judge bearden's circus

As a result of being the victim of whistleblower/sexual harassment by newbie Lane County District Attorney Alex “my SATs are bigger than yours” Gardner, I had a front row seat at the laMe county circus court on Thursday, January 8, 2009. For 2.5 hours, I watched the monkeys, clowns and elephants perform.

I had never seen Lane County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Mary Ann Bearden wearing a robe and whacking a gavel before. Until yesterday, I’d only observed her at Public Safety Coordinating Council Meetings, where she would whisper and giggle with Alex Gardner. [Note: If Lane County wants to break its 0-for-9 streak in persuading voters to approve a new public “safety” tax, it needs to work harder on creating the illusion that the LaMe County Circus Court Judges and LaMe County District Attorneys are not in bed together.]

There were 80 cases on the 2:30 docket in Room 201 and the room was overflowing and almost certainly contained more people than legally allowed, as the allegedly honorable Judge Bearden herself noted when she estimated that there were 120 people in the room. [Note: Whether or not the allegation of honorability is perjury is beyond the scope of this document.]

I assume the District Fire Chief or the City of Eugene Planning, Police and/or Risk Services Departments specifies the maximum number of people allowable in a public meeting room within the city of Eugene. Or maybe there is a state law pertaining to this. I don’t know, it’s not my job.

All I know is that this was the second time I felt acute-onset personal-space/oxygen-deficit-disorder in a room in the Lane County Courthouse with high-ranking Lane County decision-makers. It was the second time I tried unsuccessfully to find out what the maximum allowable number of bodies in the room was. The other time was the Lane County Board of Commissioners Conference room where the average attendee was equivalent to 1.8 units of the average-attendee-size-assumed in regulations regarding maximum allowable humans/square foot.

Anyway, back to the monkeys, clowns and elephants. I watched the escalation of the submissive, uh, shall we say “grooming behavior” on the part of AssDA Hasselman and the clearly appreciative and allegedly honorable Judge Bearden. It was accompanied by audible laughter from the shysters in the audience, mostly the county-taxpayer-funded shysters in the District Attorney’s office and the Public Defender’s office who sat up front in the bullshit pen protected by the Sheriff’s Deputy. The $250/hour private defense attorneys were in the back with the alleged criminals. Under the cover of a particularly loud round of laughter from the audience in response to a snippet of the painfully-unclever repartee between Erik and Mary Ann, I muttered “Way to kiss that REDACT, Hasselman!”
I had brought my copy of Ann Rule’s “Small Sacrifices” (the fictitious-marketed-as-true story of the May 19, 1983 attack on Diane, Cheryl, Christie and Dan Downs) with me. At some point, Judge Bearden was conversing with a lawyer sitting right in front of me about another poor mofo who had the horrendous misfortune of interfacing with the Lane County criminal (in)justice system. She said “Mr. Jagger” and my ears perked up. There was no one sitting next to Diane’s intentionally ineffectual defense (HAHAHA) lawyer so I sat down next to him.

I took the book out of my backpack, being careful to be very casual. I did not want to attract the attention of the scary-looking female Sheriff’s Deputy or the not-so-scary-looking deputy of indeterminate gender. I pretended to read for about 10 seconds and then I flipped the book open to the middle where all the pictures were. I opened to the page with the picture of Lane County Circuit Court Judge Greg Foote. I sat like that for a while. I’m not sure if he noticed because I was very careful not to signal to him that I was the same person who is writing all these emails. But after 2 minutes, he got up and moved. Wow. Heckling Jim Jagger and Erik Hasselman.
The scariest part was when Judge Bearden divvied everyone up into different judge’s chambers. I heard her say “Okay, Judge Foote will take the following cases: “

Oh, no. NOT JUDGE FOOTE!

“Bonnie, Clyde, Smith, Wesson..that’s it.”

”Whew!”