Court is in Recess

Recess time!

I'm familiar with recess --- I used to be a teacher. The kids love recess. Time to jump and run and holler and play with friends. Time to talk to whoever you want to and make things up and test your skills or even just sit on top of the monkey bars and talk to your best friend. Wait! Strike that last one. Not too many monkey bars left on playgrounds these days.

No, recess from the courtroom is not the same. Every interruption to the proceedings is prefaced with instructions from the judge to the jury not to talk about the case with anybody, not even each other. There's a whole list of DO NOTs ---- recess is probably not much fun.

As a matter of fact, there's been nothing fun about this brush with our system of justice that I'm experiencing with my friend Joanna's trial. I've written about her here and here. Nothing alters the fact that one person is dead, one person killed him, and many, many lives have been shattered. But it does seem, from a friend and observer's point of view, that our method for sorting the whole situation out is almost as messy as the incident itself.

I've been to court myself only twice, once to get a divorce in 1975 before no-fault was invented. Once to testify in a friend's custody hearing. The rest of my courtroom experience has come from the teevee, starting with Perry Mason. It might not be the most accurate learning environment.

My biggest surprise with Joanna's trial has been that, despite my best intentions and repeated attempts to attend, I've been excluded from the courtroom at every turn. Somehow, magically, without my knowledge, I was included by the prosecution on a list of potential witnesses. That meant I got summarily removed each time I showed up. Not courteously, either. 

So I wound up watching the trial on the livestream broadcast on my tv at home. Couch. Snacks. Dogs. Jammies. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't how I expected or wanted things to be. I fully expected that "open court" meant what it said. There was apparently no intention of calling me or the vast majority of other people on that list. But it certainly had the effect of removing any support for Joanna in the courtroom. See how bad she is? Nobody even comes to see her.

What's my take-away so far? I have come face to face with my own privilege. I'm a well-educated white woman, over a certain age. I walk in the world with privilege I don't recognize ---- until it is challenged. My encounters with people in power who showed me no respect, no courtesy, and in fact left me feeling bullied and helpless, were a slap in the face to my complacency. I'm someone who weighs my words, who constantly seeks to expand my perspective, listens to the experiences of others, puts myself in another person's shoes. I have acknowledged the privilege I have because I thought it out; it's an intellectual construct that I recognize. But not until someone speaks to me unnecessarily harshly, as though I am both slow-witted and without value, backed up by the hulking presence of a uniformed officer of the court, do I experience the inverse of my assumptions about who I am. It is a startling, humiliating moment. 

In my world, grown people speak to each other politely. I naively assume that everyone will do that, unless there's extreme provocation to behave otherwise. But that's not true. For a short time, I felt helpless in the face of power, unable to assert anything that would change the situation, and I was indignant, outraged, bewildered. 

Privilege means that I go through life assuming that people I meet will be reasonable, if not polite then at least civil. That I will usually get my way because I am also a reasonable, civilized person. 

I won't say it was good that this ADA felt she had the right to be mean and hiss at me. (That's what it felt like.) But it was good to be able to later think about what happened and realize that, for one thing, this is Joanna's life for the last two years and three months. If she is convicted and sent to prison, it's her life for the forseeable future, a life in which she is not valued for any of her accomplishments or who she is, but judged and categorized, labeled a convict and devalued accordingly. 

It's not just inmates, is it? It's anybody who encounters the diminution of their humanity based on superficial characteristics. It's the conversation that never truly starts and cannot ever end --- race, color, religion, gender, nationality, on and on and on. 

Recess will be over on Monday 9/28/15, 9:30 AM. The closing arguments will be heard. The jury will be instructed and dismissed to their deliberations. The wait will commence and sooner or later, judgment will be delivered. Guilty? Innocent? Either way, she is still a worthy human being, a person, not a label. Just like all the rest of us.

They call my friend a murderer; Joanna Madonna

Today her trial begins. It's been two years and three months since he died. Two years and three months since she saved her own life, at the expense of his. Two years and three months in county jail, with no fresh air, no sunshine on her face, no smell of cut grass and earth. 

Today the next phase begins.

I'm haunted by the word. Murder. It's familiar, all too familiar. It appears every day in news stories, in fiction, in tales of horror and on tv. It holds a special fascination, a sense of awful otherness. It could not apply to someone I know. 

Murder is a concept, the killing of another human being within specifications defined by law. But that's not what the word brings up for most of us. It's not a matter of preconditions and legal parameters, the dry language of law books. It's fraught with midnight danger, the stranger in the bushes or under the bed, the nightmare of blood and lust and revenge or greed. And the murderer is the ultimate bad guy.

Joanna is an alleged murderer. That's her charge and there's the body of her husband to prove it. But she's not a murderer to me. She's not a threat that will rob you of sleep, or haunt the dark corners of midnight. She's my beloved friend.

She's the person with a ready laugh, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on, a sheltering presence. She's the woman who looks for the bright side and resolutely seeks silver linings. The person I know is not unkind, not rageful, certainly not a murderer. And yet . . .

This morning at ten a.m. the judge will pound his gavel and the trial will begin. Her fate is unknown, though the death penalty was taken off the table six months after her arrest. The news cameras and reporters are at the ready. It's not your run-of-the-mill murder trial. It's high profile in this neck of the woods; she a former teacher, he a disabled veteran. The newly elected District Attorney is coming out of her bureaucratic office and prosecuting the case herself. It has all the trappings of good theater.

Joanna and I talk on the phone every week. We discuss, not the case, but what led her to this point, what could have been different, what will be different, no matter the outcome. She could be acquitted. She could get life in prison. Or it could be anything in between. It's not often that any of us comes to such a stark turning point in life.

I've learned many things while Joanna has been locked up. We've had as deep discussions as possible in ten minute monitored phone calls, occasional "visits" by video at the jailhouse, and rambling, speculative, thoughtful letters, also shared with anonymous strangers in the mailroom. We've explored the pitfalls of false pride, secrets, fear and codependence. We've shared strengths to be found in honest inquiry and sobriety, in faith and doubt. We talk about parenting our children and education and the challenges faced by her autistic daughter. We've each lost a beloved parent during her incarceration and been able to comfort each other through the following grief and helplessness that knows no boundaries of lock and key.

I will be there today, and all the subsequent days. The jury will hear testimony. Attorneys will present cases based on evidence. People at work and at home, with no stake in the case except opinion and emotion, will debate and defend and attack based on nothing more than 800-word news articles. I'll try not to read comments.

Her daughters, her family, her friends and acquaintances will all watch closely as the woman they know will have her life dissected in the public eye, entertainment for the 6 o'clock news, morality tale and horror story. Will truth come out? Will justice prevail? Is that even possible?

I guess we'll see.