James M. Redwine

Wizard of Oz

Where’s the Wizard?

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Photo by Peg Redwine

In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz based on the book by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are swept up by a tornado and dropped into the Land of Oz. Dorothy has fantastic adventures and meets fanciful characters such as The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man with no heart, The Scarecrow with no brain, and The Wicked Witch of the West who has bad intentions. Most importantly, she meets The Wizard of Oz who is masquerading as an all-powerful ruler but is exposed to be a graven image. What Dorothy learns from her trials and tribulations in Oz is, “There’s no place like home” and the true Yellow Brick Road is the one that takes you there.

On April Fool’s Day, Peg and I and a lot of other people, just as Dorothy, had the everyday values of home reinforced by an F1 tornado that roared through our usually rather uneventful lives. We had become inured to such unappreciated comforts as roofs and electricity. We expected that nothing unexpected would disturb our reverie.

From childhood one of my greatest pleasures has been watching and feeling a storm lazily working from calm to possible calamity. I know I am joined by many people who enjoy and are excited by slowly tumbling grey clouds in the distance that metamorphize into colliding black clouds that envelope lightning bolts and driving rain. Few things are as rare and pleasurable as the acrid smell of ozone. Perhaps it is the foreboding that storms represent, much like skiing down a mountain or watching your favorite sports team when it is one point behind with a minute to go. Regardless, few things make humans appreciate being human as does a roiling and thundering storm.

When Peg stepped out on our veranda to check on the strange sounds coming at us from the southwest, she quickly turned, ran back in and said, “Jim I hear THE TRAIN!” We huddled momentarily in an interior bathroom, but the siren call of a mighty natural event was too strong. We had to join in the grand dance so we took deep breaths and were mesmerized by prairie grasses waving like laundry flapping on a clothesline; you do remember those, right?

After a night of agitated wonder and worry and hours without power, we ventured out to find a few items from a neighbor’s ranch but no damage to ours except a couple of downed trees and quite a few broken limbs. Of course, Peg has already assigned me to clean-up duty. Once we had used our cellphones to make sure there was no loss of life and only some unfortunate damage to a few residences, we felt much as a speeding motorist who hears a police siren behind them, but relaxes as the officer flies on past in pursuit of a more egregious offender. It is exhilarating to be shot at and missed.

As General Patton said about war, “God, help me I do love it so.” Peg and I, and maybe you too, Gentle Reader, do so love a “good” storm. Of course, sometimes a storm brings loss of lives and property. Then we are forcefully reminded of what we truly have and that there really is, “No Place Like Home.”

The Cure for Black Robe Fever

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In response to both the states of Indiana and Oklahoma’s CLE requirements I am currently engaged in a forty-hour online Mediation course presented by the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada. I may subject you, Gentle Reader, to the exciting content of this course before long. Hey, why should I have all the fun alone. But for this week I thought you might prefer another of those true courtroom dramas such as the one presented in last week’s column about my service as a prosecuting attorney that helped keep me from falling too deeply into the Black Robe Syndrome. The case that today’s column is about occurred about 25 years ago in front of me in the Posey County, Indiana Circuit Court. To my chagrin, I confess it is all too true and was first confessed to by me in a Gavel Gamut article on August 07, 2006 and appears in the book Gavel Gamut Greetings from JPeg Ranch.

The whole embarrassing courtroom episode reminded me of Dorothy’s serendipitous traipse along the Yellow Brick Road in the land of Oz with the cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in search of a brain for the Scarecrow, courage for the Lion, a heart for the Tin Man and the Wizard of Oz for Dorothy. When the mighty Wizard of Oz is finally seen for what he really is by Dorothy his façade of omnipotence gets shattered.

It is probably a good thing that we sometimes have false images of our leaders.  I remember my feelings of dismay when I was told by one of my grade school teachers that the painting of George Washington that hung in our classroom and in which The Father of Our Country looked so stern and powerful portrayed General Washington with his lips tightly pursed because he had ill-fitting false teeth.

And I will not disclose at what advanced age I still clung to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  I might have been slow to catch on but I was happier than my peers.

We may be wrong, but most humans believe in pomp and circumstance and the regalia of office.  Police officers have badges, soldiers have uniforms and presidents have Air Force One.  We do not need to know about what happens behind the scenes.

Then there are judges.  Judges have courthouses, high benches, gavels and those flowing black robes. Hey, it’s kind’a cool. And, of course, some judges have spouses who are not so easily impressed by all the accoutrements since they see their judges asleep on the couch in dingy tee shirts and torn Levi’s.

But what brings the old “feet of clay” sharply into focus are those unexpected events that occur in court where some citizen decides to act like this is a democracy and he or she is an American.

While there are many instances where I have been made to realize that the trappings were for the office and not for me personally, my wife Peg’s favorite story involved a case from about ten years ago where I was imparting great judicial wisdom and admonitions to a young woman who had been found guilty of stealing.

As I was regaling the full courtroom with the majesty of the law and how it fell so heavily on this poor young miscreant, all of a sudden the huge double doors in the back of the courtroom burst open and a large woman with her hair in curlers wearing a housecoat and bunny slippers charged up towards my bench. She was the young woman’s mother and she was not amused and certainly not impressed by my lecture to her daughter.

The lady stopped just behind the bar that separates the hoi polloi from those who are paid to serve them. She stood to her full height and said very loudly:

                     “If you weren’t wearing that long black dress, I’d come up there and slap your face!”

Then she turned and marched slowly and grandly out the back of the courtroom giving me what for the whole time.  The packed courtroom was split between amazement and amusement.

As for me, I knew how the old Wizard of Oz felt.

It’s An Ill Wind …

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Original Artwork Used by Permission of Artist & Attorney Cedric Hustace

COVID-19 has killed about 200,000 Americans since it took our first citizen in early February 2020. It has cost us millions of jobs and thousands of businesses. Before we finally defeat it, and we will, ’Ole 19 will have cost us many trillions of dollars of our personal and public treasure. It is difficult to contemplate there may be anything worthwhile to be gleaned from this world-wide pandemic. However, we humans are a resilient species. We have learned better hygiene from past plagues (Typhoid Mary?), better agriculture from past famines (the Dust Bowl?), and better technology from past wars (too numerous to name). With the corona virus we are rapidly developing better, cheaper and more ecumenical delivery systems of social services, including legal services, in response to social distancing.

As Jeff Bezos rides Amazon into the financial stratosphere we now can get groceries and education without leaving our homes by simply using our thumbs and televisions. While we complain about the pervasiveness of the outside world into our lives we can now consult with our medical providers at lower cost and with greater convenience. We can even have our “day in court” and never go to court. And the courts we no longer have to go to may have changed their attitudes more in this year of 2020 than they changed in the transition from ecclesiastical models to secular ones over the last few hundred years, or, at least, since I began practicing law in 1970 and judging in 1981.

Just as Walmart encouraged southern ladies to eschew high heels when shopping and Rural King and Atwoods relaxed the clothing bar even further for men than their wives thought possible, socially distanced court proceedings have proved that justice need not be pretentious to be administered fairly. A live-streamed video decision that grants a divorce or closes an estate is just as valid and just as readily accepted as a stuffy proceeding presided over by some self-important potentate in the presence of three-piece suits and tasseled loafers.

“Zoom”ed legal proceedings are quickly proving what some in the judiciary have been asserting for years, it is the facts and the law of a case, not the “majesty of the law”, that are the essence of justice. We judges are discovering thanks to COVID-19 what the Wizard of Oz was so rudely apprised: litigants do not need to tug on their forelocks and beseech their “betters” for justice. In an American courtroom even if that courtroom is one’s living room, “Justice is to be administered freely and without purchase, speedily and without delay”.

What we are discovering is that American citizens can save time, money and inconvenience by attending court electronically while sipping coffee and wearing casual clothing and still accept judicial decisions as just. It is the fairness of a judge’s ruling, not the judge’s robe or periwig, that is the woof and weave of our judicial system. If we judges concentrate on the evidence and properly apply the law, we need not waste time and resources enforcing arcane rules designed to stroke our egos. Legal proceedings do need proper structure but two of our most honored judicial precepts should always be followed by judges: (1) De minimis non curat lex (don’t sweat the small stuff), and (2) When the reasons for a rule no longer apply, do not apply the rule. A casual but mutually respectful atmosphere and the ability to ignore behaviors that do not impact a just outcome in court proceedings may be an unanticipated “symptom” of ’Ole 19 and electronic court.

With electronic court the days of waiting for years to get into a court should be over. Every judge, lawyer and litigant has instant access to a court; there is one in his or her hand, home or chamber. And since 95% of all cases are eventually settled without trial why delay justice due to everyone having to use the same brick and mortar building? Socially distanced justice has been forced upon us. Of course we must address the health issues but we need never go back to the Wizard of Oz days. The curtain has been raised and up it should stay.