It was 10:30 AM on Friday\u2014hour three of waiting for my case to be called in West Roxbury District Court \u201cvirtual session.\u201d I was happy to wait; from my perspective as a student public defender, I\u2019d hit the lottery with the presiding judge. In several cases, he leaned on prosecutors to count months of pandemic delays as credit toward probation time. In one case, he announced, \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough in this police report to make out a case,\u201d and insisted the prosecutor dismiss it or conduct a probable cause hearing on the spot, adding \u201cmaybe you can guess which way I\u2019d lean if we went down that path.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was pleased to present my case to the Judge not just because he was dealing favorable outcomes\u2014but also because he recognized what unfortunately few in robes do: the true toll that prosecution takes. In most cases, the sentence (if there ever is one) is only part of the punishment. Having a case open is itself<\/em> a punishment.<\/p>\n It is extraordinarily stressful to have a criminal case lurking in the background of your life. You wake up every day knowing that if things don\u2019t go your way, you may end up spending months in jail, with a criminal record forever marring<\/a> your future<\/a>, being subject to deportation<\/a>, losing your housing<\/a>, or even having your kids taken away<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pending charges also have immediate, tangible impacts. Some \u201ccollateral consequences\u201d of prosecution, such as child removal proceedings and ineligibility for public benefits, can be triggered by a mere accusation<\/a>. Pending criminal charges show up on<\/a> credit reports run by landlords and background checks run by employers.<\/p>\n Every criminal case is a dark and menacing cloud, regardless of how severe the charges are.<\/p>\n At one point that Friday morning, after someone accidentally unmuted themselves and derailed a hearing for the umpteenth time, the Judge stopped the proceedings. \u201cEverybody listen up. I want you all to know that the minute I am allowed to make you come back in here, there will be no more<\/em> Zoom court. The interruptions and distractions, people doing court in their cars\u2014that\u2019s all disruptive and inappropriate. But the real problem is that we get nothing accomplished this way. In person, you\u2019re both here, you can talk to each other without the internet breaking up. You hauled yourself here so you don\u2019t want to leave empty handed. The bottom line is you get things done<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Having observed the Judge for hours, I knew that he had sympathy for the people being dragged through the system. He wanted them to be able to move on with their lives, and he believed that they would enjoy better outcomes when a prosecutor saw them as a person and not a blue square.<\/p>\n At the same time, I was unsettled by his rant. When I heard \u201cin person, you get things done,\u201d alarm bells went off in my head. It is possible to incarcerate two million<\/a> people and supervise 4.5 million<\/a> more only<\/em> because<\/em> the system is so good at \u201cgetting stuff done.\u201d We can close thousands of cases a day because prosecutors treat defendants as names on a page and not human beings, because sentences are assigned with no concern for the impact they will have on the person being sentenced (or their family or community), because we consider cases \u201cresolved\u201d without any regard for whether the harm that was caused was repaired, and because 95+ percent<\/a> of those accused of a crime waive their constitutional rights to a trial before a jury of their peers.<\/p>\n