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Withering Under Judge Revelle's Gimlet Eye

By William S. Bailey

Speaking as someone who came of age before the current era of preventive dentistry, there is a similar reaction of fear and anxiety in me triggered by either a trip to the dentist or a court appearance. If you saw me in the dental chair for a routine cleaning, you'd assume that I was in an advanced stage of rigor mortis, given the extreme muscle rigidity present. While I have learned to disguise the physiologic affects of fear in the courtroom to a far better degree through practice and conditioning, internally my emotions usually are in a state of fight or flight whenever I am in a courtroom.

The scariest moments in professional life often occur at the beginning of the learning curve, a time when youth and inexperience give no clue of what to expect. This is what happened when I stepped into Judge George Revelle's courtroom as a new public defender in November 1976 for my first sentencing hearing. There was no training period for new hires at the public defender. I got a case load and learned to survive in the jungle very quickly thereafter, in true Darwinian fashion. My predecessor on this file before Judge Revelle had pled out the client on multiple counts of shoplifting, with no jail time recommended by the prosecutor, (provided that she continue to participate in drug rehabilitation and pay a $200 fine). The cryptic, vague transfer memo to me in the file gave no clue that this court appearance was anything other than routine, "Should be no problem." I was to repeat this phase during the course of the hearing on this case more times than a transcendental mediation student does a mantra.

In the wonderful world of public defender misdemeanor practice, whatever justice exists is often, as the saying goes, meted out in the halls. I met my client for the first time in the hallway outside Judge Revelle's courtroom an hour ahead of time. While this was probably generous by public defender standards, I wanted to have the chance to get some sense of this client before I plunged into the unknown world of my first sentencing hearing.

My sense of compassion was quickly triggered as the client carried an air of confused vulnerability around her like the perpetual foggy shroud on the moors. In some sense, the multiple shoplifting charges had forced this otherwise intelligent, attractive 30 year old mother of two children to come to terms with a serious drug addiction problem. But until this proceeding was over, the ghosts of her past could not be put completely to rest. The client was so visibly unhinged by the prospect of the sentencing, I spent most of the hour out in the hallway reassuring her that it would all work out (mentally chanting the "Should be no problem" mantra that my predecessor left on the file transfer memo).

While I had called the prosecutor several times to confirm that "the deal" that my predecessor struck in this case was still on, trying to put an overworked prosecutor in telephone communication with an overworked public defender was a near impossibility (with faxes and voice mail still off in the future).