JUDGE SUSAN
Judge Chrzanowski has more legal troubles on her mind than testifying in the murder trial of Mick Fletcher. Under her authority as a district judge in Warren, she had funneled many cases for the indigent his way. That was fine—until it came out in the days after Leann was shot that Chrzanowski was sleeping—or not, depending on their mood—with Fletcher.
Before, during and after the Fletcher trial, Chrzanowski and her attorney would wage a fierce legal battle with the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, an arm of the state Supreme Court, which wanted her fired from her job. In the meantime, she would temporarily be allowed to work, and collect her $118,285- a-year salary.
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Five days before Fletcher's trial began, and a week before her crucial and riveting testimony Chrzanowski was busy at work, on the job, dispensing her brand of gentle, preachy justice.
District Court in Michigan is where the wheels of justice are lubed, greased and paid for. This is where felons are arraigned and bound over for trial in the larger Circuit Courts, but most of the people walking through the doors are here for minor driving infractions like speeding and running stop signs, for housing code violations like letting their grass grow too high, or for misdemeanor charges such as petty shoplifting, destruction of property and being minors in possession of alcohol. Judges here also hear civil suits involving sums of less than $10,000.
Most cities have their own district courts, but some share judges with larger, neighboring cities. Such is the case with Center Line, a tiny blue-collar community just one and a half miles square that shares a border with the city of Detroit. Many of its residents still make a living from the auto industry, either working at the sprawling GM, Ford or Daimler-Chrysler plants nearby, or at the hundreds of small job shops along the surrounding thoroughfares that make parts
for the Big Three or their suppliers.
Center Line's tiny courthouse is staffed by judges from nearby Warren, which is the third-largest city in Michigan—2000 census figures are expected to put the city over 150,000—and Detroit's largest suburb. They spend most of their time on their home turf, visiting Center Line once a week to dish out justice the way many of those coming before them build cars—relentlessly, keep-the- line-moving, next case, People vs. So and So, one after another.
Judge Susan Chrzanowski—small, blondish, cute in a bookwormish way with her hair worn up when she's on the bench, far more striking when it's down and she's out of her robes—knows how to keep the line moving. Some judges at the district level are notorious for starting late and leaving early—one called "Half-a-Day" made a career out of four-hour days in a busy Detroit court, sandwiched between rounds of golf. His docket grew enormous.
But by 9:12 today, Chrzanowski enters the courtroom to her bailiff's cry of "All rise," and without ado she tells everyone to sit and calls her first case, herself, in a strong, clear voice: "People versus Shannon Williams!"
At 8:30 a.m., a seemingly chaotic line of people had snaked through the lobby, waiting to alert the clerk they were here. Late-comers cruised the parking lot in vain looking for places to park. Police with clipboards hollered out names, then went to huddle with those who had been called as they waited in line. The prosecutor met with others. By the time the judge had taken her seat, things were ready to roll. Deals had been offered and accepted.
Center Line's 37th District Court is no impressive hall of justice. There aren't the typical wooden rows found in most courts, just cheap aluminum- framed, padded chairs, and all 42 of them are filled. The state seal affixed to the wall behind the judge is so small it looks like a plastic plate. By 10:50, everyone here will have had their day in court. Nearly all of them will leave less solvent but somewhat mollified. Unless they screw up and ask for a trial, invariably they walk out guilty of something less onerous than what they had been facing when they arrived. They will have stood before the judge, pleaded guilty or asked for a break because of extenuating circumstances, gotten their lecture, gotten a reduced sentence, paid their fine and left.
Metropolitan Detroit is the most racially segregated area in the United States. The city is 80 percent black. The suburbs that surround it are, with rare exceptions, lily-white. The highway that divides Detroit from its suburbs, and Wayne County from Oakland and Macomb counties—Eight Mile Road—is as stark a demarcation line as any you'd find separating warring ethnic factions in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, but you'd never know that sitting in the courtroom on any given day in any suburban district court.
Blacks come to the suburbs for the service jobs whites no longer want in the full-employment economy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As they have for decades, they fill the auto assembly lines. And they come to shop at the modern, sprawling suburban shopping malls. On their way out of and into Detroit, they are arrested and ticketed by suburban police. Blacks call it "racial profiling." Cops and their supporters say that the poor, the uneducated and the underclass commit more crimes and offenses and are more likely to get arrested or ticketed, and that the poor, uneducated underclass of southeastern Michigan just happen to be black.
The cops in the suburb of Livonia used to alert each other on their car radios to the unofficial crime of NIL—nigger in Livonia. The cops and their chiefs say those days are long past; many of those sitting on plastic and aluminum chairs in Center Line might beg to differ.
Shannon Williams, like many of those here today, in this predominantly white suburb, is black. He was originally charged with driving without a valid license, which can mean jail time and points on his driving record. He has been offered a chance to plead guilty to not having his license on him.
"Do you wish an attorney?" Judge Chrzanowski asks for the record. If he does, the deal is off.
She fines him $309 and gives him 30 days to pay.
Next comes an old guy, what little hair he has left completely gray, who has just finished an alcohol-treatment program and is hoping to get a drunk-driving charge dismissed. He'd been here a year before and as part of his plea-bargain then, all charges would be dismissed in a year if he sought treatment, passed urinalysis tests and went to AA. He has complied on all counts.
"I hope I never see you again, though I don't mean that in a bad way," he tells her.
"I don't take it in a bad way," she says, dismissing the charge from his record. "You obviously can't touch alcohol. It's poison to you. Good luck."
A lawyer steps forward. His client hasn't shown; bond is revoked, an arrest warrant issued.
A defendant steps up, says his attorney was here 15 minutes ago, but went out to his car on the pretense of fetching something and instead drove off. He is here to have assessed his compliance with a set of her orders at a previous hearing.
"Have you attended the first-offenders' program, sir?" "No."
"Why not? It's been a year." "No money."
"Have you done your community service?" "No."
"You haven't paid your fines and costs?" "No."
And so it goes. He gets 30 days in county lockup and is ordered to pay more fines and costs. If he doesn't pay them in 90 days, it'll be more jail time and more fines and costs he won't pay, either.
A man driving on a suspended license pleads to no operator's license on his person; fine and costs of $359, two weeks to pay. A drunk driver who caused an accident, now in AA, gets 9 days in jail to be served on weekends and community service; fine of $909 with 90 days to pay. Drunk driving pleaded down to careless driving. Defective brake light fixed on the spot by a new fuse when the cop pulled him over dismissed; court costs of $10. Failure to dim lights, guilty, $85. Driving around a railroad gate, guilty, will come off the driver's record if no further tickets in six months, $95. Speeding for a teen-age girl reduced from fifteen over to five over with a lecture: "I want to warn you, don't drive through yellow lights, don't roll through stop signs—the Secretary of State loves to take away people's driver's licenses."
Up they march, face the judge for their minute or two, then are directed to the clerk's office down the hall to write a check. One after another, people versus, people versus, people versus.
In theory you can have a trial here. In practice, you'd be a fool to insist on it. It's a peculiar form of justice, but even critics admit it works remarkably well. The cities share in the court revenue. Paying for a modern police force, for high- paid judges and for city services means making arrests and writing tickets, lots of them. Claiming innocence, even if you are, is foolhardy. It's the cop's word against yours, and the cop always wins. Because trials here are for misdemeanors and are heard by the judge, only a preponderance of evidence need point to guilt, not the harsher standard in felony trials: evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. "Preponderance" means 51 percent, and a cop's word is always worth at least that to a judge who has to work with him or her year round. Admit guilt, even if you aren't, claim extenuating circumstances, and almost always the charge is reduced or even dismissed. Even when the charge is
dismissed, court costs are often assessed and the wheels turn.
Part of the greasing of the wheels involves the system supporting young attorneys in the process of building up a client roster—kids just out of law school who weren't good enough to land high-paying, long-hours jobs with the major law firms around town. Criminal law for young defense attorneys can be little more than a subsistence living, without alliances formed with sitting judges.
Many of the felons, who are required to enter the legal system in Michigan at the District Court level, where they are apprised of the charges against them and the judge determines whether there is enough evidence to bind them over to Circuit Court, are indigent. When they are, attorneys are appointed to their cases and paid for by the court. Judges are free to appoint cases to lawyers of their choosing, and frequently in many cities a handful of attorneys get almost all the cases.
They quickly learn once they start getting cases that if they want to keep getting them—and often the only work involved is to meet the client for the first time minutes before the case is called, then go through the expected steps of the
dance when it is called—they better not slow things up with motions, arguments, protests and appeals to the letter of the law.
Judge Susan Chrzanowski, it had recently come to light, had her favorites— or favorite—when it came to assigning cases, too, and his name was Mick Fletcher. Today, though, nobody has needed her help in finding attorneys. There were no felony arraignments or pre-trials. No one asks for a trial on misdemeanor charges. The line has sped along.
Chrzanowski is a budding Judge Judy. She likes to lecture and admonish, especially youthful offenders. Near the end of her day's work here in Center Line, a thin, small 17-year-old black boy steps before her. Five months earlier he had been arrested for shoplifting. A search of his car had revealed some beer, and he subsequently blew .04 on a Breathalyzer test. While not legally drunk, he is in violation of Michigan's zero-tolerance laws for teens and alcohol.
As arranged beforehand between the prosecutor and his attorney—only four of the 42 in court today have attorneys—the teen will be allowed to plead no contest to a lesser charge of retail fraud if he also pleads guilty to consumption of alcohol by a minor. The boy has dropped out of high school, but works as a landscaper for his uncle, and his father, a factory foreman, is in court to tell the judge that he will be hiring him for the shop when he turns 18. A no-contest plea has the same legal repercussions as a guilty plea.
The judge is told by the defense attorney that an agreement has been reached. Playing her role in this organized charade, the judge tells the teen that he has a right to a trial and if he goes to trial he'll have certain rights he will be able to enforce. The reality is, if he pleads no contest or even guilty, his sentence will be far lighter than if he demands a trial and is found guilty.
Rights come with costs.
Before sentencing, Chrzanowski lectures: "It's time to start making some responsible decisions here. You seem pretty nonchalant here. Sometimes I have the impression the best thing I can do for young people is to send them to jail for a weekend or two. Let them see what it's like.
"You work landscaping with your uncle, and while I've known many good landscapers, it bothers me when family members bail out their relatives," she
continued. "You have to think about the choices you make. Sooner or later you have to pay for your mistakes. We all do."
To the casual observer, it's a standard lecture line that precedes the sentence: House arrest on an electronic tether for six consecutive weekends and a stiff fine. To those few in the court in the know—a journalist with a book contract, her court reporter, the bailiff and the prosecutor, her words are beyond ironic.