I am inclined to believe that a legal genius invented the US court system so I dare not assume something is seriously wrong with any aspect of it. This is a glimpse into the fraction of our judicial system I can't stand. .(from a completely personal perspective.) On any given weekday morning, hundreds of law-abiding citizens are summoned to converge in crowded courtrooms for different offences largely related to traffic tickets. Of course for any society to function properly, every tenet of the law should be upheld, regulations seriously enforced by some legal perimeter to avoid human society from plunging into chaos. I get it. But when the process is so mundane, notoriously dull and ridiculously routine, someone needs to ask the relevant questions, and perhaps even question the relevance of such ‘due processes’.
For many of the hundred of defendants on any given morning (for which I am sure every sane person in Houston has been at some point in their life), you wonder what genius planned this in the first place.
The likely sequence is, you wake up before dawn to get ready for your day in court (actually your 1 minute in court); you set all your alarms and reminders to avoid you from earning an arrest warrant just in case you oversleep. Then you start your adventure through the traffic on any highway in Houston until you get to the crowded downtown streets only to end up in a parking lot a hundred miles away from the courthouse. Sorry to add that there are no formally assigned parking spaces, which means that you pay another “fine” just to park your car. Good luck on this one.
Then you spend the rest of the morning running along the pavements, hurry towards the municipal courthouse, and by this time you are looking forward to seeing the officer who pulled you over 2 months ago for some ‘lame’ reason. It is very likely that your transgression is anything from ‘over-speeding’, to ‘running a stop sign’ or my archetypal offense, ‘failure to make a complete stop’. The deja-vu moment hits you, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Yes I know; slow enough for you to pull me over. Duh! You never question the officer’s psychology (just take my advice and don’t try that), and so you end up in court anyway because that is our legal system, and you are a law abiding order-loving citizen.
In case this is hard to believe, you spend the next two hours watching the lawyers walk around the courtroom, flaunting their 2 for $99 – shiny Suitmart suit-looking jackets as if in a Friday happy hour at a Cajun Restaurant; casually chatting about their dogs and cats (and occasionally how long they hope to be in court). All this while you sit at the back of the room, staring at your watch and counting the minutes you are missing away from school or work, or even both. If you are like most people, you have paid a television advertising-mailbox bombarding-law firm $75 to represent you, but count yourself lucky if they show up. There is the possibility that they may not show up and believe it or not, one of their lawyer-friends will step in for them (that’s just the nature of the system).
The amusing part is, even if your lawyer shows up, he calls your name and makes sure you exist, (together with a long list of clients’ name he picked up 20 minutes ago) never says another word to you, and you pray that this attorney has a clue why you are there in the first place. Call me cynical but an image of a stranger showing up with a pink shirt, blue tie and a weird-colored suit with a clipboard is not my idea of legal representation. Your day is court started at 8am and if you are lucky, the judge calls your name three hours later to inform you that ‘your case is dismissed.’ My best guess is that sometimes the only reason why they are forced to let you go, is to make room for the next group of anarchic and unruly citizens destined for a date with a judge.
I am sure if youve read the article carefully thus far, you have already assumed that I am a peeved, chaos-loving, law-breaking, and court-hating American. Far from it, I actually admire the system; I just am not particularly fond of its efficiency and the thought that a taxpayer’s hard-earned fines could be appropriated with a little more caution.
Regardless of how incorrect the assertion is, the longstanding public perception that police officers hand out tickets like bologna sandwiches to meet their quota makes for a demoralizing catalyst. The long list of city and government bureaucrats do not help the cause either, all of whom have secretaries, who in turn have administrative assistants. Pardon my observations, but you stay in the courtroom long enough you notice everything and everyone picking their teeth while they check emails on their ‘myspace’ pages. Then there is one the thing you can’t miss, the rude ‘bad-weave-wearing and bad-mannered’ security guards with the huge flashlights and the nasty attitudes. Good gracious, they are rude.
For comic relief, the genius put up a life-size notice on the wall that reads “No cell phone” and “No Newspapers”. Just perfect, - sit in court for three hours and I can’t read anything, I can’t send a text message and I cant even stare at my own watch? What will you rather suggest I do, stare at the brown walls and daydream? That is what makes the experience awful; - all you can do it to sit back, look up and shut up.
I have been in court so many times that I can recite the entire process, even in my sleep;- it usually ends the same way. Case dismissed. Reason? Officer not present! (And it took you three hours to find that out?) Of course, the officer never shows up, I could have told you that. And this honestly is the basis for the attorneys adequate defense on your behalf, because the police officer who pulled you over six months ago and ruined half of your day is delayed in Shipley’s Doughnuts and stuck in the drive-through at Crispy Creme. I always wondered how different it will be if the officer actually showed up one day, simply because the attorneys don’t know anything about me or the case. What will their argument for my defense be? The answer, I don’t know. I will have to give lawyers some credit nonetheless; they always know the case number. Of course, this is America, hundreds of lawyers graduate from law school every weekend eager to jump in the action. It is for this very reason that I chose to go to Law school, Ill defend myself from there on; thank you very much. This is my concern, - is this really what our legal system is disintegrated into? Of course, I am not in the business of constitutional reevaluations but perhaps the judicial interpretations of American society should be seriously re-assessed. A typical day in court, with the financial implications on the state budget makes the roles of the police, the lawyers or even to a lesser extent the judges, seem somewhat of a circus. Our legal system obviously is not broke, and I am not suggesting that we fix it, but at least tweak it.
Maybe traffic tickets should be paid at the post office or even Wal-Mart. (That’s only a suggestion). Let us save the courthouse for offenses that necessitate the appropriate legal attention. I admire the judges and the respect the courtroom for what it is intended for, I rather not devalue it for some bonehead offense.
