court room 302

¶ … American Criminal Courthouse by Steve Bogira. Specifically, it will contain a book report on the book. "Courtroom 302" is a detailed and disturbing look into the criminal justice system in America. The author spent one year observing the activity in this particular courthouse in Chicago. The result is an intimate portrayal of the people who populate the courts of America, from criminals to prosecutors and beyond. When the reader is finished with this volume, they will be far more understanding and troubled by the criminal justice system, as it exists in America today.

Author Steve Bogira is a reporter for a Chicago weekly newspaper, not a jurist or criminal justice professional. Because of this, he has a way with words that paint pictures of the players in this courtroom drama. Early in the book, he writes of a string of prisoners, "The prisoners are rumpled and rank - the wagon-tossed, wretched refuse of a major American city" (Bogira 4). The characters come alive in this book because Bogira knows how to write, and because he is incredibly detail oriented and observant.

Courtroom 302 is just one courtroom in the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, "the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in the nation" (Bogira 3). Bogira starts his journey through the legal system in the cellar of the courthouse - the lockup where 78,000 prisoners a year get their first glimpse of the building. He then follows some of the prisoners completely through the system to Courtroom 302, while he follows other trials and actions there throughout the year. It is an in-depth look at the criminal justice system in the minutest detail, and it is startling in many areas.

It is clear the author researched this book with depth and detail. Not only did he spend a year inside Courtroom 302, he interviewed hundreds of participants in the courtroom drama, including Judge Daniel Locallo, the presiding judge in the courtroom, numerous times. His notes on each chapter indicate he also used published sources as background for his own exhaustive research and interview process. The book is well written and compelling, but it is also well researched and defended. The author clearly understands his subject and his experience in the courtroom. He brings this understanding to the reader, to make the entire experience more interesting and enlightening.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this book is the implications it holds for every courtroom across America. First, Chicago may be the busiest felony courthouse in the nation, but there are hundreds more just like it all across the country, filled with petty criminals to the worst habituals. It is clear, most of the people arrested are black, and that the criminal justice system is severely taxed. Second, the system is taxed, in large part, with petty crimes that seem miniscule even to some of the police officers involved. Bogira writes, "Ferro wonders aloud about the final tab for catching, prosecuting, and perhaps punishing the defendant for his $18.75 felony" (Bogira 15). Thus, much of what is clogging the system are petty drug and burglary crimes that leave more seasoned criminals out on the streets, and petty criminal inside filling up the system.

Another very disturbing aspect of the book is the indifference and hatred many of the justice system personnel feel for the criminals. The Public Defender spends about two minutes with each of the accused, and wants a "ticket out of this toilet'" as quickly as possible (Bogira 12). This attitude continues throughout the book with most of the people the author encounters, and seems to reach an apex with Walter Williams, a one-legged heroin addict who cannot make his $750 bond, and dies four days after being arrested - a combination of asthma and heroin withdrawal. The officers on duty assumed he was "dope-sick," not a good enough reason to bring in medical personnel (Bogira 19). The record does not improve as the book progresses.

Several other defendants in the courtroom plead guilty, and the jails fill with people who need treatment. Larry Bates is another junkie who plea bargains in order to go to a prison with a drug-treatment facility, and then is sent to another facility without a program. He does eventually gain treatment, but he fell back into the drug lifestyle after a stint at marriage and a low-paying job. He ended up back in jail for eight years, and the list goes on and on. It is not so much that judge Locallo is a bad judge. He actually seems fair and honest, as honest as any elected official can be. What is at fault is the system itself, and the almost bone-chilling numbness that seems to come from most people in the system. They no longer care about guilt or innocence, or even the people themselves. They only seem to care about getting them through the system as quickly as possible, and with the least commotion. There is no compassion or caring about anyone, even the sick or infirm. They are all just "perps," and have no redeeming qualities, and that is probably the other most disturbing aspect of this book. That so many people can be so cold and uncaring.

Most of the people who visit Courtroom 302 on the wrong side of the bench are poor and black or Hispanic. Many, like Tony Cameron, feel they could beat the charges against them if they could only afford a real lawyer who cared about their case, rather than a harried Public Defender (PD) who has too many cases and two little time. Most of the people who work in the courtroom are white. As Bogira notes, "And many blacks here believe that white defendants have the ultimate advantage: if worse comes to worst, they can always buy their way out of trouble" (Bogira 67). Most of the people in Courtroom 302 do not have that luxury. They rely on the mercy of the court system to do justice, but as the case studies above clearly illustrate - justice does not always prevail for Chicago's accused.

Justice does not always prevail because there are many more considerations in the courtroom than just guilt or innocence. PDs often urge their clients to cop to a plea for a variety of reasons - none of which have to do with guilt or innocence. For example, one young prosecutor is worried that a plea bargain will not count as one of six he needs to advance to the next level of his career (Bogira 82), while judges often quickly decide on cases to help their cases disposed numbers look good. Thus, the young man who swore he did not murder another young black man plea bargained and went to prison for sixteen years, because his attorneys "persuaded" him to do so. Not because they believe he was guilty, but for a variety of self-serving and convoluted reasons. Justice is not being served in many of America's courtrooms because the legal system has become too bloated, mechanized, and self-serving, and all of that comes out in Bogira's book. That is also evidenced by the suggestion of some court personnel that each courtroom views the law differently. Bogira notes, "Sentencing standards can vary markedly from courtroom to courtroom" (Bogira 88). Thus, how much time a person receives can depend on the judge, how he or she views the case, and even the mood they are in that day. Somehow, that just seems wrong.

Of course, not all the justice meted out in the courtroom is faulty. The case of Frank Caruso, Jr., the white teen who almost beat a young black boy to death, simply because he was in the "wrong neighborhood" was immensely satisfying to the jury and the white community. However, it was immensely unsatisfying to the black community because the youth was not convicted of attempted murder, and because he was sentenced to eight years in prison. However, the two boys who helped him simply got probation. Caruso was convicted of several charges, and the white community seemed satisfied by the verdict. Blacks immediately said if the situation were reversed, and blacks had jumped white boys, they would have ended up in jail. Perhaps that is true. Justice is not always blind in the criminal justice system, but it can be difficult to find quite often in this book.

If there is any fault with this book, it may be in how the author has presented his own evidence. There seems to be some bias in the cases he has chosen to follow and report on. Most of the defendants are black, and many have psychiatric or drug problems (or both). The decisions all seem to be based on personal needs and determinants, rather than on the guilt or innocence of the actual parties. There is a certain cynicism in the entire process, from the way the defendants are treated in the jails, to the way they plea away their futures because they are urged to by self-serving PDs. Perhaps the author chose the most sensationally bad decisions from his year of research to show the inherent problems with the system. Of course, he could not chronicle every case and every decision, that would be impossible in a 300-plus page book. However, the reader has to wonder what he left out, and if it would have given the book a different feeling and tone if he had included some more positive cases, as well. Perhaps, like the beat reporters he discusses in the book, he fell under the spell of showcasing the "heater" cases that would be interesting and noteworthy.

Certainly, most of the people in this book are criminals, and they committed the crimes they were accused of. However, there seems to be no way to end this cycle of crime and jail. Many of these people clearly need help, not jail time, but there seems to be no help available, even in prison. Many of these people would probably not end up back in the system again and again if they could only get treatment for their problems. Few of the cases revolved around hardened criminals. Rather, they were a grim group of drug offenders, and minor ones at that. Gates ended up in prison for years for selling two rocks of cocaine, a minor infraction compared to those of the importers and major drug dealers who are bringing the drugs into the country.