Judge Nadel’s OJT

Jeanine Nadel, new judge.

Most male-type individuals will tell you, as just as many female-type individuals disagree, that plenty of women have hurtled through the glass ceiling in the last thirty years. But in Mendoland, if you're a male, you better jig through the halls of the County Courthouse, singing as you go, delighted that another female has been appointed judge. If you're anything less than exulted, you're a hopeless oinker. And you're a double oinker if you dare wonder out loud at the gender imbalance among County department heads. Most of them are girls. I mean ladies. I mean women. I mean they're not men, even if some of them dress in men's suits.

“Don’t go up to Judge Nadel’s court,” I was told.

“Why not?”

“She’s just getting started and the sight of a reporter in the gallery would just be too much!”

“But, my God, she’s been sitting up in front of reporters at the Supes meetings for years. What’s going on here?”

“Just stay away for a few days and give the poor girl a chance!”

“How could my presence or absence have any effect on her chances? Ferchrissakes, she’s in like an Alabama woodtick for the rest of her life! Nothing I or anybody else can do will change that. But, as a favor to you, I’ll stay away. But tell me what’s going on?”

Jeanine Nadel was appointed to the bench not because she's fair and honest, which she seems to be, but because of certain political considerations made by Governor Jerry Brown and the Democrats. And Mendo's demography, come to think of it — the libs and the labs insist on diversity. Kind of. While they'd go weak in the knees at an Hispanic woman being appointed to the bench, they'd only go weak in one knee if the appointee was an Hispanic male, not that either is likely any time soon here in Groove County.

In fact, this Nadel kid is a stranger to courtrooms.

Last week, as she took the bench for the first time, Judge Nadel had to have Judge Ann Moorman seated at her at her elbow just to get through some routine matters.

On Tuesday, Judge Moorman had shown Judge Nadel around the Courthouse, introducing her to everyone and showing her all the secret codes that open the doors where the secrets are tucked away.

Wednesday being a holiday, the new judge had a full day to recuperate from the strain of the Courthouse tour. On Thursday, she ascended the giddy heights of the bench and a number of routine matters were called.

* * *

“Scott Merriman… is there a Scott Merriman here?”

He wasn’t. I could have told her that. Merriman had missed the bus in Boonville. The MTA driver that day — another woman who mustn’t be criticized under any circumstances — had left a number of people behind, as she was ahead of schedule for some reason perhaps related to her desire to take care of personal business.

But this lady considers any kind of comment from the passengers as either an insult or an impertinence, so nobody was about to tell her that she’d left too early.

Judge Nadel asked the Deputy DA what he thought.

Deputy DA Gardner: “I think this failure to appear shows the state of mind on the part of the defendant quite clearly, your honor.”

“Wait a minute,” a lawyer from the Public Defender’s office said. “The DA is not clairvoyant. He can’t tell someone’s state of mind who isn’t even here. This is crazy.”

The rookie judge called the next case.

“Kelly Chestnutt…”

Mr. Chestnutt stood up and wasted no time explaining his case. This guy was ready!

“First of all, your honor, the cop gave me this citation for driving on a suspended license when all I was doing was moving a vehicle in my own driveway. He says in his report that he saw me driving on the street, but I have a picture proving that he couldn’t possibly have seen anything on that street from where he was. But my

public defender would never

return my calls, and when I finally got through to someone at the office I found out he’d quit the job and left town. So I took the plea, but I’m on a fixed income and can’t possibly pay this huge fine. Is there any way I can work it off in community service?”

Judge Nadel asked Judge Moorman, and they agreed that Mr. Chestnutt could work off his fine: “It would come to about 2500 hours,” she said deadpan.

Mr. Chestnut couldn’t believe his ears.

“I’m kind of hard of hearing,” he said. “But the fine was $2,500; and I thought I heard you say 2,500 hours —?”

Judge Moorman whispered something to Judge Nadel who changed the sentence to 250 hours of community service.

A fair minded bartender could sort out most of the stuff that finds its way into the local courts, but thirty years ago the state legislature, mostly lawyers, got a law passed that said judges had to have law degrees, which is why Mendocino County today has more judges per capita than any county in the state. We used to have "lay" judges, judges without law degrees, in every area of Mendo, but the lawyers passed this full employment act for themselves, and ever since we've had 8 judges and a magistrate at $175,000 a year plus fringes.

It is common for judges to take a great many days off. They need the time to spend all the money they make, for one thing. But taking time off doesn’t affect their pay. The rest of us have to get up and go back into the grind regardless of how we feel. And the money we make flies right back out the door and into the wolf's mouth.

So yes, it’s great to see a woman smashing through the glass ceiling. “Go girl – I mean judge! You rock!”

The murder case against Billy Norbury is being fast-tracked by DA David Eyster, but the defense keeps trying to derail it. Trial was set for later this month but at a pre-trial conference on Friday, Mr. Norbury’s lawyer, Al Kubanis, wanted to put it off until some psychologist’s report came in.

Judge John Behnke considered the request and asked DA Eyster if he had any objection.

“At first blush it feels a bit dilatory,” Eyster said, sounding a little like Penelope in the petunia patch.

Dilatory.

Well, it's more polite than "stalling tactic."

The judge put Norbury back a week, with the next court date landing on the auspicious date of Friday the 13th.

The crowds that usually attend Norbury’s court appearances have diminished considerably. The public has finally gotten the message that even when a case is fast-tracked, it goes forward at a frustratingly slow pace.

Back in January, when Norbury, who is white, shot his black Redwood Valley neighbor, who happened to be a popular local reggae performer named Jamal Andrews, the crowds overwhelmed the Courthouse, demanding an explanation of what appeared to be a straight up race murder. But the DA found that race wasn't a factor, that Norbury killed Andrews for other reasons, probably dope-related, from what we hear, and probably because Norbury also just might be cuckoo.

Public outcry over deadly violence is to be expected, but it usually happens that by the time a murder goes to trial everyone but the people directly involved have forgotten about it.

One of the most salient reasons for this killing and a great many others in out crumbling nation is the fact that everyone seems to have at least one gun. Here in Mendocino County where a big part of the population works off the books in an illegal industry... most people have more than one gun. If Norbury had had to fist fight Andrews, Andrews would still be alive. The gun makes it easy to kill someone over nothing or not much at all.

The consensus is that law-abiding citizens should be allowed to keep guns for self-protection or as sporting appliances. But it only takes a single incident to turn a law-abiding citizen into a murderer. A fit of pique and a handy gun is a fatal mix. Before you know it, the damn thing jumps in your hand, the slide clanks back with a ping as the spent shell is ejected and, when your ears stop ringing from the report, somebody is lying there dying.

In order to prevent this kind of tragedy, guys like Joseph Spreng, law-abiding citizen, Vietnam War veteran, one of your all round peace-loving kind of guys, are disarmed for flimsy or non-existent reasons. Mr. Spreng was having words with his neighbors when the neighbors called the cops on him, saying Spreng had threatened them with ultra-vi.

The cop asked Spreng if they could look around. He said ok and as soon as the cops saw Spreng’s gun cabinet they started loading them up to be carted off. When Speng protested, he was thrown to the ground and cuffed. Why? Resisting arrest, of course, a felony.

Spreng’s lawyer, another Brady Bill supporter, Kit Elliot, advised Spreng to take the plea to the resisting arrest charge so that the DA would drop all the other charges they’d tacked on: Disorderly Conduct, Obstructing a Peace Officer in the Conduct of His Duties, Terrorist Threats, Homeland Security Risk, Farting In Public, Spitting On The Sidewalk, Jaywalking, etc.

(Spreng had an impressive collection of guns, including an M-14 — not that there is anything strictly wrong with that — but law enforcement can make it seem that way, and when they confiscate your guns, you have to hire lawyers and go through an enormous amount of trouble and expense to get them back, and activist judges are not going to be of any help in this constitutional enterprise. Quite the contrary.)

Judge Behnke said, “So, Mr. Spreng, how do you plead to Count Two, the charge of resisting an executive [sic] officer, a felony?”

“No contest.”

“Now, you know that by pleading No Contest to this charge it is for sentencing purposes the same as a guilty plea, and that by making the plea you are in effect giving up your rights under the Fifth Amendment?”

“Yes.”

“And if you plead to a felony you will never be allowed to own or possess firearms or ammunition in the future?”

“Yes.”

“And do you give up that right?”

“Yes, sir. I give it up.”

So much for this man’s Second and Fifth Amendment rights, the ones he risked his life for in the rice paddies and jungles of Southeast Asia.

DA Eyster said, “The remaining counts are dismissed on my motion.”

Spreng was put on probation with a search clause, meaning he no longer has recourse to his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures; meaning, “in effect,” as Judge Behnke says, he is no longer, really, an American at all, having lost most of the constitutional rights Americans are supposed to enjoy, not to mention voting the pricks who did this to him out of office because felons can’t vote, either.

More cases just like this one are going through the courts as we speak, some of them involving people right here in Anderson Valley like Boonville’s Robert Rosen, formerly a lieutenant in the army.

During his time on the bench, Judge Jonathan "Whoopee" Lehan, an unindicted weenie wagger, disarmed thousands of Mendolanders. But just before he retired, he asked his bailiff to help him decide on a gun for himself. The bailiff, who knew I used to work for a gun magazine, asked me if I had a suggestion. I recommended a Glock, because in the end only cops will have guns, and they all carry Glocks.

And now for the sad and tragic tale of young Miss April Rash and her grandmother. How did the fetching Miss Rash come to be shackled and cuffed in a Superior Court dock?

It all started the day Miss Rash, who looks a lot better than her booking photo, was arrested for pawning Gran's coin collection.

“You are certainly looking a lot better than when you first came in here,” Judge Behnke remarked to Miss Rash.

Despite the faded jail coveralls and chains, Miss Rash was scrubbed pink, her hair was washed and brushed, and her eyes were clear. She looked wholesome and well, back from the land of drug zombo-fication.

Jail saves a lot of people from themselves, as in, "You weren't arrested, man. You were rescued!"

“This is the only case I’ve seen,” Judge Behnke resumed, “where the defendant describes a lengthy stay in jail as a breath of fresh air. But this case involves a theft from a person you were close to in order to feed your desire for drugs, and it will be interesting to see how your relationship with your grandmother goes forward from here. Be that as it may, I’m going to sentence you to 270 days in jail and put you on probation. The idea is that you complete the probation and make restitution.”

The judge turned to the Deputy DA Heidi Larson.

“Her grandmother got everything back,” DDA Larson reported. The coin shop is out $125 however.”

$125?

That means Gran had some nice coins; a pawnshop never goes more than 10% of value.

The judge added 60 days for the violation of probation and the mandatory 90 for tweaking (violation of Section 11550 of the Health & Safety Code), the first consecutive and the latter concurrently with the 270 for ripping off Gran. Whenever space could be found in a treatment center, Miss Rash could serve the remainder of her time in a rehab program.

The kid's lawyer, Thomas Mason, standing in for his law partner, Jan Cole-Wilson, said Miss Rash would like to have a day out of jail before going to the treatment center so she could put some of her personal business in order.

Deputy DA Larson was skeptical.

“What if she decides to have one final big blow-out while she’s out of custody? I would rather see her go straight into the program.”

Behnke said, “I’m not unwilling to let her have a day to get her things in order. But I’d like to know when she’s going and where, and she must be back the same day.”

During the proceeding hot tears of shame and remorse had been burning down Miss Rash's pretty face and dripping off her pixie chin — she’d started weeping even before her name was called. The bailiff took her a wad of Kleenex, which did little good since her wrists were cuffed to a chain at her waist. She hung her head and hid her face as best she could behind the reddish-gold curls that tumbled down to her shoulders.

The girl had some shame left, and surely that counts for something.

There were more sentencings scheduled, but the public defenders have begun resigning in upsetting numbers because of the County's decision to shunt them off into a nasty old dustbin of an office building while the supes lounge in big leather chairs and the judges look forward to their spanking new courthouse.  They're a kind of afterthought anyway.

These are dark days for presumption of innocence.