Free Courtroom 302 by Steve Bogira Page B

Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals called for theabolition of plea bargaining within five years. Under plea bargaining, the commission said, the focus wasn’t on rehabilitation or even deterrence but merely on the disposal of cases, the quicker the better. The commission imagined sentencing hearings in which judges paid more attention to the offender than the offense; in which they considered not just an offender’s criminal background but his upbringing, skills, and deficits; and in which a plan was devised for actually changing him into a law-abiding citizen—a plan whose implementation would be monitored by the judge.
    The number of felony cases has risen dramatically throughout the country since the commission made its recommendation three decades ago, so instead of being abolished, plea bargaining has been relied on all the more, and the critics have largely disappeared. The concept of studying an offender and devising a rehabilitation plan isn’t frowned upon so much as not looked upon at all; the proper sentence is whatever both sides can agree on to belch out one defendant and make space for the next. Locallo, like many judges here, has little regard for the ivory tower notions of yesterday’s commissions. “We don’t live in a theoretical world,” he says. “Under ideal circumstances, you’d get a complete analysis of the defendant you were going to sentence. But you’re not gonna have that. So you take the realistic approach.”
    JERMAINE TIDMORE ’ S PLEA is a dispo for Locallo, a conviction for the prosecutors, and one less case for the public defenders to fret. The conveyor is humming along this particular morning—until Tony Cameron manages to gum things up.
    It happens after Campanelli’s partner, public defender Diana Bidawid, informs Locallo that Cameron wants a 402. (Like most courtrooms at 26th Street, 302 has two public defenders and three assistant state’s attorneysassigned to it.) Cameron is in front of the bench with Bidawid at his side, and prosecutor Alesia is next to Bidawid.
    “Mr. Cameron, your attorney is requesting a conference to discuss the possible disposition of your matter, are you asking to have a conference?” Locallo begins.
    “Yes,” Cameron says.
    Locallo sails through the first part of the 402 without a stoplight. Alesia, surveying a police report, tells the judge that the robbery occurred outside a currency exchange on Chicago’s south side. According to the arresting officers, Cameron got into the victim’s car, sat in her lap, put a gun to her head, and told her, “Give me your money or I’ll blow your ass away.” She handed over $260. Cameron fled, Alesia says—but he returned to the scene, and the victim identified him, as did her sister, who’d also been in the car.
    Cameron has one other conviction, Alesia tells the judge: in 1986 he was found guilty but mentally ill in another robbery case, for which he got six years.
    Public defender Bidawid takes a half minute to summarize Cameron for Locallo: thirty-four, lives with his mother on the south side, does odd jobs, has an eighth-grade education, learning disabled, a long history of mental disorders, taking an antipsychotic in the jail.
    “All right. We did have a fitness hearing on December fourth,” Locallo says, scrutinizing the court file in front of him.
    “Correct. He was found fit,” Bidawid says.
    A defendant can be mentally ill, or even insane, and still be deemed fit for trial.He’s fit if he understands the nature of the charges against him and the basics of the court proceedings, and if he can cooperate with his lawyer’s efforts on his behalf. At the December hearing, a county psychiatrist testified that based on his interview of Cameron and his review of some of his mental health records, Cameron was “fit to stand trial, with medications.” Cameron has beenin psychiatric hospitals sixteen times, and he’s received treatment from outpatient clinics throughout his