Two Good Men

April 26, 2016 5:09 AM

"Where are we going, judge?" Serna asked. "We're going to turn ourselves in," Olivera said. "He said he was going to stay with me," Serna said. "I couldn't process a judge being my cellmate. "They take me to the cell, and I'm sitting on my bunk. And, then, in walks the judge.
posted by IndigoJones (14 comments total)

'I am here to climb out with you.' Yes.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:25 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Look, can we skip with the 'bad lines from porn scripts?
posted by Mezentian at 6:07 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Awesome story, thanks for that. Though too I confess it was hard not to think of "here comes the judge" (an old tagline from the Flip Wilson show, knowledge of which indicates I am old).
posted by emmet at 6:14 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's a great story. I'm not a veteran so I can't relate to that specifically, but I've had some issues I thought I'd never get past and I had many well meaning people try to help me or think jail and other punishment would 'scare me straight' and the only thing that ever worked was people who had been in the metaphorical hole climbing back in to help me out. These weren't amazing people with special training. They just genuinely cared and had been in my shoes. It can be really hard to describe this to people who haven't experienced it which is why this story is unique enough to be remarkable.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that reasonable punishments within the law or other systems should be handwaved. That's why this story is good. The judge didn't say 'oh poor you, you don't need to go to jail'; he said 'oh you do need to go to jail, but I understand and want to help you'. This is a very rare case where the judge was able to physically go to jail with Serna which is great, but there are many ways to do similar things.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 6:47 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

The article touches on this briefly but I think it's important to note that Judge Olivera didn't just do this one nice gesture. He has been deeply involved with veterans issues in his jurisdiction for years, notably with his work in establishing and running the Veterans Treatment Court in Cumberland County.
posted by Wretch729 at 6:59 AM on April 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

(an old tagline from the Flip Wilson show, knowledge of which indicates I am old).

Not that old. Wilson appropriated it from the brilliant Pigmeat Markham, also, coincidentally, from North Carolina.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:04 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This made the rounds on my legal blogs, and the consensus was some judges you call "Your Honor" because you have to. Others you call Your Honor because they earned it. This guy earned it.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:50 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's how you do it right, isn't it? Wish we had more like him.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:11 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

dust. eyes.
posted by spinturtle at 8:32 AM on April 26, 2016

I wish we had a criminal justice system that was funded and organized in a way that more actors in it felt empowered to undertake acts of compassion like this.

I wish we had a government and military that acknowledged that, after spending years breaking people we claim to honor, we have a responsibility to help them recover when we are done with them.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:24 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I wish we had a government and military that acknowledged that, after spending years breaking people we claim to honor, we have a responsibility to help them recover when we are done with them.

This, so much.

The beau and I were at the movies last night, and if you get there early enough, local advertisements run on the screen. There was one for a local private school that boasted the "highest military acceptance rate" in the region after graduation.

I turned toward the beau and said, "I'm not sure that's something worth bragging about."
posted by PearlRose at 9:48 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Maybe all judges should be from the same background as the person they sentence so that more of them give a shit about the defendants as people (since obviously having people just grow up and recognise humanity in someone "different" is impossible).
posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:15 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Now we just need to do this for the other 2.3 million people in our prisons.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:26 AM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The lesson here should not be "we need more great people as judges" but "we need a system that is designed to treat people as people, regardless of who the judge is." What if our system was designed not with punishment as a goal but with justice as the goal? Where rehabilitation, reintegration, and restitution were baked in and not the occasional, wondrous byproduct of a particularly nice judge for a particular person whom that judge favored? Where committing a crime did not revoke one's personhood and invoke punishment, but instead rallied our institutions to repair the harm caused by the crime and the harms that contributed to the crime.

This judge was bound by law to send this guy to jail. But he also knew that it was likely that going to jail would not be very good for him (and, by extension, for the society he lives in), and so took this extraordinary step. I do not want to expect that every judge take that step. I want to expect that every judge is bound by law to pass sentences that protect and improve lives of criminals and their victims alike.

This is a great story, and I appreciate that it is being told and I agree that the judge is a great man. But it leaves me with a sick feeling, because this story is remarkable mostly because it is the opposite of what is common.
posted by cubby at 1:21 PM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]