Eye on the Courts: Groundbreaking Grand New Courthouse Masks the Reality of Injustice

Judge David Rosenberg has been working on this new courthouse for a decade now, and he deserves tremendous credit for the fortitude and skill to get it to the point where on Friday they actually broke ground on the new building.

“We truly love our historic courthouse … but it was built five generations ago for another time and another era,” he said, as quoted in other news accounts.  “We have outgrown that historic courthouse in every conceivable way.”

Here we are in complete agreement.  While I am not necessarily concerned about the need to move one’s car every two hours, I think one of the more unknown travesties of justice is the dehumanizing way that in-custody defendants, none of whom have been convicted of a single crime, are paraded through the corridors of the court house, chained together wearing bright jail-issued jumpsuits.

It is not only dehumanizing for people to be treated in this manner, but there are huge security risks, as well.

However, while I agree a new building is needed, in this end this is an exercise in dressing up a pig into a more appealing package.

California’s Supreme Court Chief Justice and graduate of UC Davis’ King Hall School of Law was on hand for the groundbreaking festivities.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye told the crowd, estimated by some to be 300 people, including many attorneys, law enforcement officers and other dignitaries, that the new building will serve as a “temple of justice.”

“For me today, this building means so much more than the magnificent edifice that it will become,” she said. “What I know about this project is that it was the subject of incredible collaboration by smart and intelligent, dedicated people who had a vision for the future and could see what Californians were capable of.”

Jim Smith, the Woodland Daily Democrat editor wrote in an editorial, “Cantil-Sakauye said the future five-story building — scheduled for completion in two years is — a ‘grand, grand edifice’ that will service the judicial system in the ‘literal, physical and figurative’ sense.”

“[Senator Lois] Wolk praised the community — and Rosenberg specifically — for their ‘strong and unceasing advocacy.’ She noted that everyone loves the existing courthouse, but noted it was built for another century,” he writes.  “[Assemblymember Mariko] Yamada said that in the 20th century, the current courthouse ‘might have been good enough’ but that the new courthouse is built for the 21st century and makes it possible to provide ‘justice for all.’ “

But that is just it.  The building may change, but until we change the system we are simply trying to dress up a pig in the finest clothes, as though it were a prized thoroughbred.

We can build the best and grandest court facility in the world, but if it remains the house of injustice, it will matter not.

In a nation that has among the highest incarceration rates in the world, we have a county that, while it is in the middle of the pack in terms of crime rate, ranks near the top in its prison incarceration rate – at a time when the state is being forced to reduce its prison population.

We are building a $161 million courthouse at time when we cannot even afford to fully staff the current one, at a time when the court’s computer system is badly outdated, and at a time when we have seen severe cuts to the types of services that can help keep people out of prison and out of the judicial system.

While Judge David Rosenberg has always struck us as a thoughtful and fair judge, his comment on Friday was not his best moment.  He said, as paraphrased by Jim Smith, “Best of all, it was being built not with taxpayer dollars but revenues generated [by] user fees coming from fines and penalties paid by those actually using the local judicial system.”

Those who are actually “using” the local judicial system are the criminal defendants, many of them poor and struggling to get by.

Interestingly enough, the day before Judge Rosenberg said those words, CBS News ran a report, “Thousands of Americans are sent to jail not for committing a crime, but because they can’t afford to pay for traffic tickets, medical bills and court fees.”

CBS reports that we have “a justice system that in effect criminalizes poverty.”

“It’s a growing problem nationally, particularly because of the economic crisis,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the justice program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

CBS reports that about one third of the states actually jail people for not paying off their debts – anything from court-related fines and fees to credit card bills and car loans.

A few months ago, we had the case of a guy who was caught selling drugs.  He told the court he had sold drugs to pay for his court fines.  The judge told him that he needed to find a better way to make money.  That judge was David Rosenberg.

These are the people on whose backs the courthouse will be built.  Most of them are not vicious criminals who will end up in prison for long periods of time, but rather people charged with small and, at times, petty offenses.  They have one thing in common, they are poor and have limited ability to make more than the bare minimum payment.

Singer Ani Difranco once wrote, “you might be the wrong color… you might be too poor… justice isn’t something just anyone can afford.”

So it is great that we celebrate the commencement of a new courthouse that we are badly in need of.  However, let us not pretend that this place will be anything other than a fancy veneer covering a thoroughly bankrupt and corrupt system, badly in need of reform.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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