An afternoon in the Park County Courtroom

By spending one afternoon in a courthouse, you can see the whole spectrum of human behavior, emotions, and acts of desperation by reasonably desperate people.

As the cops/courts reporter at the Powell Tribune newspaper in Wyoming, I write about crimes and the justice (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask) that follows on an almost daily basis. But between the weekly trip to the district courthouse and typing up the police report (chock full of animals running at large), the topic can get rather boring.

Until you spend some time in court, observing the legal process in action. In my more than a year on the job, I have yet to cover an actual jury trial here in Park County. But even the simplest of hearings can say so much about the people involved in the case and the problems they have caused to themselves or to others.

Today was no different. The hearing I was there to cover, a preliminary hearing for a 17-year-old young man (boys don't move out of the house) accused of setting fire along with another to a local state criminal investigations office in Powell.

For starters, the hearing was delayed one and a half hours because the defendant was in transit from the nearest jail that had the capability to house a juvenile, hundreds of miles away in Lander, Wyo. That speaks volumes about the limitations of the justice system in Wyoming. Not only that there are no closer facilities to hold juveniles in, but that somehow, this transit issue wasn't taken into account when the hearing was scheduled. This isn't the first such blunder I've seen with inmate transportation to the courthouse (one time, the wrong inmate was shackled up and brought over by mistake).

So before the hearing, I sat in on a sentencing hearing for a man who admitted to and was found guilty of domestic battery. Though the crime was a misdemeanor, domestic violence is taken seriously by the courts, the defendant represented himself. A bold move, considering court-appointed counsel is free to those who truly cannot afford it.

So by himself, the man pleaded his case to the judge on how he was sorry. In reality though, he wasn't alone in the courtroom. His wife, the woman he admitted to beating, was sitting right behind him in the first row of the public seating area. She even spoke on his behalf, pleading with the judge to let her husband return home rather than serve more time. She said here sons and elderly mother needed the man's support, as did she, having recently been in a coma. She also said she had forgiven him for what he did. But that didn't seem to be the main issue.

The man, while quiet and seemingly embarrassed, showed no real remorse for what he did. But what was his wife to do other than accept him back. Live soley off welfare and whatever Medicaid she was eligible for? Poverty was forcing her to take back an admitted wife beater. When the judge sentenced the man to one year probation instead of jail time, his wife seemed pleased, but certainly not overjoyed.

The judge himself seemed as though he wanted to be harsher with his sentence, what could he do? Deny this family their only plausible source of income? But what message does this send to the man's sons (their ages were not discussed)? That as long as you bring home the bacon, you can slap mom around a little when you get angry? Ultimately, the wife will have to make the decision to cut the abuser out of there life, because a provider is not worth living with the degradation, both physical and mental, of being married to an abuser. At least that's easy to say from my removed seat across the courtroom.