, back in jail.

“Theoretically, you don’t get involved with clients, but in fact, you do. I care for many of my clients, especially the young guys who have been through the system or as I call it, ‘life on the installment plan.’ ”

In a flat voice, Durovic says, “They did burglary ten years ago and then they sold dope, and they have probation last year and probation two years ago and it’s time again for them to go up to the joint.” She resumes her normal tone, “It’s a career track. They either die or they get old enough and chill out.”

What, I ask, do public defenders talk about when they have parties, get drunk?

“Cases. Crazy cases. What crazy clients did. It’s funny. We’re very similar to the DAs.

“I’ve always said, ‘It’s hard to marry somebody who doesn’t do this work.’ Because the hours are long, and it’s difficult for your spouse to understand, ‘I’ve got to go down to the jail,’ or ‘I’ve got to prepare for a case.’ You’re married to somebody who’s a secretary, their response is probably, ‘Why are you working on this guy? He’s probably guilty anyhow.’ “There are extra hours, stress, much anxiety, so it’s difficult for us to relate to people who don’t do our work. It’s easier for us to relate to DAs or cops because we all do the same thing, you know?

“A lot of DAs, I like personally. You don’t see it as often with the new DAs, because they’re young and they’re strident, but those DAs who’ve been around awhile, like public defenders who’ve been around awhile, we’ve seen a lot of stuff. So there is a camaraderie.

“We do the same work. The DAs, they’ve had witnesses who spin ’em, lie to ’em or say something other than their initial testimony once they get on the stand. And we have clients who spin us. Many of the DA’s cases are based on our old defendants. Oftentimes, their witnesses are no better than our defendants, and this is especially true in gang cases. What they have to rely on are people who’ve been in trouble, people raised by the criminal justice system.” Durovic and I take the elevator downstairs. We are in the Centre City Building’s lofty foyer, Durovic’s voice echoes against the marble walls, she looks terribly small. Her mother, she says, came to the United States from Eastern Europe. Not long ago her mother was in San Diego visiting and sat in felony arraignment court. “She said the defendants reminded her of people left homeless and wandering after the 1917 Russian Revolution. ‘Lost and terrified,’ she said,‘lost and terrified.’ ”

Municipal Court Judge Timothy W. Tower, a rugged, blue-eyed blond in his early 40s, puts out a firm hand in greeting. Behind him in his courthouse office stand photographs of his four children, his wife. A plaque lists his name as holder of the District Council Order of Merit from the Boy Scouts. Nothing on the walls, however, indicates his position as Bishop of the San Diego 10th Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He smiles. “I try to keep church and state apart!” When Judge Knoepp arrived in FA to serve his two months, he found, attached to ongoing cases, memos Tower had written. Knoepp admired the memos’ thoroughness and perspicacity. “A quick study,” Knoepp called Tower. Hearing this, Tower smiles, says, “You just about have to be to come from where I came from and do that job.”

Tower earned a bachelor’s degree at UC Davis and graduated from law school at UC Berkeley. He went to Gray, Cary, Ames and Frye, was there five and a half years in civil litigation. He left in 1976 to form Legro, Renetto, Pate and Tower. In 1979 he joined the San Diego Gas & Electric Company, where he was senior counsel at the time of his nomination to the municipal bench.

At SDG&E, Tower coordinated SDG&E’s suit against the Westinghouse Corporation, in which SDG&E alleged that Unit 1 Westinghouse had supplied them a defective nuclear plant. “We had a total of 450 million in claims against Westinghouse. Many, many attorneys on our side; many, many attorneys on their side.”

Before appointment to the bench, therefore. Tower’s work had been in civil litigation. He knew, he says, “a lot about courtroom and about rules of evidence, which with some exceptions are the same in criminal and civil — not to say they are necessarily easy, but at least you can understand the principles.

“Civil law is more complex than criminal as far as the law side is concerned. In terms of procedure, criminal substantive law is not that hard. That’s one reason I didn’t go into criminal law: I figured out early, it would get old quick. What makes criminal law interesting, what keeps criminal lawyers happy, is that the cases are fascinating. You are talking about people’s motivations, intimate, nitty-gritty things that happen to people.

“Two more reasons I didn’t go into criminal law. One, I found it wasn’t going to be intellectually challenging — I’m sure there are those who would disagree. Two, I woke up the first year of law school in criminal law class thinking I was going to be Perry Mason and then I thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute, these people we’re reading about are crooks who committed crimes and got off because of some rule of law, and the rule of law may have had a good basis, but these crooks didn’t get off because they were innocent!’

“The next step in my thinking was, ‘Am I going to spend eight to ten hours a day with crooks, murderers, people who are the dregs, if you will, of society?’ ” An apologetic balm warms Tower’s voice. “Because they really are, and while many people get caught in the process who aren’t, probably a good percentage if not most are the dregs of society. So, I thought, Am I gonna rub elbows with those people for eight or ten hours a day, five days a week? Uh-huh.’

“The civil process — especially the commercial side — tends to be involved with contracts, great legal principles, and the complexity of the law. Even personal injury and fraud, these tend to be fairly exceptional circumstances, they’re not necessarily uncommon, but they’re also not the way most people deal with each other. Whereas in criminal law,” Tower grins, “ ... well, crime involves people trying to get by and choosing the wrong way to do it.”

I ask Tower about “the tour.” “You start at traffic out in Kearny Mesa. Traffic is basically four misdemeanors: driving under influence the most serious, then failures to appear, driving on a suspended or revoked license, reckless driving. Traffic gets you started on ‘Here’s what criminal law is like, what some of the procedures are like.’ I did very well in criminal law in law school, by the way, so it was not exactly brand fresh, like taking a layman and trying to teach him.

“Next you do two months downstairs in misdemeanor arraignments. If you think felony arraignment volume is high, go down to misdemeanors! Drug cases, mostly use and sometimes possession, prostitution. Then you get municipal code violations, everything from not having fare on the trolley to not having your dog on a leash to using two fishing poles when you’re supposed to have one. You also see street people who were cited for illegal lodging, urinating in public.

“Misdemeanor arraignments was an eye-opener; you know these things happen, but it makes you see what’s happening. Many people appearing in misdemeanors are not real serious criminals, but they do things society doesn’t approve of.”

In all three courts, the problem, says Tower, is “to run through the volume and still do justice. I have seen judges be more efficient than I was, and while I think they are respectful, they do not feel the need to let people talk.”

“What I found most difficult from a procedural aspect is that attorneys who appear before felony arraignments are also high-volume attorneys. That’s another difference between civil and criminal practice. Some civil practices are high volume. But normally the volume by comparison with criminal practice is much smaller. A hundred cases would be a lot for a civil attorney. Most criminal attorneys do more cases than that in the same time frame. When I was practicing, because I was doing major litigation, 50 cases was high volume for me. If I were down to 40, Iwas comfortable. Fifty was too much.

“My point is, these attorneys have to be many places in the courthouse at the same time. There has to be a safety valve, and the safety valve is in felony arraignments. You have to let lawyers be there when they can, within reason. But you have to have some order. You can’t just let them pop in and do whatever, because other people are waiting. I insisted they call and check in because I think you start to get a real lax situation if they can just walk in anytime they want.”

Bail-setting, says Tower, is perhaps the most crucial aspect of felony arraignment. “Arraigning someone is pretty pro forma; even extradition, pretty pro forma. Certain things you do are cut and dried as long as you don’t screw up. But bail-setting, you couldn’t do, say, by computer. You gotta have a decision maker.

“Bail is important because the key elements have to do with safety of society and likelihood you’re going to get the defendant back before the court. And you’re not foolin’ around in felony arraignment; we’re talking guys with guns, with drugs.

“I tended to be conservative, to set bail on the high side. I did, however, have cases where I think prosecutors felt I set bail too low. We had six or seven co-defendants with drug charges, a pretty major drug operation. For one guy I set bail at $100,000 and the others at $150,000 to $250,000. The prosecutors argued for $300,000 and $400,000. But the Constitution says you’re entitled to reasonable bail, so I had to take that into consideration.

“But usually, setting bail, I tended to take the prosecution’s side. And toward the end of the tour I became more prosecution-oriented, more conservative, because I’d had a few experiences. You get burned. You trust people, and I did and had people who didn’t come back. That taught me to be more skeptical.”

Having been on the bench almost 18 months, how would Tower assess his fellow lawyers’ performance? “On the whole I think the lawyers show a pretty good level of competency. What scared me in felony or misdemeanor or wherever I was was that it became pretty clear to me that I knew more than most lawyers who appeared in front of me, and these were guys who were doing criminal law for a living and I never did. I am not saying that from beginning to end I knew more. This wasn’t true of everyone, there were lawyers who came in front of me who knew more than I did, and I learned from them.

“Lawyers know if they screw the judge up, the judge is going to remember, so they don’t do that, except the stupid ones and there are a few of those too. Good ones try to be straight with you. Most lawyers realize their stock and trade is their reputation. They ruin themselves with one judge, they are probably going to ruin themselves with all the judges, because we talk.”

What was the effect on Tower, seeing child molesters, murderers, rapists, armed robbers? Hearing related the details of unbelievably violent, wretched, and vile crimes?

“Fortunately, I didn’t have to get exactly among the defendants. They were at the podium, and I had the marshals between me and them. Most defendants didn’t say a lot, and I was talking mostly to their attorneys.

“I won’t say I was surprised, because we know these crimes occur. But, yes, it was a different experience to have someone who has committed murder or rape or some other heinous crime actually stand in front of me and have to look them in the eye and ask them how they plea.

“But my personal philosophy, frankly, doesn’t make it that hard for me to deal with that sort of people. I believe people have to pay for the consequences of their conduct, and the system is designed to determine who deserves the condemnation of society, so I like the system.

“Yet I do have some sympathy for people who commit crimes because almost by definition you have to be sociopathic to commit a serious crime, but that doesn’t excuse the conduct, and I believe they ought to pay for the conduct.

“What did concern me was that I saw people who had very serious problems of self-esteem, personal values, and it’s pretty clear to me the penal system doesn’t deal with those issues. It may deal with them for a few people who benefit from the system because they happen to be in the right place at the right time, to have the right counselor in prison. But by and large the system isn’t designed to deal with those problems.

“If my two months in felony arraignments had an emotional impact on me, it was realizing, ‘These people are going to be out of circulation for a while or be given some other appropriate punishment, but punishment isn’t necessarily going to change the conduct. This is a shame for them, a real tragedy, and it’s a shame and real tragedy for society.”

How did Tower make it known he wished to become a judge? “I managed to persuade my boss at SDG&E, the General Counsel, Stephen L. Baum, to write a letter to the governor for me. Then I persuaded Tom Page to write a letter for me. Mr. Baum is very well acquainted with the person who was then the governor’s appointments secretary, Mr. Marvin Baxter. He’s the guy whose attention you have to get. Mr. Page is well acquainted with both him and with the governor. So, I got a couple of nice letters from them and their support. I got more support from other people. Dan Stanford helped, as did many other people.

“Of course, I had been practicing in the community for a long time, so I knew a lot of lawyers. Starting with Gray, Cary, I knew probably most of the older, more senior partners at most of the big firms. So I got four letters from Gray, Cary. A letter from Luce, Forward, Hamilton and Scripps. I got some letters from people in L.A. whom I knew. So it was all that politicking that goes on to try to get somebody’s attention.”

And why did he want to become a judge? “In any job, if you do anything for a long time — and ten years in the gas and electric company is a long time, mind you — you begin to get burnout. It becomes routine. That’s the negative. On the positive side, I like the law, I like the debate. I don’t just sit back and listen to what lawyers have to say. I try to stay out of trying the case for lawyers or getting in their way, but when it comes to arguing the law, I can get into that.

“Even more important, although I was making a contribution as an advocate, I could make a greater contribution as the person making the decisions. As a young lawyer, I would not have been in a good position to make decisions, but after 18 years of practice and learning what I have through my church and the practice of law, I came to feel I’d be a pretty good decisionmaker. I had a good concept of what justice is about and felt I would be more comfortable taking the evenhanded approach — and it has turned out to be true — being able to listen to both sides and come up with a solution as opposed to advocating just for one side.

“Most of us like to feel we’re doing something worthwhile, and I felt the Lord had prepared me in terms of talent and temperament to do this job, and I felt I could give back to society the benefits it had conferred to me.”

An El Cajon attorney outside FA suggested that if I wanted to talk with an attorney with a high criminal-volume practice, both misdemeanor and felony, a lawyer who was earthy, streetwise, and canny, I go to 1140 Union, to the second floor offices above bailbondsman “King” Stahlman and visit Ronald S. Pancoast.

Past the reception desk is a vast room looking out onto Union Street, where Pancoast and two staff members work. Pancoast, a white-haired and burly man in his late 40s, meticulously garbed in blue suit, striped shirt, and paisley tie, offers me a seat across from him. His eyes lock on mine. I feel I couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.

Quite often, says Pancoast, when a person arrested on felony charges first gets in touch with him, that person telephones from jail. Likely as not, one of Pancoast’s former clients will have recommended Pancoast to the arrestee.

If Pancoast takes the case, what is his initial step? “Usually, I refer him to a bailbondsman and have him bailed out. I can do a lot more for a person when he’s out of custody than I can when he is in custody.

“Essentially, there’s two parts to a criminal case. There’s the part that revolves around the issue of guilt or innocence, and there’s the question of what should be done to the person at sentencing.

“Most felony criminal defendants have rather lengthy records of involvements with substance abuse. Usually, it’s alcohol and drugs, in combination. An addictive person will use. It doesn’t matter whether the drug is heroin, alcohol, methamphetamine. If one drug is not available, the addictive person substitutes another. Usually, this drug-use causes criminal activity either because the addict needs to support his habit or it causes a loss of judgment that puts the addict into an unfortunate situation.

“If the substance-abuse problem can be addressed, then the criminality will go away. And it’s quite often that a substantial rehabilitative program will enable a person not to use again and to convince a judge that such a program is more appropriate than actual time in custody.”

I ask if Pancoast feels a defendant may get a better deal when he goes to court if he has a retained private attorney rather than a public defender. He does. “I am paid for my time, so I’m able to spend more time with the case, it’s as simple as that. You are able to get to know the defendant better, you can focus in on this person’s problems.”

Say I’d been arrested on charges of armed robbery, what would Pancoast charge to defend me?

“An armed robbery is a prison presumptive category, which means that unless the judge finds good reason to the contrary, he must send the convicted armed robber to prison. So, we can possibly enter into a negotiated plea for something other than armed robbery to let the charge fall one degree or one step down in the hierarchy of crimes.

“So it could cost a lot. Not only that, armed robberies are litigatable offenses, and whether or not it went to trial, it would certainly require trial preparation. The big issue in armed robbery is usually identity, and as odd as this may sound, eyewitness identification is the least reliable form of evidence that exists.

“Normally, we’re looking at perhaps $10,000 for an armed robbery. Plus trial fees, which would be probably $750 a day. Civil cases or dissolutions, my typical fee is $150 an hour. During the period of time that we start picking a jury until the jury goes out to deliberate, I get compulsive. I often have to hire other attorneys to cover other court appearances. I get very single-minded. I get tunnel vision.”

First-degree burglary or possession of a controlled substance for sale are charges Pancoast frequently defends. For these charges. Pancoast normally charges a base fee of $5000. If the case can be settled before it reaches superior court, Pancoast may give the client a $2000 rebate.

Is there anything an attorney can do to help a client before he goes into felony arraignment court?

“Nothing. Normally, if I’m retained before felony arraignment, it’s possible for me to get discovery from the district attorney’s office and therefore to be able to discuss the police reports with the client.

“A person should always plead not guilty. The evidence is not available to him; therefore, he can’t determine whether or not the acts that he knew he committed actually fall within the definition of the crime.

“Not only does he not know what the police report says, but even were the police report accurate, most people don’t have the technical knowledge of law to determine whether those acts fell within definition of that particular crime in this state. For example, in some states burglary is not burglary unless it’s done at night. It’s a theft.

“In California, burglary isn’t burglary unless criminal intent precedes entry. Burglary is breaking and entering into a dwelling, the residence of another, with intent to commit a crime therein. The crime is usually theft. If you break into the house to get out of the cold and while in the house decide to take valuables, then you have committed a breaking and entering misdemeanor and a felony theft, not a burglary. So you must plead ‘not guilty’ until all evidence is in.

“The way the plea-bargaining system works is to allow the defendant to enter a plea to a charge that may be less serious than the aggregate of the charges facing him and to allow the district attorney to be assured of conviction.

“A client might be facing eight or even ten years. The district attorney and the defense attorney in a settlement conference prior to the dispositional hearing may agree that at worst this is a two-year case, and if the judge will listen to my rehabilitative spiel, he or she will decline to sentence my client. So we fashion a plea to make punishment fit the crime. Usually these discussions are over the phone. ‘What do you think this is worth?’ you will ask.”

Different courthouses, says Pancoast, have “different atmospheres” in which these settlement conferences take place. In San Diego, where Pancoast derives two-thirds of his practice, the atmosphere, he says, is far less relaxed than it is in El Cajon, where he also practices.

The difference? “In El Cajon, there’s minimal confrontation between defense attorneys and the district attorney’s office; it doesn’t seem to be a battle at all, it’s less adversarial. A lot more joking, clowning around, a lot more ‘I’m just a good old country lawyer.’ This is beginning to be true in San Diego also.”

I ask if the majority of Pancoast’s clients are indeed “guilty” of that which they are accused. “Guilt or innocence,” he answers, “isn’t the real question, because quite often the people who are in felony arraignment court are guilty of something. The question is, ‘What are they guilty of?’ And secondly, ‘What should be done about it?’ And that gets back to where I started, ‘What can we do to protect society from what often is a 15- to 20-year continuing course of conduct?’ You can break that cycle, there are people who have felony convictions who have been addicts who have stopped using and have gone on to lead successful lives.”

Pancoast sits back in his chair. “I have two felony convictions, one for possession of a controlled substance and one for possession of marijuana for sale.” Pancoast goes on to tell that he had started law school in 1971 but because of his drug addiction dropped out after a semester and a half. In the early ’70s, he was arrested and did three and a half years of state time in custody.

“In 1977, I started working for an organization called Project Jove and began to put my life together. My recovery was a process; it didn’t occur all at once. I went back into law school in 1981, graduated in 1985, took the bar in 1986, and passed the first time. Now I have a little over eight years completely substance-and-alcohol free. Obviously, it’s a lot longer than eight and a half years since 1977, but alcohol is a drug too. It took a while to convince me I couldn’t drink.”

His experience, says Pancoast, helps him work with people with problems similar to his own and to put together realistic programs to help them. “Suggestions to a client that he begin a certain course of conduct now and follow it have more credibility coming from me than from someone who’s never been arrested, who’s never had a problem with alcohol or drugs.”

Was it difficult for Pancoast to do time?

“Oh, no. Oh, no. Not at all. That’s one of the sad things about the criminal justice system. The fact that doing time is so easy. The first 30 or 60 days are rough. Human beings are very adaptable animals, and after those first few months, they’ve learned to adjust. For convincing a person of the error of their ways, so to speak, the first 30 or 60 days are all that are necessary. After that, doing time can become counterproductive. Take a typical first offender, 21, 22 years old. Assuming he hasn’t been through the juvenile system and gets arrested on a felony, he will go stark raving mad in the first 30 or 60 days of custody. By that time he’s had his preliminary hearing, and usually a deal has been made. By then he begins to realize doing time isn’t that bad, and he’s no longer afraid of it. So the criminal justice system stops being a deterrent.”

Among Pancoast’s clients have been addicts with criminal histories in excess of 20 years who never before tried rehabilitation. “I am able to convince the judge,” says Pancoast, “ ‘Your Honor,’ I might say, ‘this person is not your typical defendant, coming in and telling you they’re going to go into a drug program. This guy was arrested in December, by the middle of December, he was arraigned. Right after that he hired me, and he went into a treatment program. He’s been in eight months. We have a representative of that program who will tell you that this is the wrong time to take him out. Why don’t we go ahead, impose a sentence, and come back in a year and see if my client is still making progress?’

“Most judges listen to alternative-sentencing spiels, because the good spiels are well thought out, and the defendant is well under way to recovery, and actual articulable events have occurred that you can point to and say, ‘This has happened, this has happened. Here is a list of 120 AA and NA meetings this person has attended. This is a letter from the director of the residential treatment center. This is the aftercare program that they will go into.’ You have truth working on your side, the person has actually done it, you can see even physical changes in the person. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that a person is an addict and that their life is completely out of control, and conversely when a person is beginning to put his life back in control, you can’t help seeing that this is taking place.”

I mention that he had been described to me as someone with a high criminal volume. At any one time, how many cases is he likely handling? Pancoast figures that he has no more than two or three new cases each month go through the felony arraignment court in the downtown courthouse and another one or two a month out of El Cajon and every few months perhaps one new case out of Vista. But the numbers, Pancoast says, will be deceptive. Many of his cases last longer than those of other attorneys because before a plea is entered many of his clients are entered into residential-treatment programs and aftercare programs. “So on many clients, even 18 months after arraignment I will still have an open file, whereas typically for clients not in treatment the time between arraignment and plea may be no more than two months.”

Presenting the facts in cases in felony arraignments, the prosecutors, I note, appear to engage in more histrionics than will the defense side. I mention, as example, A1 Arena, who represents the People in drug cases. One of a trio of defendants charged with sales and possession of rock cocaine had been depicted by his attorney as unaware that his co-defendants possessed drugs. Arena rose to his feet, jutted out his chin, and, in sonorous stirring tones that reached to the last row, addressed the judge. “They were in fact rocking the cocaine on the stove. He,” Arena’s eyes blazed as he indicated the defendant, “was virtually hanging over the stove, he was not stirring Campbell’s soup!” What, I ask Pancoast, does he make of the dramatic style? Pancoast at once says, “I try cases with Al, and Al’s a fine fellow. In trial there’s room for dramatics, and my style might be different from his, more laid back. For the life of me, I can’t be convinced that someone like Judge Thompson or Knoepp or Frank Brown are impressed by dramatics. But some defense attorneys like to do it because their clients like to see it. And I think some district attorneys like to do it because they view the public as being their client.”

Is there anyone in the DA’s office to whom Pancoast will turn when he wishes to discuss a client’s case? “No. Essentially, I talk only to the person to whom the case is assigned. The only time I may make an exception to that is if I’m trying to sell to a particular district attorney something really unique as an alternative to custody. I’ll say, ‘You know, I’m not as nuts as this makes me sound. Talk to so-and-so and they will tell you that the things I say usually make sense.’ Or, ‘If I represent something as being a particular fact, I’m not trying to do a ball trick, I’m playing it straight and above board.’ ”

Late Friday afternoon, DA’s sixth-floor courthouse office. In a long room that is both reception and work area, men have taken off jackets, loosened ties. Backs of shirts show wrinkles from the day’s wear, as do women’s skirts. The women’s stockings droop, and the carefully lined and shadowed eyes, the lipstick that early this morning before 8:30 bail hearings highlighted smiles, now appear slightly out of focus, blurred. Even Brenda Dailey’s tan seems faded, and as she stands at a desk, picking up a ringing telephone, her shoulders bowed, she looks exhausted.

Along the narrow hallway to municipal court division team leader Jay Coulter’s office, a glimpse in open doors shows offices as small and cramped, as stacked and heaped with file folders as those in which public defenders work. Some desks are chaos, others orderly, almost bare. Even in these last hours of the work week, men and women still speak urgently into telephones and scratch notes on forms.

Coulter has been in the DA’s office since 1972, for the last four years in the municipal division. “The DA’s office,” he explains, “is a career office. Twenty years ago, you got out of law school, you came to work in the DA’s office for three to five years, learned trial skills, and then went into private practice and utilized your skills for a private law firm. All over the state, district attorneys offices started realizing that the defense bar was old and experienced with a lot of knowledge and know-how, and DA’s were relatively new, just out of law school. They decided they had to get a more experienced and battle-scarred group of deputies to handle prosecution of cases, so they started converting the offices into career-type offices, by raising pay, increasing retirement benefits. Before it was almost like being an intern in a hospital.”

Is there a certain type of person that seems attracted to the DA’s office? “There are a certain number of people in our office that I would describe as conservative — ‘If you’re charged with a crime we’ll prosecute you as hard as we can and put you away for as long as we can’ — but we also attract many people who are in it because there’s satisfaction working on behalf of victims of society, people wronged by others who may be bigger and stronger.”

For attorneys new to the office, felony arraignments court, says Coulter, “is the first step on their trip into the district attorney’s office and trial work. Every new deputy will come down and spend at least one morning beside me at the prosecution table.

“We will talk about bail. It’s very difficult for new deputies to get a handle on bail. The information they need to make a decision is based on experience, and by definition, when you’re new you don’t have experience.

“Maybe bail is set at $15,000 and the defense attorney is asking for an OR release. You put all the facts — ‘What’s the person’s past record for appearing in court? How dangerous is the crime?’ — into your internal computer and stir them up and come up with something. Because the judge is going to look at you and ask, ‘What is your recommendation? How do you feel about what the defense attorney has suggested?’ “You can have a person who is a longtime member of the community, he’s getting a divorce and he heaved a brick through his ex-wife’s front window and did some substantial damage. Well, is this person really dangerous to the community? Probably not. That kind of case I might not oppose an OR release, especially if the person had family support in there, perhaps the pastor of his church. If this same person with this clean record, never been in trouble before, shot someone, somebody like that I think we ought to keep in. But we have to look at the nature of the threat.

“Another issue is, how wealthy is the person? Bail is designed to be something likely to cause some concern. How much access does he have to ready cash? Because we want to set bail at a level that’s going to cause him to want to come back to court. One thing that bothers me, when we’re dealing with drug cases, some of these people are caught with ten or fifteen thousand in cash and a bunch of drugs, and the defense attorney may ask for only five or ten thousand dollars’ bail. Well, that’s pocket change for some of those people.

“On the other hand, you get some relatively poor person who’s caught committing a burglary, maybe $500 might be more than he possibly can handle.

“Bail is set as much to guarantee appearance in court as to safeguard the welfare of the community. For many years in California, the only concern for bail was to get the person to return to court. You could not actually consider threats to public safety. The legislature changed that and said you can and should consider the safety of the public.

“You have a boyfriend/girlfriend dispute. The woman tells the fellow she’s breaking up with him, doesn’t want to see him again, and he can’t handle that, beats her up, kidnaps her — that’s a scenario we see fairly often. I’m very concerned about these incidents. When you have strong emotions — love, rejection — it’s common to see physical violence. So in some such cases, we will see a judge set bail at $200,000 or even $500,000. What the judge is really saying is, ‘No bail. This person should not be released.’

“I had a talk with Judge John Thompson, and he said, ‘I am going to set no bail on these cases. That is a more honest approach than setting bail that I know is ten times higher than this defendant will ever be able to make.’ I agree with this. Some defense attorneys do too.

“There is no sense in taking some poor or middle-income defendant and setting $500,000 bail and claiming you have any thought he would be able to come up with it. He’s living in a rented home, drives a 1970 Toyota; this is not a guy who can come up with half a million dollars. Why not just say, ‘No bail!’ ”

I note that almost everyone in the courthouse to whom I’ve spoken feels that most people coming through felony arraignment are guilty. Coulter’s answer is no-nonsense. “The vast majority of them are.”