A Mini-Debate On The Nature Of Justice Court. Editor's Note: Last April, Lee Thorn, a philosophy instructor at Pima Community College, became a self-described "customer at the bar of justice" when he was prosecuted for consuming a can of beer in the campus faculty lounge just before a class he was teaching. Here is his view of what happened to him in the legal system, followed by a response from Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall. Don't Pay The Two Bucks' By Lee Thorn PERHAPS WE'VE LET our Justice Court degenerate into a shell game because most of us don't anticipate going through it. If we're not planning to do anything illegal, why worry about what happens to those who do? That's pretty much how I thought--until I was arrested in the middle of teaching a philosophy class at Pima Community College last April. Now that I've been ground through the Justice Court, I have what I hope are some constructive thoughts about it. Based on my experience, I devised a model of how the system works and sent it to the County Attorney and the Presiding Judge requesting interviews with them. I offered them an opportunity to correct my proposed model. Here it is: The County Attorney hits you with three bogus charges. If you don't plead guilty, you have to go to court a minimum of three times before you can tell your story. The prosecutor offers to drop two of the bogus charges if you'll plead guilty to the third and pay a fine. If you refuse, you eventually go to court and are prosecuted by someone who's been too lazy to prepare a case before a judge, who knows little if any law. The County Attorney didn't respond to my request for a chat. The Presiding Judge wrote back explaining why the three court appearances were necessary. Of course there's no reason why either of them should have to justify his or her actions to a mere taxpayer, but even after I offered to give $20 to the favorite charity of anyone in the County Attorney's Office who would sit down and explain their process to me, I got no takers. I guess $20 ain't what it used to be. One of the major flaws in the existing system is that the prosecutor has immunity from law suits claiming malicious prosecution. That means the prosecutor can charge you with any crime that pops into his head; and even if he knows you're innocent, you have no legal recourse against him. That's very nice for prosecutors; but from the public's perspective, it's like giving doctors immunity from malpractice suits, or giving corporate financial officers immunity from charges of embezzlement. The practical result is not that prosecutors end up sitting around trying to think up crimes to charge their enemies with. The practical result is that, not having any real pressure to present a plausible case, they have little reason to see if there is a plausible case. While you, the defendant, are paying good money to consult a lawyer and/or spending your precious time researching your case, there's a good chance your file is sitting unread in a pile of equally unread files in the prosecutor's office. What do they risk by prosecuting you based on nothing at all? Nothing at all. Besides the unlimited license to overcharge, the prosecutor has a crowbar called time to hold over your head. It takes a minimum of three appearances to actually tell the judge your story. You can't know beforehand how long each appearance will take. You may be required to show up at 9 a.m. and not be called on until 11. You're prudent to plan to lose half a workday for each appearance, a financial loss that will probably equal or exceed any fine that might be assessed. The day and a half in court could be replaced by a one-minute phone call that would run something like this: "Hello, I'd like to enter a plea on case CR36942." "Your name, sir?" "Jack D. Ripper." "Your plea?" "Not guilty on all charges." "Sir, the prosecutor offers to drop charges two and three if you'll plead guilty to number one and pay an $80 fine." "No way. Let's go to trial." "Would September 14 at 8:30 a.m. be convenient?" "Perfect." "Thank you and good luck." I leave it to students of the bureaucratic mentality to determine whether this shortcut hasn't occurred to those who run the system, or whether they'd prefer not to take the crowbar from the prosecutor's hand. If a defendant does take the time, trouble and expense to go to court, he deserves to have his case heard by a judge who knows some law. I'm not saying that Justices of the Peace should have law degrees, but they should have a nodding acquaintance with some of the rudimentary principles of law that distinguish our system from that of China's. Let's not ask them to pass the bar exam, but let's demand some modest test. They should know, as my judge did not, that witnesses to the same event don't get to hear each other's testimony before giving their own, that when the police admit to knowingly submitting false documents to the court you have what's known in legal circles as a "Major No-No," and that the judge is not supposed to be an adjunct prosecutor who supplies legal arguments for the prosecutor when he's too lazy or incompetent to come up with his own. There's an old American saying: "Pay the two bucks." It means that it's easier to pay, guilty or not, than it is to protest one's innocence. Of course it's easier to pay, but what has that done to the system? Social systems atrophy just like muscles do. One designed to render justice, but never called upon to do so, will soon lose the capacity to fulfill its purpose. If you don't want a sham system and sham justice, don't pay the two bucks. It may well be that one of our more serious duties as citizens of a democracy is that of not letting our officials push us around. I certainly ended up investing more hours in my case than I care to count, but I didn't pay two bucks, or two cents. Just Desserts By Barbara LaWall LEE THORN DOESN'T deny drinking beer on campus. He just thinks it's unfair to be held accountable for his conduct. Refusing to accept responsibility for his "drinking and teaching," Thorn now accuses the prosecutor's office of being the heavy in a personal drama of his own making. In doing so, he misrepresents many of the facts. Thorn complains that it is unfair that he was "arrested" and unfair to have been charged by the County Attorney's Office with "bogus charges." First, the County Attorney did not charge him. He was "arrested" and charged by campus police, who wrote him a misdemeanor citation for the offenses they had probable cause to believe he committed. Fellow employees saw him drinking in the faculty lounge, the police smelled the beer on him, and when asked, he admitted, "Yeah. I had a beer in the RD Building earlier." The Legislature--not the County Attorney's Office--has declared it a crime to drink in public and on educational campuses. There is nothing unfair and nothing bogus or malicious about upholding the law and prosecuting people who are charged with breaking it. Crimes are not bogus simply because they are not heinous. As long as there is sufficient evidence to prove guilt, it's the obligation of our office to prosecute criminal charges. We must not, nor do we, substitute our judgment on whether an offense should be the law for that of the Legislature's. If Thorn thinks drinking on campus should be permitted, let him persuade his legislators to change the law. Thorn also complains he was unfairly "ground through the Justice Court" because he had to appear three times. His first appearance, an arraignment to enter a plea of guilty or not-guilty, is required by law. After entering a plea of not-guilty, the file was then transmitted from Justice Court to the prosecutor's office. Thorn's second appearance was a pre-trial conference, at which time the prosecutor offered to plea bargain and dismiss two of the charges in exchange for a plea of guilty to drinking in public and either paying an $80 fine or completing 16 hours of community service. Thorn refused and the case was set the third time for a bench trial. Thorn's concern about the number of court appearances and delays at Justice Court is shared by the courts and the County Attorney's Office. In an effort to ease the strain on the public, the new Presiding Justice of the Peace, Robert Gibson, has proposed setting non-victim and non-DUI trials directly out of arraignments, bypassing a pretrial conference date. This will reduce the number of appearances to two. All persons charged with criminal offenses are entitled to a trial, to make the state prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That's what Thorn wanted, and that's what he got. Providing a trial to someone who wants to contest the charges they have been cited with hardly constitutes "malicious prosecution." In fact, it's the fairest treatment possible under any system of justice. In a letter to former Pima County Attorney Steve Neely, Thorn gleefully threatened to both humiliate the prosecutor, and file a bar complaint against her to "limit her career opportunities." Then while awaiting trial, he wrote two letters to the prosecutor accusing her of malicious prosecution, of being lazy, filing bogus charges, and conducting a "cheap shell game." Although normally our prosecutors respond to citizen inquiries and correspondence, Thorn's attitude made it evident that any correspondence with him would be pointless. Thorn wants the public to believe he was caught up in an unfair system, that the prosecutor's office wasted taxpayer's money on prosecuting a frivolous case. Thorn was given the opportunity to avoid a trial. He, however, refused to admit his personal responsibility. It was his insistence on trial that caused the taxpayer's dollar to be spent to prove his guilt. Lee Thorn got what he deserved and what he was entitled to in our system--a fair trial. He was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a Justice of the Peace (who, contrary to Thorn's assertion, is both a law-school graduate and a member of the State Bar of Arizona). Thorn is absolutely entitled to his day in court. But he needs to lose his "I-am-a-victim" attitude and his "blame game" mentality and take full responsibility for his conduct. Photos by Sean Justice

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