Congratulations Roderick!
First the important part: Roderick was cleared today by Judge Linn and sent home a free man.
I know we engage in a lot of hyperbole here, calling places like Chicago "Mordor" and "People's Republics" and such. Normally, I frown on it. However, the Cook County Courthouse is genuinely a scary place. It really did remind me a little bit of Mordor (and many Orcs and Goblins were about!)
Chicago is a filthy, ugly, dangerous place. The area I was in honestly reminded me of scenes from
Escape From New York. The Courthouse itself is part of the giant Cook County Jail complex about which I'm sure you've all heard the stories. Scary place.
The courtroom was a large rectangular room divided into two sections. Entering from the hallway, you find yourself in a spectators' area with benches facing the courtroom proper, which is entirely sealed off from you by a curved, faceted wall of inch-thick glass. It's about 25 degrees hotter in the spectators' area than the hallway, easily 90 degrees. A set of double doors lead through the thick glass wall into the courtroom itself. The judge, witness and each attorney have microphones through which their voices are piped out to the spectators. The glass is soundproof, so when the judge kills the microphones the spectators are out of luck.
There were about 25-20 people, mostly middle-aged white guys, who showed up on Roderick's behalf. All of us wore blue shirts. In addition, a very nice lady and her daughter, a student at Duke University, were there taking notes on the whole thing, as was Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune (Zorn writes the "Rhubarb column" and, though he isn't what most at THR would call pro-gun, is very good about giving us equal time and coverage. He has a good working relationship with John Birch, it seems, even if they're not exactly buddies. He asked very fair, intelligent questions after the trial.
The strategy behind asking for a bench trial was solid, but it was definitely a gamble, and more than once during the short trial we were asking each other if it was too late to get a do-over and take a chance on a jury! The reasoning was this:
1. You can't trust any Cook County jury. The average person in Cook County would not care what the law was, they'd just know it was their job to put this gang-banger in jail for having a gun. (They'd know he was a gang-banger because he's a 26-year-old black guy with cornrows who had a gun in his car.)
2. Theoretically, a judge should know the law better and also be better able to parse the law, and Pritchett's defense hinged on that. Remember, he stipulates that the gun was in the car, in the CD case. He was only arguing that it was unloaded. A jury could well have decided that was one of them there technicalities that Callahan used to complain about and sent him up anyway.
3. Judge James F. Linn apparently has a very strong reputation for fairness and rigorous thought. Attorney Maksym thought it was a better gamble to bet on Linn's fairness than that of 12 people from Chicago too dumb to get out of jury duty. (No, he didn't say that, I did. You can complain to me.)
Before Mr. Pritchett's case came up, we had the chance to observe justice in action. The first gentleman who came before the court pled guilty to two counts of armed robbery (with a fake gun, apparently) and was admonished by the judge for turning to a life of crime at age 37. He told the judge that he'd gotten divorced, had 5 kids, etc. etc. etc. and was sentenced to two years' probation minus 260 days served.
We weren't sure whether to be shocked or hopeful that the judge was in a lenient mood today.
When Mr. Pritchett's case came up, we were all pretty worried. Quite frankly, it seemed that on purely legal grounds the case should be simple--the cops had no proof that the gun had been loaded, and an unloaded gun is not illegal. Simplicity itself. Their only evidence was the word of a Chicago police officer, which would not seem to meet the "reasonable doubt" standard. But we knew that often the law doesn't matter as much as the private emotions and agendas of the players in a trial like this. It was terrifying to imagine myself in the place of this guy who, after all, is the same age as I am and facing many of the same problems in life. But it was also clear to me that as a white kid who lived far away from Chicago, I routinely did things Roderick simply can't get away with doing--like driving on expired plates for a day or two.
The police officers didn't show up to testify. The prosecutor instead used their recorded testimony from the indictment, with Attorney Maksym (WM hereafter) stipulating to the fact that the officers would have testified to those facts had they been present. Essentially, the cops' testimony was the same as Roderick's, except that they claimed the gun was loaded and he claimed it was unloaded.
those JBT's
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