Serial S03 - Ep. 1: A Bar Fight Walks into the Justice Center
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These first two episodes of serial season three are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows and is super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done.

The justice center in the ohio takes up a whole city blocks downtown. It's a closer er of concrete towers built in the one thousand nine hundred and seventy. I could heads here, but i'm just gna say that the buildings are hideous but practical.

The justice center houses in one location, everything a justice system needs, the city and county courts, the county jail, prosecutors offices, sheriff office and headquarters for the Cliff in police. Roughly speaking, the building functions like most diaries vertically, in this case, from the balls up. The main court tower is twenty six stories high, so the elevator really runs the place if a person's arrested in clean and they are coming into the justice center from the basement where ry cops escort suspects from the underground parking garage.

They get booked up a few floors to the jail once they get a court date, they're riding up to one of the courtroom floors. The lower floors are for lesser crimes, less hallowed proceedings, mister miners housing court. And the higher floors, starting about a half way of the building, are for felonies.

Detectives wearing layers often get off on the night floor, where the prosecutors offices, the courteous dino graphs, always curious, drag their squat wei cases on and off the elevator. Maybe they can chat for a few floors with the officers from the share of department in search of a coffee and a muffin defense atterley are writing up and down all morning, modern to each other. Can you believe grapes about judges who have their own judge elevators and they're not over hearing the elevator main days, of course, our crime victims and their families and defendants, their families, sometimes those families are one in the same.

When i'm feeling optimistic, I appreciate that an elevator car in a government building is one of the few places left in our country where different kinds of people are forced into. I like to think that we can all stand so close to one another with our sensible heels and timber land boots and american flag lapel pins and fake I lashes and x clone and orthopedic shots and tear drop had tools into go coffees. And when the elevator doors open up, spilling us out onto our floor, the fact that no one is bloodied or even in tears, to small pleasing reminder that we're all in this together other times, the shoulder to shoulder closest only magnifies the obvious.

We're not the same, not at all. Coming up from the lobby one morning, a Young black woman is holding a little portable speaker. The weight people in the elevator give each other looks, and I want to reciprocate their looks.

Instead, I decided it's my duty to break the tension by saying the latest thing I possibly can, to be clear, that wasn't my plan, is just what came naturally to me, apparently, usually just even bother with that this time. Now I keep my head down to avoid the looks of the black. People are probably giving each other this places primarily black and weight.

The majority of the courthouse staff is black. Clerks are mostly black. Their managers are away in the shaft department. Most of the security guards are black, most of the deputies are White, most of the attorneys are White, almost all the county judges are White, and their bail lives are White. Most of the defendants and crime victims are black. In the coconut, the elevator, everyone's polite to each other pretends nothing is weird about this, but if the elevators were calibrated to detect a power imbaLance in the load, like a socially conscious cloth drier, they'd be perpetual on the threats. From this american life in W B E Z, chicago, its cereal, one courthouse told week by week on Sarah.

If you've listened to cereal before, you probably know that our first season was about a murder case involved more ever since that story aired. People of us need and people. I work with the question, what does this case tell us about the criminal justice system? Fair question.

And to answer, I usually say. Because the answer is that cases like that one, they are not what's filling america's courtrooms everyday. The defendant in that case, a nancie, was charged with first degree murder, could never been in trouble before.

His family had an expensive defense attorney, and wares of all his case went to trial that lasted six weeks. None of that is typical of the vast majority of cases moving through the criminal courts in this country. And even if I were, I don't think we can understand how the criminal justice system works by interrogating one extraordinary case.

Ordinary cases are where we need to look. We need to spend at least a year watching ordinary criminal justice in the least exceptional, most middle, the road, most metal of the country place. We could find cleveland when I first began reporting this story, I call the former U.

S. Atterley there for advice. Explain what I want to do and he said, cliver is not a bad choice. And then he said, please don't be mean to cleveland. You give me mean to the criminal justice system, but please don't be mean to cleveland.

And I don't know, I didn't plan on taking cheap shots of the mistake by the lake because i'm a classic reporter in any way. We could have gone to lots of cities, and the problems would look about the same mini apple is, or lana or pitzer ger sao, same sort of crime, same strugling for fairness, same attempts at reform. In most courts, though, it's really hard to record.

You might need permission from the state supreme court. Hello, illini, in other places, recording of any kind of barden courants. What is your problem? pensylvania. Cleveland, no, they let our produce, our m annual joky, and me wander the courthouse unencumbered. Microphones extraordinary.

We spent more than a year in the justice center following criminal cases of all sizes, tiny ones reporters don't usually pause over, like weed possession or driving under suspension. Have your cases assault, armed robbery, up to the most serious crime, there is aggravated murder. Every case of menu.

And I followed, there came a point where we thought, no, this can be how IT works. And then we were like, oh, oh my god, this is how IT works. This is how IT happens.

People have been through the system who work in the system. Maybe they know what i'm talking about, but millions more don't know. This season, we're going to tell you the stories of the cases we followed.

Sometimes we're gonna overlap. They might spend two or even three episodes. You'll see what we saw from the inside.

First case we're gona talk about is small. It's a bar fight. We're starting with this one because it's a simple case and is also an example of the system working.

I want to show you what that looks like in this courthouse. See of a baseline for what's considered functional justice in piegan county. So here we go. A bar fight walks into a justice center. How are you going to look when he walks back out?

Let me show you this video. I want to get your impression of IT.

One morning last spring, rush spending defense attorney takes me into a little side room of the hallway on the twenty and four of the justice center. He wants to tell me about a case he's got. I'm calling the defendant anna.

which is not her name. She's charged with assaulting a police officer, which is a fourth degree felony.

Russ is drafting me into a one person focus group here. He wants to know whether an outsider like me will interpret the video the same way he does. I have standing for a jr, okay. So just explain what we're looking at. Okay.

this is a surveilLance tape of the bar. This incident occurred in the bar. Okay, there. SHE is right there in the .

lower left and corner.

Yeah, yeah, long here. yes. Yeah, yeah.

And is White, Young looking, small? She's wearing librarian glasses, skinny jeans, boots and A T shirt that fits are just so even in this terribly grainy video, she's attractive.

She's ending on the corner of the bar. You see somebody approach from the rear. Kin snacks as more anna .

had gone .

out that night with her friend .

in some other guide to a small corner bar on the west side of cleveland. When I met anna, SHE told me it's not the sort of play SHE usually hangs out. IT was her .

first time there. Just a little rougher. People are there.

older people SHE in her girl, when I noticed these two women down the bar looking at them.

I just noticed her in other girl, like constantly sharing IT us. But we still stay there for about an hour. And that's why did they talk to them? no.

So what was, why are they looking? I have no idea. I, I personally think is because we were pretty. So I going get a drink and this guy is making me my rand. And I .

would, as a guy, you had been talking to her now.

Now, just some random guy at the bar.

You serious. That was a random guy. I figured you knew that guy.

No, I did not know him. Why he just smoking your book? Because man or dogs, they can be dogs. And you know, at first I was like, ha, ha, you know, sap. And then he kept doing IT, and I actually had mad, and I know I got in his face.

And in the surveilLance video, there's a perfect view of all this. First, one guy touches her by analysts ago than a second guy touches her. Bud SHE pushes him back in a playful way.

Then the first guy starts in again, hitting harder, smacking her ads three times, four times, and IT turns and lift her foot in as and cut IT out. He slaps her at six time. Behind her, a police officer walk slowly onto the screen.

He's not seen any of the slapping. He just come from the bathroom downstairs. He had been working on the block and and come in the bar to pee. Meanwhile, back at the counter snack, the guy hits anna a seventh time. Anna spins around to confront the assab er, at that point, one of the women who'd been staring at anna from down the bar, a stocky blond SHE, storms over to anna, gets between her and the aslape er, and immediately gets into IT with ana. This is what rust wanted me to say, how and I was provoked.

The other woman entered the picture frame, and they start arguing, and then they go at IT. It's not clear if anybody through the first puncher.

what but anna, goes decisively for the ladies throat and then is just a mess. The people around them are trying to break IT up but and is not stopping. She's thrushes around SHE could swallow .

up in the crowd who wants people not go to the ground where .

this person kicks her and oh my god, wo wow. All these boozy patrons are piling in, people are grabbing, and as long hair and her head is getting yanked around, then she's pulled to the floor. It's awful to watch.

The most disturbing moment to me is when the blood ladies friend takes off her eye. Glasses places them next to her beer readers herself by sweeping back her hair. And then SHE doesn't just kick, and a SHE gives her a ferocious stomp like she's trying to kill a rat.

And I get back up, or maybe she's drag back up. I can even tell she's fighting anyone in particular anymore. And a later tells me she's got the heart of a fighter, but maybe not the skills looks about right someone behind and has got his big .

ARM around her neck. See, there is the company right there and people are still grabbing her and she's filing.

got about that.

Yeah, there is where she's swings and hits .

and hits. The cop looks like he gets him on the left side of his face and then the cop was a big dog is on top of her, takes her to the ground cuffer. After that, its four nights in the clever in city jail, a five thousand dolban d to get out in a fourth degree felony charge, assault on a piece officer. The video ends.

So you're on a jury. You see that you convict. No, I won't convicted.

I mean, I don't think I would. Yes, technically SHE connected with the cops face, but to me I looked accidental. That is, the answer is, is hoping for a solid nt guilty for his client. Better yet, he'd like a not guilty tinged ed with reuters indignation, which I can also provide, how is the video we just watched add up to a felony charge? A Young woman tried to stop a man from hitting her eyes.

She's then verbally and possibly physically attacked by some, pumped up a tinky from down the bar, ends up fighting for all she's worth defending herself, all one hundred and ten pounds of her against a pack of strangers. Cop stepson SHE hitt m from looks a bit by accident. The cup is not injured, by the way, and is the one who ended up scratched and bleeding.

I get the bad behavior abounds in this episode and and is included, but felony assault to become a felon for this that cannot be right. Rust seeks, it's not right. He thinks that the system got this one wrong, that his case should not be happening at all. He tells me today his .

plan is to go big. I know that they'll offer me a mister minor assault on this case.

but he doesn't want to settle for a misor sault on this one. He's got the surveilLance tape, which reads like a close circuit morality play. He feels like that alone ought to be strong enough evidence to force a course correction on the part of the state to undo what's already been done.

And as race her Whitehouse is not really part of his calculation here, but at least he doesn't work against her. After many decades in this business, russ says he's accepted the shameful truth that as a general rule, IT never helps to be black. IT never hurts to be weight.

So today i'm going to try to see if the state will dismiss the charges. Okay.

he's gonna ask the prosecutor to drop the whole thing. This is what i've come here to see. How's this adversarial system gonna turn now?

How's this gna play out? Russ gathers his stuff. We leave a little conference room. I follow as he goes to look for anna. He told her to be at the course this morning by nine.

Harry, are you do what?

This has been an attorney for forty one years. He's head of the kai hua criminal defense ve lawyers association. That's how I met him. I went to a meeting of the group and watched how all these people rushed him afterwards, as if we were wearing a pin. That said, when your case now, ask me how it's like that all the time with us.

He walked around the justice center and people just come at him for advice in ponging the details of their cases of ice, an attack y cross them in the hallway. So my guy was caught transporting the two kilos from chicago to cleveland. He says, OK. But he doesn't admit to being the guy that made the secret .

departments.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK Russell, say, rocking a little lonely heels, worrying the coins in his pants pockets. Then he'll set the case law they need, or the new ruling out of the eighth district they hadn't heard about.

Russ has no personal secretary, no low clerk. It's just him. He likes the action here. He likes the kibet sing, and he's a master of dolf.

T, G, I, F, courthouse report, did I hear something about justice in this building? I like russ. His colleagues like him too.

Not clear whether his clients like him. He can sometimes be a bit of an assemble to his clients. Actually, they call him all day long. One guy didn't show up at the course today and is confused about where he's supposed to go. Rust tells him to the justice center, where the court is, you've been here before.

what? You don't have a warrant, you don't have, you just get down. okay?

Like most of the defense attorneys in this building, rust has some paid clients, but he also has a lot of assigned clients, people who can afford to hire a lawyer. So the court provides one. That's how they do IT.

In kazoo, an county, thirty to thirty five percent of indigent defense get a public defender and the rest to assign to private tourneys like russ rest is the difference between how he treats his pain clients and his non paying clients comes down to hand holding. The actual lawyering part is the same, he says, but his bedside manner changes. With a paying customer, he might visit them in jail just to check in, make sure they're doing okay. He is not doing that within a sign client, and i'm guessing a pain client. He is not talking to them like this.

Tell you what my okay, i've been doing this forty one years. I'm GTA be willing to Better. I can do a Better job of researching the law than you can. So let me take that weight .

off your shoulders. He hangs up.

Anna is also in a sign case, but so far he hasn't annoyed him. He's nice tour. He meets her up on the twenty of the floor.

She's sitting in the waiting area under the TV. There's one on every floor set to the food network always. and.

Looks small and nervous. I'm not allowed to record their meeting that would violate attorney client confidential. Rust leads are to a conference room so you can explain what's happening today.

A pre trial conference sounds formal, but it's not all that means is that rust will track down in his prosecutor and they'll have a quick conversation about the case. And IT was going to get to be there for IT. SHE just had to sit and weight under the TV for us to report back. I don't know whether anna knows this yet, but rush for sure knows that prosecutors will almost always pursue a case that involves a cup that's the wait is long enforcement code.

The next time I see rus, he's eating a piece of carrot cake that was on offer in a judges chAmbers. He's had .

his pretrial with the prosecutor on rust.

the prosecutor to drop .

the SHE said that was a able and that would probably be marked to the family on me so it'll probably be tried SHE wouldn't .

even knock IT down to a well SHE doesn't .

have the power to do anything. He has to take him to her supervisor .

who is a hard marker and a hard marker .

means but yeah, just like that sounds it's not reduce much .

that sounds, matter of fact, about this and he is sort of he's not shocked that his dismissal request was shut down, but he is offended about the way IT was shot down as the day wears on. And I follow us around to his other pre trials. On other cases, a kid cut driving a stolen car, a sex offender who violated a registration requirement, a guy nailed for having drugs on a scale in his car.

Rust keeps circling back to how the prosecutor on N. S. Case called his request. Laughing ble he couldn't shake his irrtation told me about IT told other people waiting at the .

elevators about .

IT 来 that he was irritated because he didn't make this dismissal request revell ously he's been doing this a long time。 He's good at IT he knows how disinclined prosecutors are to drop a case, how rarely that happens. He wouldn't ask her dismissal without good reason.

So to call IT laughing ble feels disrespectful. He doesn't really know this prosecutor. Her name is Jennifer king. He's heart. She's a good lawyer, but she's a little Young.

Maybe SHE doesn't yet understand that if you call a person's earnest mark request laugh hable, that can erode the professional relationship. I talk to Jennifer king. Perhaps unsurprisingly, SHE had a different tag on why they got off to a scratched he start.

Jennifer has been in the prosecutor's office for three years in the general felony unit. She's got a huge inviting smile. SHE told me resus request for dismissal didn't sound like much of a request to her SHE end like his toe.

the defense turney came to me at the first pretrail said, you're gona dismiss this.

Oh, he didn't. He didn't say you dismiss. He said you are going to dismiss this.

I mean, he was asking, but was an an an asking manner.

Did he mean you guys are gonna end up dismissing this like by the time i'm through with you, you're gonna ish. You had never like IT was like that or was he's saying, hey you this what do you take from IT .

I took from IT is being pretty aggressive and and know you're gna dismiss this because this cases is crap and you you all are just charging brain and girls in this fight jennie .

felt at ross was telling her how to do a job.

A Young female prosecutor who, who has never worked with an older male prosecutors pRobing, been practicing longer than i've been alive, you know, comes at me and says, you're gone to dismiss this case.

I never told her you're going to dismiss this case. never. I would never say that to any prosecutor. I would never. I am not a confrontational guy.

Not to belabor this, but rust remembered yet a different interaction in which he thought gennifer is interpreted him. He says he tried to fix that after that first meeting, told her he didn't mean any offence by anything he said, but his qazi apology didn't go over well. He knows it's hard to be a female torney in this building, especially a Young one.

Female attorneys get short shift. He says there's a bias against them, principally among older White men. I eat a lot of the criminal bar jetpack d told me, whatever her personal feelings about a defense attorney, SHE is not gna take them out on the defendant that does not influence my mark, he said.

I thought maybe Jennifer would be a little sheep ish about, in this case, that they were prosecuting IT at all, much less as a felon. But no, the Jennifer ann's case was uncomplicated. Anna was facing a felony, because punching a cop is a felony. Jennifer had watched the same barca relate video that russ had and that I had, and he said, so yeah, you can see what happened. But what?

You don't have this audio. You don't hear the saying police break IT up and SHE still fAiling. He is still kicking and SHE punches and officer, who's trying to keep people from being harmed right in the face and I mean, her ARM comes around. So we see, yes, there's an assault there. And look.

look, did that punch look deliberate to you? Or did IT look like somebody kind of filing around trying to defend themselves .

somewhere in between? I mean, I know IT wasn't to do sub strike punch to the face. I see you kind of a thing.

But then again, IT wasn't just like her ARM flung back and happened to hit him in the face either. I mean, he is aggressively fighting at that point. And yes, there's lots of people on the floor and there is another woman kicking her. But really, if he just stopped at that point, nothing probably would have come of this SHE proudness won't been charged with any sort of a ult.

For the record, ana says he never heard the officer say stop or break IT up. SHE says he never even knew police were in the bar until someone, but that's an as word over cops. Jennifer will take the cops.

Rust thinks this whole case is built on a misunderstanding, starting from the very beginning when the cop arrested. Anna just pointed out that the cop didn't watch the surveilLance video that same night, so you must have thought anna was the troublemaker. In his police report, he writes that anna quote initiated the fight rest of the cup, didn't know anna was being harassed by some skivvies de in a baseball camp, didn't know the blond lady got in in his face, that and I got stamp while he was on the floor if a cop had known, r said.

I don't think he would have charged her, but I don't think anybody really knew the full story of what happened.

Is that true though? The police, we're wearing body cameras at night in the bar. Listen here.

Who is your right? This is ann's friend Christian.

who is sitting next to her in the bar. Christian, talk to at least three different officers that night, including geant Timothy gill. The copy got hit face, and SHE told him all the same story, same accurate story.

So then he, he got, you show the folk out of america, and then the other girl dinner face, like john up right away. So don't talk to my friend like this. In the starring at water, this body camera footage is part of the evidence in and his case.

I listen to all of IT, and I gotto say IT contains some James for us. This case, first of all, all the officer did know what happened. And yet anna is the only one who gets in any trouble that night, which seems extravagant, unfair.

At one point, sergeant girl tells anna, a, they're aware of the lady who got her face, that they are gonna file report saying that lady assaulted ana. That doesn't happen. They never even talk to that lady.

SHE wisely, high tailed IT from the bar right after anna was detained. In this report, sergeant gill will describe the other woman not as an assailant, but as a quote, mutual combatant. As for the aslape er he did stick around.

There's this whole exchange between Christian and sergeant girl where he asks her what the guy look like he was smacking your friend and Christian demerge she's like, um I don't know and then girl says, so we heard just give me with you got and Christian cough IT up SHE says that's him right there in the red jacket and the guys taken outside pat IT down put in the back of a cruise er and then the police let him go. Why would they do that? You ask.

Well, maybe because back inside the bar the remaining patrons say, oh, why not? I don't think he had anything to do. Officer, I talked to this fellow afterwards.

Roy, he's nice. He felt badly about what happened in we are. As as you know, there was about four, five people.

I say we never seen that. You know, he wouldn't do something like that. Did you know him? No, but the other people didn't know yeah to say like that.

He wouldn't. That's not him. He he wanna do that. Roy believes this is why the aslape er was like go because they all vocht for him OK.

Huh so the male cop is believing four men or six men over the women who say he's slept us. Also, the cop himself started in kill the victim. IT does not appear to care that much about being punched.

Consensus from the bar patrons is that the punch was essentially an accident. They don't think anyone should get hold downtown, including anna. They give search and gills some sloppy push back.

You got a arrester seriously surgeon, gills structure, a little to explain in this tape. Surgeon girl is in the background. He's saying, let me make this perfectly clear. Nobody wants to arrest the go to.

It's hard to hear, but he says, will I press charges? No, i'm not. Do I think it's the biggest still in the world? No, I don't.

He says the same thing to anna, who's outside the bar sitting in the back of a police cruise er half hand fed one cuff had slipped off and was dancing every which way his tones with her is not exactly apologetic but IT is conciliatory girl tels her sweet heart. Don't worry, i'm not gonna ss charges, so don't worry, i'm not listening. I'm not going to press charges.

IT doesn't matter. You're fine, but I had to take you to jail because you hit a, but IT doesn't. Hey, listen to me.

IT doesn't know. I'm not sure why surgeon girl is saying he's not going to press charges. Surgeon gill isn't the only decider on this.

He's the first link in a chain. Here's what's going to happen. A detectives will come by the bar tomorrow and look at the surveilLance tape.

It'll see what he needs to see that N, S, R, made contact gin, gills face. And that will be probable cause for felony assault on a peace officer. The prosecutors will take IT from there for the city prosecutor than the county prosecutor.

Sergeant gill could stop the whole thing right now as he's talking anna. He could let her out of that cruise er sent home to bed but he doesn't. Instead, he says this, which to me is the most confound liver of audio from the whole night surge.

Gill says, I know you didn't mean to punch me. I'm sure IT was purely accidental, he says. Maybe you just trying to calm down regardless in IT is not play added.

It's possible nothing could have play added or just then SHE told me SHE was a little drunk and very angry sitting in the back of that cruiser for hours for no but to raise. Why am I in the back of this court? This is what? Why can you buy me? Analyst, a slay of infective of protest.

For one hour, SHE kept IT up. I asked, how was he not scared to talk to cops like that? He said, I hate to say I am a White girl.

You know, i'm saying sometimes you can get away with things and you can say things. Do you understand what i'm saying? I did understand what he was saying.

Really, and the cops on the receiving end of this, these are not even the cops who arrested her, never went into the bar anything. They happen to be on duty down the block when someone deposited and in their back seat by the time they driver red to the justice center and sheep, or from the garage onto the elevator, they're arguing like family, tired and familiar. We don't know.

We know just so why am I here? Why are you? Wait me? Where's the police officer that I supposedly? Also, we are very good.

I. Just fine, but you still have to go through this. You still have to go through this. The message to end from the police officers that night was, we know you don't want to get on this train, but too late. You're already on IT.

Don't worry though, it'll stop for you eventually, like surgeon girl said to the bar patrons, after one of his rta ical Q N A, do I wanted? Do IT? No, I don't. He added sh'll get a day in court that's coming up after this.

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In his heart of hearts, rust thinks the real reason the prosecutors office is pursuing this case against anna is because there was a cop involved, but also because she's already got a record, no felonies, but she's got some misdeeds from florida.

There's a driving under suspension, A D, Y, then some local convictions, including a recent one which looks pretty bad, a case that started out as two felony theft charges but got drop down to mister miners. So in is not clean, not that they're a lot of clean records in the justice center. Most of the defendants, many the victims, to have had some prior entanglement with the war.

And even if it's small stuff, marijuana possession or trust passing, you get the stink on, you would have come to think of as the stink. You get a wife of bad citizens about you in older. That causes the presumption of innocence to travel.

Russ understands why. I understand why. It's because everyone who works in this building has become accustom to the likes of you. You are the usual suspect. And now IT feels natural that the courthouse is where you belong.

So with the aroma of prior mister miners clinging to anas file, the prosecutor moves from the laufer's stage of negotiations to a solid plea offer. M assault first. Agree, mister, just as reit predicted, russ knows the whole system is primed for him to take this.

Mister miner offer fact that the case be dammed. Everyone here, please. Ninety six percent of convictions in this course come from please all day.

That's what people are doing, broker hugging, angling for predefined tendency. Even among defense attorneys. Ruses is to go along with the flow.

We're trying to get rid of cases. If somebody is offered to plea to a mister minor, you take, be done. Okay, that's a win.

In defense parLance, the feeling will be, well, he has a prior record anyway. So a plea to a mister miner is of no consequence. Here that I I remember, one judge told me this is, one judge told me, if this county innocence is a mister miner.

what that means is.

if they don't have the evidence against you, they'll let you plead up to a mister miner. okay? If they can prove you guilty, they'll give you mister miner.

Everyone around here, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, even defendants, has internalized this idea that a misdemeanor is a little consequence. A lawyer like rust sometimes has to remind themselves how mango to principle. That is, if the prosecution can prove its case, they should drop IT, not simply shrink IT, until looks harmless enough to swallow. What's more, if in a does plead to this charge just to make her case go away, the judge, understandably, is gna treat her as if he did, in fact, a salt cop.

And she's going to give her a hard time about IT. She's going to left her and you know, when your plan didn't do anything that that's just I don't I just don't want to put her in that situation where he is the little and accused of doing something that SHE didn't do because SHE and IT rejects .

the state's offer. Reagan es with, again, provocation, accidental hit the glaring unfairness of IT all, why should this client play to any kind of assault? It'll take IT to trial. Another decision made now, russ is having called .

feet because i'm having second thoughts about this. You know about, what about trying the case?

Because first to fall, in any case is no longer about what really happened in that bar. It's become a risk benefit analysis. The surveilLance video is great evidence, but rust has a slim concern that the state might try to bring in body cam video where n is on a tair.

SHE says some ugly things in IT it's not incriminating or anything, but IT doesn't help her look sympathetic. And regardless of how well the trial goes for anna, there's always that five percent of juries who do something weird like convict on a case like this. Even IT does get convicted.

Then there's the matter of the room twenty b. Judge morine clancy. Judge clancy used to be a prosecutor to get a reputation as law enforcement friendly SHE could be a tough sentencing for any of this judge was an unlucky draw in about twenty other rooms. Rush wouldn't worry about any getting sent to jail for this, but this room IT is conceivable those are the risks for anna, but then resume its there are risks for him too, in rejecting the mister minor assault risk said, shouldn't matter when you're considering what best for your client, but in reality they do.

I know that when I tell the prosecutor that she's going to trial and i'm relatively certain, i'll get blow back. You know, why are you taking up the court's time and not pleading this out to a mister minor? I wouldn't certainly get IT from the prosecutor. IT wouldn't surprise me if I get IT from the bailiff .

and the judge.

You don't have you gotten that.

Look back now I will in what .

for i'll be viewed as somebody use complicating things unnecessarily like .

you'll just be seen as an now in this case.

well as an obstructive st, somebody who is impeding the disposition of cases. I will be, I am going to say, subject to ridicule, but I will be regarded as an obstruction, as I said. And you know, I do, you don't want to get a reputation for that.

Reputation is everything around here is a closed and somewhat circular community of this courthouse. Everyone knows everyone. Word gets around very fast.

If you're a pain, the ass. If you grand stand, you're boat rocker. If you slow dockets down, IT can affect your business.

Colleagues might not refer clients to you, and judges might not assign your cases. About half of resus income is from assignments. Some like anna sump alot ork one by one.

They don't pay much, not exactly paid by the hour there. A C cap. According to the court rules, the most thing get paid for in this case is eight hundred dollars.

Whether he takes up to trial or not, the minimum he can get paid is curiously specific, two hundred and fifty six dollars. The best way to make money as an assignment attorney is to treat like a volume business, take lots of cases, resolve them quickly, but not too quickly. The catch is judges control the assignments, which can lead to a kind of subtle self inflicted pressure. Maybe I won't file this motion or take this case to trial, because that might annoy the judge and then he might not assignment cases. Russ has a good reputation, I doubt, is in real danger of reprisal, but if this courthouse veteran is worrying about whether he will be seen as an obstructionist on a little case like this, imagine what a less secure tourney might do in his place.

Three weeks before the trial date, russian animate a last ditch counter offer. How about disorderly conduct, an m4， sort of the smallest charges in the courthouse, just one up from, say, a speeding ticket, the state rejected IT note, says Jennifer, this was definitely an assault. So either take the m one or try to beat the felling charge a trial.

The end, a shows up for her trial, wearing a new dress you got at Marshals, navy blue with White piping around the collar, cap sleeves, string of perles Sparkly flats. He looks like an attorney, which he later told me was the look he was going for. She'll leave the tags on the dress and hopes of returning IT the shoes shall keep rush.

Is there, of course, standing with anna at the defense table, at the prosecutions table across from them? No, Jennifer, it's some other guy, a Young prosecutor name, JoNathan. And listen now, john athan characterises the crime before them, disorderly conduct, a mister minor of the fourth degree.

Seems Jennifer was busy on a murder trial. So about week ago, she'd handed off the case to JoNathan mcDonald. JoNathan watched the bar surveilLance video.

And this morning before, in a trial again, russ saw JoNathan back in court chAmbers. And first thing he said the russ was, you ve got your disorderly conduct and IT takes IT in the court room. SHE pleaded guilty happily.

JoNathan gives the judge a quick and options of the case. There was a fight, he says IT was chaotic, multiple people were touching. Anna SHE was falling.

He closes IT out with a fourth degree use of the passive ways sergeant girl l. He tells the judge was struck by a blow low. And sergeant gilled himself isn't there. He'd come by earlier in the day, but he had believed another officer was there. Judge clancy, double checks with them, like you're call with this outcome. The officer mentioned an ord spent four days in jail, says, I mean, I would say that adequate judge clancy finds end of two hundred dollars and cents, or on our way, with the gentle good luck to you.

Very good you.

Thank you. Everyone suddenly seems so chill about this felling assault on a piece officer. Just weeks earlier, Jennifer firmly rejected the m for disorderly.

What happened? What changed? Obviously, the prosecutor for one fresh is on the case.

In this instance, eyes attached, the guy who gets along well with responsive, but personalities aside, rest leader told me it's also the timing. The eve of trial can be a magical time. He ripped on a Samuel Johnson quotation.

The prospect of going to trial concentrate a man's mind wonderfully. A clarity descends. Sometimes you learn things about your own case that you hadn't quite seen before like that .

that sucks maybe and I think that's that's probably what happened here um that they they just took a look at IT that you know came to realize certain things about IT that this was not a tribal situation. In fact, I told JoNathan, I said the, uh, you couldn't find twelve people in your office who would convicted of would all agree that the SHE should be convicted to this and he said to say.

why did you say that .

after we did the deal, after we did the plea?

At this point, I was sincerely confused about what to make of in this place. Just in a fundamental way, with this sums up comes down. Is this an example of the system working or not working? Oh, I think IT IT achieved .

the right result. So it's an example of the system working. You had this gone to trial, that would be a an example of the system not working because this never should, to be perfectly blunt, sh'd never should have been charged with this.

So setting aside that, rush believes anna didn't commit a crime and that he just pleaded guilty to one, the system worked. I talked to Jennifer about this too. SHE arrest, agree. SHE said he was glad the case went to a prosecutor who had a good report with russ that he was fine with the result in any way, Jennifer said, at the end of the day, the difference between the initial offer of mister minor assault and the final offer disorderly conduct.

But really the difference between the m four and the one is so negligible that it's like OK. So I came in for and IT worked out to just the system work.

kind of this just point out, no. And assault versus a disorderly, i'm sorry. no. If IT were your record or my record, or I just said Jennifer record we were talking about, the difference is not negligible.

This is what rankles me most about any case, the breeziness with which everyone's looking back on IT now clapping the dust of their hands and saying, right, that's done. Small crime, small case, small punishment, all in proportion, just as served. But they're not saying maybe because they're not seeing IT is the extent of a inas punishment which when you take a minute to catalog, the consequences was not small, did not fit the crime.

I'm going to do that now take you through so that when they say SHE got ta fine and was sent on her way, could have been worse. You'll see why i'm arguing that I was worse, quite a lot worse. First stuff, ana, at the back of a police car for at least in an hour.

Bligny, yes, but also destroyed. Then she's booked into the cleaning city jail, which is disgusting. disgusting. agreed. I've seen parts of IT, and I spent four knights there. I can say IT fast, four nights in jail, or I can say IT like IT filled to anna thursday night, then friday night, saturday night and sunday night for a bar fight. Four days and nights there was loud in there, people shouting and arguing up and down and across the cells. And I slept on a mat on the floor, no blanket, no sheet, a pathetic little spunge on a stick for a toothbrush, because ana's White and skinned, and a said people assumed he was a hero, add ack and gave her her time about that, called her a clock in a junkie. Everyone's messing with each other just to pass the time.

Everyone's bored. There's no TV. Um they gave you maybe like a magazine the done interesting like word of eat and cleveland by Maxine then yeah might do their food size and you're just sitting in there like finally monday .

comes and ana sees a judge who sets her bond at five thousand dollars. That's a lot. The judge had other choices and I could have been let out of jail was just a promise to come back to court.

But this was five thousand dollars full payment, which I didn't have. Instead, he paid a bonds mini fee of five hundred dollars to post the bond for her money. SHE doesn't get back.

If he hadn't been able to muster that fee, she'd been sitting in jail for months, possibly a condition of her bond. Is court supervised release, sort of like portrayal probation? Every wednesday she's got a come back downtown check in in p in a cup for a drug test.

And these visits are on top of the pretrial, i'll told animate more than twenty trips to the justice centre for this case, and he does not live close by. The judge found her two hundred dollars for the disorderly conduct, plus court fees, which he has to pay. Because SHE plus guilty, he was convicted.

If the state had dropped the charger, she'd gone to trial. And one, these fees would disappear. I showed them to rust to ask if he could explain the tommies list fourteen different fees, some with names that suggest a deep respect for catchall accounting, reparations.

County Operations court special projects fund, something called ad fee. Rush had no idea what this stuff was. laughing.

Oh my, a steep is what IT is.

Anna owes the court a total of seven hundred and eighty four dollars and fifty cents on top of the five hundred SHE paid the bonds, man us said there's a way he competition the court to wave the fees of ana campaign, but SHE does not ask him to, and he does not offer technically is not a layer anymore. Blister fees was a surprise to anna too. Have you seen this before? This number? no. Did you know about all these fees? No.

no. I mean, I planned .

to .

pay IT. I'm just.

you know, do you .

have a job? No, I just lost my job. So.

no, no.

Just crazy. We am getting hungry. Sera.

she's pregnant. She's found out she's happy about IT hoping for a girl a month later, and I was working at mcDonald's. Her online account with the court, meanwhile, has turned red, indicating that the county clerk has handed over the bill to the attorney general office for collection all this for an in for disorderly.

A felony judge I was talking to for a different story in this series told me he was thinking of giving a defendant serious time. What serious time? I asked, explain.

Well, to someone with common sense, even one day in jail is devastating life change. To someone who's got no common sense, maybe they do. Three years, five years means nothing.

They go right back out and commit more crimes. I knew any man, punishment is relative. What IT takes to teach you a lesson depends on what you're used to.

But there was a more disturbing implication as well when that prowls this course and throughout our criminal justice system that we are not like them, the ones we arrest and punish, the ones with the stinking, they're slightly different species with senses dulled and tough. And they don't feel pain or sorrow or joy or freedom or the loss of freedom the same way you are. I wood, this little case for the state of ohio wasn't little foanna in our interview.

SHE couldn't bring herself to watch the bar survey ance video of that night. I was too upsetting. SHE teared up a couple of times thinking about what a horrible year IT had been, and SHE blaming herself.

She'd been stupid to go to a bar like that, he said, with people SHE didn't trust, ana doesn't have money. She's never a stable job. She's really Young, just twenty one. Ana didn't feel the stress and outrage and shame of this case less than I would have. I think SHE felt IT more.

Before ann's final day in court, when he ended up taking the plea, Russell had only one interaction with the judge regarding in his case he was sum into her chAmbers by her bail liff, who told us that judge clancy had a question for him, just waited around for twenty minutes. Finally, the bail have came out. And just related the question out of curiosity, the judge would like to know, was the defendant in this case related to a county judge had recently retired? Same last name, restful debate of no, no relation.

Ross told me this almost a year after IT happened. I asked him, what if the answer had been yes, and I was related to the retire judge? Oh, that was, that would have been dismissed if they found out he was a judge's knees or related in some way. I don't think SHE even want have been charged. Ha, so that how that works in cleveland next time on cereal.

Serials produced by Julie snider, a manual joshi e. Bankhead and me with additional reporting by italy sq. Ski editing on this episode from ira glass, brian read honored ffc while and Nancy uptick with any danger field is our digital editor research, in fact, checking by ben fAiling sound design and mixed by stone Nelson.

Music clearance by anthy roman settled is our director of Operations. Sero staff includes Emily conn, Julie wig, casey hoey and Frances swan. Our music is by adam dorn and how willer with additional music from mam gini.

Our theme sonne is by nick loris orne and remixed by adam dorn. Special thanks to dana chivu z rich orris, amy kala hn lison oller Bennett estein, alex cotton wz and Steve boga, who spent a year in the cook county courthouse in chicago. He read a great book about IT called courtroom three o two.

That book is the inspiration for the season. We also want to thank the judges and staff at the cahoot account of coming please, also everyone over the county prosecutors office and at the cahoot account public defenders office. Finally, the art on our website was made by Melody newcome SHE created a mirror for this episode and by moth studio who did the animation. Please check IT out on our website, serial podcast dot org. That serial podcast dot org, syria's production of this american life and W B E Z chicago.