Court theater

The stage is set for felony arraignments in a Hennepin County courtroom in Minneapolis’ Government Center. It’s a hushed environment. As one of about twenty audience members seated in three rows of General Admission, I take note of the set as we wait for the action to commence. The judge’s chair, front and center, is raised several feet from floor level, where a pair of attorneys face open microphones. One, the representative of the state, fusses over a laptop. The other, a public defender, arrives armed with an intimidating stack of file folders. (Backstage information: the public defender has spent her morning in a series of quick meetings with her clients, all of whom have been arrested and charged with felonies. Learning details of their cases on the fly, she has prepared herself to argue with her counterpart before the judge at the arraignment phase, in which the conditions of client’s freedom before trial, or plea bargain, are set.) A quartet of bailiffs set the tone in the room: no bullshit, but with respect. I’m introduced to a couple of them before things get underway, and they are extremely high on the list of the nicest people with whom I have recently come in contact. And they are armed. A bailiff gets the signal that court is about to begin, and he makes the standard theater announcement: cell phones off, behave yourselves. No mention is made whether unwrapping throat lozenges will be frowned upon. The judge enters, gets a standing ovation. But she’s the down-to-earth type and bids us to sit down. No, really, sit down. She has the authority of the armed men in the room, after all. What follows happens both very quickly, and with startling inevitability. A series of men (today, they are all men; there are not separate hearings for women, but Minneapolis’ females have not been committing felonies in this particular slice of time) are brought via some secret passage to the wings at stage right. When it is their turn, they press their face up to an ovoid opening in thick glass, recite their name, address, and date of birth. And then their immediate fate is decided. It’s public defender versus county attorney, though the competition isn’t particularly rancorous. The matter to be settled is bail, which is set in the tens of thousands of dollars (at least two bail bondsmen are seated in the room). The details of the cases aren’t aired, just the level of the charges. Tiers of bail soon emerge, many of which involve the accused not breaking any more laws in the immediate future, and staying away from those against whom they are accused of perpetrating crimes. Their faces, pressed against the glass, are snapshots of men who have been staying in jail, and who will be returning to jail once this process has finished. Sometimes their eyes dart over the audience; more often, they either call for an exchange with their attorney, or go through this experience as one of many. One particular bailiff has the air of a performer. He has perfected a look of restrained disapproval, albeit with impeccable politeness. He hands forms through a hole in the glass, takes the pen back from the prisoners, and manages to convey distaste. He has witnessed more human failures than I could catalogue in my imagination. The one private attorney who appears before the court attempts his own theater; he comments on his appearance having changed since last approaching the judge, then launches into a Constitutional argument that seems designed toward his client’s avoiding alcohol testing. His audience (the judge) squints at him with incomprehension. We have a stage, an audience, and players—some of whom are doing their jobs, others who are dealing with the consequences of their actions. It’s a sector of human life in which misdeeds are processed, systematized, and made into actionable segments along a bureaucratic chain. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but this is the way station along the dramatic arc. Being incarcerated for an alleged felony, after all, is no small matter. The theatrical impulse, in its purest sense, is to tell stories as a way of illustrating reality for one another, to aid us in navigating its waters. Here is another form of theater, breaking down real acts, stripping them of metaphor or symbol, getting to the heart of the matter. No one is arguing that the performance lacks legitimacy, they are merely trying to find the best terms for moving forward. So this is a theatrical setting, dogged and determined to be the opposite: an arbiter or reality as impartial as humans can make it. It seems messy, as just such a thing can be, a flawed answer to an imperfect situation. But in the broadest scope of human behavior, including the theater, its primary impulse feels noble. And that is not without profound, heartening worth.