Voice

Courtroom Report

Superior Court in the Pacific Northwest

News reports in this medium-sized town were abuzz with the latest on a local murder. A hearing was scheduled in the case, so I drove to the courthouse anticipating a lively session centering on the defendant’s competency to stand trial. The session lasted almost a minute, since the prisoner hadn’t been transported to court as scheduled. I left to find a trial where lawyers got to say more than one sentence.

A few courtrooms away, a domestic violence protection session was beginning. In the hallway, people milled about, looking uncomfortable and unsure of themselves. They sat in the corridor, whispered to each other, got up, paced, went out for a smoke, waited for family or friends. Anxiety was in the air. The misery of divorce hovered like storm clouds. A palpable sense of the fear inherent in brutal relationships charged the atmosphere.

By comparison, the inside of the courtroom seemed a safe harbor. An efficient judge moved quickly through the schedule. He spoke with detached objectivity as he dealt with folks representing themselves, listening as each gave a sort of personalized citizen’s complaint about their domestic partners. Topics centered around bad behavior—how he beats the dog or how she drives without a license. There were four accusations of harassment by text message, including a guy who texted his girlfriend that he had bought a gun.

Over the course of nineteen cases, only four lawyers were present in three matters. Three of the four were women, none of whom spoke loudly enough to be heard where I was sitting in the second row of spectators. Granted, the courtroom was large, but as the hearings progressed I began to wonder seriously whether all judges are required to take lip-reading courses.

The first attorney to appear stood hunched forward and with her arms folded over her chest as she addressed the court. Opposing her was her client’s wife, a loud, assertive woman who had no trouble projecting her voice. The lawyer prevailed, proving that a soft-spoken lawyer is better than none, I guess, but I was hoping for a more dynamic performance—or at least to be able to hear what the case was about.

The two other women lawyers opposed each other. Their body language was deferential, and they seemed unsure of how to proceed, so I can’t be positive they were lawyers. From the few words I caught, one represented a registered sex offender, whose tee shirt showcased his tattoos—he looked like a sex offender, anyway, so my brain filled in the information I couldn’t hear.

The teacher in me was dying to leap up and fix these timid performances: “Talk with your outside voices! Unfold your arms to open your lungs, take a big breath, and think about whether you are loud enough. Can everybody in the room can hear you? Show the amateur advocates in the room how to stand proudly, talk like you mean it, and get the job done.”

Lawyer #4 had real presence and a resonant baritone voice. He was just about the only person in the whole session who took over the room and advocated. Unfortunately, this gifted lawyer missed an opportunity to be first-rate. Instead of looking at the judge, he talked to his papers, which he had carefully laid out on counsel table. As he made his case, he stared down at them, continually shuffling and rearranging them. He treated them as if  they held the secret to winning, if only he could get them in the right order. He made virtually no eye contact with the judge. It was a perfect example of how distracting all that paper can be.

It takes a leap of faith to handle notes properly. You have to believe you are prepared. This lawyer was prepared, and he didn’t need anything but a short list of bullet points. I know he was prepared, because for over an hour before his appearance, he sat a few feet from me, poring over his file, studying it and making more and more notes. He was prepared, but he didn’t trust that he was. For a five-minute hearing all he needed was one piece of paper with a limited number of bullet points. What was he asking for, and what facts supported that?

The loudest and most assertive person in the courtroom all day was a guy who wanted to visit his kids. He and his estranged wife were dressed properly for court, and both displayed a respectful, if agitated, demeanor. He spoke fast and nonstop, forcing the judge to interrupt to get a word in edgewise. Even though he was more coherent than most, he engaged in the same variety of public whining we’d listened to all morning: his wife hits him, his mother-in-law hits him, his wife is on probation, and she ran off with the kids to live in a distant town. He unleashed genuine anguish at being trapped in a hopeless loop of attack and revenge.

His wife rebutted with counter-accusations and her own list of grievances. She held her own, but couldn’t match his energy. No sooner had the judge shushed him than he jumped back in. When it was all over, he got exactly what he wanted—to see his kids twice a week.

I wrote in my notes, “This is agony,” and added, “Why is this guy the most effective advocate in the room?” He embodied the emotions I’d felt in the corridor—despair as a ruined family disintegrates, the urge to fight in order to fend off the desolation that would surely follow. He was loud enough, he made eye contact, and he spoke with energy and passion. He rose to the occasion.follow

And that’s what I wanted from the attorneys that day. It would have been so simple: look at the judge and speak up.

See any good performances at trial lately? What techniques made them so?