Public Property

When I reflect on the dialogs today, other thoughts and themes, which are really variations on some that others have discussed, unfold. One thing that strikes me is that the buildings in Berkeley and Jefferson County that have been built as courthouses since the 1800’s have been converted buildings. In order to make room for Magistrates when the Supreme Court said that they could no longer work out of their houses, they converted the John Street School. John Small attended there and he was one of the people who designed the modifications. Later a bowling alley and a bank became courtrooms, near the “old courthouse.” Most recently, in Jefferson County, the old jail was converted. The new judicial center started out as a woolen mill/factory and was then an outlet mall? Does the former use say anything about the location? The structure? The memories? The way the buildings function?
Another thing that strikes me is the growing lack of public access to the courts. That was not a theme I went in aware of, but it emerged so clearly and is perhaps the crisis in judicial architecture. How can we create spaces where the public feels both welcome and safe to use to address their conflicts? After a recent crisis in Yolo County, California where the public was locked out of an open proceeding, one legislator proposed rules to provide public access to courts. Her legislation provides, in part: “Each court security plan must address how the presiding judge and sheriff will ensure that security services are provided in a manner that protects the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to a public trial and the right of public access to court proceedings under the First Amendment and Section 124 of the Code of Civil Procedure…(the plan must) describe policies and procedures for ensuring that security services are provided in a manner that protects the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to a public trial and the right of public access to court proceedings under the First Amendment and Section 124 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Describe the training to be provided to ensure that courtrooms remain open to the public unless a lawful court order authorizes closure. Describe outreach efforts to local media and any Bench-Bar-Media Committee to facilitate discussion of concerns about fair trials, the free press, and other key issues affecting the courts, the media, and the public."http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/07/state_senate_ma.html

This story and the access issue that our community members who care about justice have raised sent me searching through some old legal opinions. There is a quote from U.S. Supreme Court decision that may perfectly describe the issue of the public nature of the courthouse. “What transpires in the court room is public property." Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 374 (1947).
This rather overriding issue about access to courts and the important part that the courthouse plays in community, does not overshadow the others. It may be the most concrete. (Pardon the pun.) But probably one of the most important messages I’m hearing is that the issues are not the courtrooms, it’s the courthouse. That shouldn’t be a surprise. As a lawyer, I know that most cases settle and never see the inside of a courtroom. However, the place, the experience of knowing that this building is “public property” is important. The courthouse doesn’t just house an isolated chamber someplace where bad things happen. It is a place where the community meets to resolve their conflicts. It is a place where relationships are created and mended. In short, the relationship between justice and architecture is this: the architecture must be mindful of creating a space where the citizens and judiciary of the community are respected, where they may be challenged to be a member of that community, and where they have room to talk openly and freely, with full participation of one another.

Another day-another dialog

Paulette has been sick and I’m exhausted. We are feeling like we need So we load up into Paulette’s car and drive for another day of shooting, learning and talking. We start off at the Martinsburg City Municipal building. We selected that venue because Judge Sanders had spoken about the photos of police officers that hung in the hallways. The City Manager gave us permission to film, and we did. The photographs turned out to be a group of kind of rag-tag hodge-podge photos which seem to date from the early twentieth century. We also explored the experience of the defendant in this courtroom, and found that a defendant wouldn’t be able to see the witness testifying. The bench is so big in the small space, that Paulette could only see about half of my face over the bench.
From there, we went to stop at Patterson’s Drug Store. You may recall that we stopped her before for Paulette to get her ammonia coke-a rite of passage into the bar. I remembered that when I first became a member of the Morgantown bar that the attorneys and judge would meet at Murphy’s in the morning before court. I had heard that the judge used to do the same thing at Pattersons. I was telling the story and Paulette was filming when one of Martinsburg’s old timers who I’ve seen stopped. He wanted to be on tape and wanted to flirt with Paulette and I. We did for a while, and then I asked him about the judge. He remembered that Judge Scinscendiver would “hold court” there before the beginning of the business day.
About that time, a group of assistant prosecutors, most of whom we did early interviews with, were coming back from lunch. They stopped and it was a perfect backdrop to discuss the sense of community among lawyers and the space to develop that sense. We then returned to some of the issues we had identified that we wanted to discuss, including the openness of the courthouse, the public property nature of the courthouse, and of course, the women’s witness room. One of the prosecutors had used the women’s witness room to talk to all of her witnesses, including men, before they moved to the new courthouse. One of the youngest prosecutors thought it would be great to have courtyard near the courthouse for the community to gather. Another thought that was a terrible idea, and would just attract vagrants.
After that very dynamic and vibrant dialog concluded, we returned to the old courthouse to revisit the courtroom, reshoot some of the Women’s witness room and dialog with John Small, the county clerk. It was here, in the Berkeley County Courthouse, that Paulette got the great idea to make a trailer, Extreme Courtroom Makeover. She was feeling puny, so I went along.
The dialog with John Small was beyond wonderful. It was kind of like everything we done to that point lead to our meeting. He told so many important stories, but the one theme was that the courthouse is a place that belongs to the people. When he was growing up, the public toilets downtown were in the courthouse. Both the ladies’ room and the men’s room had attendants. His mother would stop and visit with the attendant when they came to town. When a jury trial was starting, the janitor rang the bell. And the only time Mr. Small ever goes into the women’s witness room is when the toilet is stopped up and he needs to unclog it with the plunger. His stories were so rich and insightful, I could go on forever, but you’ll just have to see the film.
One of the things that Mr. Small brought up and that we knew we needed further footage of was the new elaborate security at the judicial building. So that was our last stop. The judicial building is no longer in the center of town, but it’s just a few blocks away, surrounded by a giant parking lot and across the street from the cemetery.
The bailiffs and the head of the security couldn’t have been nicer, more polite nor more efficient. While they were not willing to be interviewed, they told us about the process for the security which involved national standards and an architect from the city. They reported that people do complain about what they have to go through to get into the building, but the bailiffs recognized how important it is for folks to feel safe in the courthouse. It is such a difficult tension. When we got into the courtroom, I was reminded of how I do like the physical space of those rooms, being circular and spacious, well let, comfortable. However, I couldn’t ignore what it took to get there.

Extreme Courtroom Makeover - The Trailer

One good project naturally begets others... here's an option for a series that might follow our recent adventures. Watch 30 seconds now on YouTube:

Additional Emerging Themes

Additional emerging themes:
-steps in the courtroom and the shackled defendant
-courthouses as the "center of town"/part of the community
-courthouses as gathering places for attorneys and judges-forming that community
-the divergent ideas on a dignity in the courthouse and respect for the process
-justice as a theoretical space, the architecture of the mind, and whether or not justice might mean a hug.
-deference to the judge in how the courthouse is designed
-what does security mean?

Dealing with the Material - Sunday Reflections

In our project, we are not writing down transcripts word for word. In the editing process we have culled each of the original interviews which range from 5 - 60 minutes long, down to a "string out" form - what we consider outstanding soundbites. We will include each of these first "culls" on a CD in the form of quick time movies so our process and progress can be tracked (and if we can include them online - we will do that as well.)

Now we are taking each of the "culled" interviews and placing them on the edit timeline - where themes begin to emerge. This will take several days and we intend for the final edit to run about 25 minutes. So far themes include:

-What works in a courtroom (mainly intimacy - access to the players)
-Anecdotes of what does not work.
-A scene of Brenda and me walking around the Berryville courtroom and examining a defendent's chair and how that might effect the process of justice.
-Security issues - post 9/11 and how they have effected the justice process.
-The bathroom and its place in the concept of justice.

More soon on this...

A Little Ammonia with that M'am?

A rite of passage into the Berkeley County Judicial Process is to have an Ammonia Coke at Patterson’s Drug Store. Paulette’s in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Gh3CPuVEU

Still confused? Check out http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf602427.tip.html for a review of the numerous benefits (and literary references) to the Ammonia Coke.

Actually, the ammonia coke does tell a story about architecture and justice. From the stories I've heard, judges, lawyers, and local folks would gather for lunch or coffee before court at Patterson's Drug Store a few years back. When I graduated from law school in 1987 and practiced in Morgantown, at least one of the judges and a whole slew of lawyers gathered at Murphy's (across the street from the courthouse) in the morning before court. As a young mother with two children, it would have been impossible for me to add that meeting onto my day. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that any of the women bar members felt comfortable or welcome in those morning sessions. However, it does seem important that this part of the day has been eliminated. At the new courthouse in Berkeley County, there is no place to walk to across the street from the courthouse to have coffee together. During one of our dialogs, one lawyer suggested that an informal gathering place for attorneys at the courthouse would be nice. I wonder if we could relocate Patterson's?

Time and Space in Conflict

While we are working on editing, reviewing the themes, and refining what is missing from our research, I’m reading Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. She discusses the “western” concept of time and space and notes that the Maori word for time and space are the same word. She states that other indigenous languages have no related word for time and space but a series of precise words for parts of these terms. This becomes an issue for me in this project since I imagine that we are studying “space” and ventured into this project with an idea that the concept of space was primarily a physical one. As we began the dialog (especially when Judge Sanders discussed the “architecture of the mind”, a far larger concept of space emerged: a concept that includes a psychological or theoretical space for community, intimacy, empathy, compassion. But even now I am beginning to wonder if we are still too narrow. Ms. Tuhiwai Smith:

Conceptions of space were articulated through the ways in which people arranged their homes and towns, collected and displayed objects of significance, organized warfare, set out agriculture fields and arranged gardens, conducted business, displayed art and performed drama, separated out one form of human activity from anther. Spatial arrangements are an important part of social life. Western classifications of space include such notions as architectural space, physical space, psychological space, theoretical space and so forth. Foucault’s metaphor of the cultural archive is an architectural image. The archive not only contains artifacts of culture, but it itself an artifact and a construct of culture. (Smith, 51.)

Is the courthouse an object of significance? A cultural artifact bearing testament to what our society has found important in different periods of time? If so what does the women’s witness room say? What does it mean when the courthouse moves away from the center of town? What is the psychological space and theoretical space that is created? What needs to be created? How is that associated with the physical space?
And then: what does it mean if time and space are the same? OJ Simpson was sentenced yesterday and I’ve seen a bunch of reports on his sentencing. Every reporter states the sentence as a different amount of time. I watched the judge announce the sentence on ESPN and without knowing the laws in Nevada, (whether or not each sentence is determinate or runs consecutive or concurrent to other sentences) I have no idea what his mandatory minimums or maximums may be. What is the relationship of time and space-- in the courtroom? Does it, as in Einstein’s Dreams, (Lightman, 1993) change when we move from the square into the courtroom? What does it mean to the passage of time when the space where we watch, or wait, or talk, or deliberate is crafted with diverse intentions which may be unrelated to the psychological or theoretical spaces?