By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
During voting season, Washington voters are often asked to choose the people in black robes that sit in judgment in the state’s courts. While we might wish to pick judges with the wisdom of Solomon, most people have little to guide them other than a name, a picture and a few sentences in the voter’s pamphlet. Most of our impressions of what should and does go on in courtrooms therefore comes from television.
Some of the most vituperative comments from sitting judges concerned the daytime descendants of Judge Wapner and “The People’s Court.” Each afternoon a plethora of former judges mete out swift and sure justice, usually in small claims matters without the slightest regard for either the actual legal issues or any sense of decorum toward either plaintiff or defendant. One reason being that voters constantly ask if they “are like Judge Judy?”
“God forbid that there are any actual Judge Judys ever on the bench, that’s all I have to say,” says King County Superior Court Judge Katherine Shafer. “I think they create so much fear among regular people who have to come to court and so much misinformation that I just don’t know where to start.
“It’s sort of the Land of Inappropriate Judicial Behavior,” she says. “ It’s almost like the anti-judge. People like Judge Judy seem to get their appeal from being just as Draconian as possible, and that’s just the opposite of what I want to be.”
Family Court Judge Julie Spector agreed. “I’m asked all the time, ‘Are you like Judge Judy?’ The answer is no,” she says. “I’ve watched it and I says, ‘Wow, this is make-believe. Where’d this come from?’ And she was a real judge! I don’t think she’d last 12 seconds in the State of Washington.”
Shafer admitted that she did enjoy watching the original Judge Wapner when she was in law school, comparing his rulings to what she was learning in class.
“That was sort of fun because Judge Wapner had this sort of misty version of California law. He did actually ask people about the facts of their case and then, when he did come back he would actually deliver some recognizable version of a legal ruling. And he would actually explain it — he didn’t always explain it courteously.”
Judge John Erlich sees both what he calls the TV trials, the daytime reality-based shows, and the evening dramas as entirely different phenomena.
“They’re both entertainment, but they’re entertainment in very different ways. The drama programs are just that: they’re drama,” he says, “whereas the TV trials are more like reality TV.”
Erlich readily admits that he tends to avoid watching legal shows of any kind. He says he occasionally sees Judge Judy when he goes to the gym after a particularly rough day on the bench.
“Those are the ones that, in my mind, are the most questionable,” he says, referring to the daytime reality-based shows with judges like Judy Sheinman, Mills Lane or Marilyn Millian, in that when lay people watch those, they have expectations about what judges are going to be like.”
He says he sees almost none of what he does most being done by any of the daytime judges.
“We are dispensers of the law,” he says. “I am the gatekeeper and I decide what evidence can come in and what stays out and what the jury instructions are going to be. That is the thing that none of these judges do… and that’s primarily what we do in these cases. I’m typically not the fact-finder.”
The other thing he says Judge Judy and her ilk are paid to do is to comment publicly on the believability of the people that come before the bench.
“What the judge does is exactly what it would be entirely inappropriate for either a judge or a juror to do in an actual trial, and that is express your views on credibility. And that’s where the entertainment comes in.” He says he views it as the same as what made daytime game show “The Weakest Link” popular, the chance to see someone in authority give out with withering remarks about the people facing them.
Evening dramas were at least somewhat better received by the panel of judges, though they are only occasional members of the audience.
Judge Julie Spector volunteered to watch an episode or two of “Judging Amy” before her interview to catch up on the fictional Connecticut Family Court judge.
“Judging Amy is such a funny show. I think what she does in court with kids is fabulous,” she says. “I think that it’s really important that it gives people an idea of what really could ideally happen in a very imperfect system.
“The reality of it is it doesn’t usually happen that way. My niece is a social worker in the inner city in Baltimore. The first thing she says to me is, ‘Aunt Julie, I hate judges — I hate lawyers.’”
Judge Shafer says she likes “Law And Order” because it portrays situations closer to real life than the other courtroom dramas. “Mostly they seem to be pretty close to reality in terms of the rules of evidence and how they’re applied and preliminary rulings on search and seizure issues.”
Having spent a decade in the King County prosecutor’s office before running for judge, Shafer says she does take exception to the way that Jack McCoy, the assistant DA played by Sam Waterston, plays fast and loose with his ethical obligations.
“He skates on the line or over it on a regular basis,” she says. “I think he does things that are ethically indefensible. But it’s interesting watching the moral issue play. You’d report him to the local disciplinary commission if you caught him in our state, but that he does it in order to attain a higher good gives it that moral issue that keeps you interested in the show.”