Second District Judge Carl B. Kerrick stuttered a bit as he tried to fix the date for a status hearing three weeks out.
“I’m tired,” he said after finally coming up with Dec. 8. It was Day 17, the final day of testimony in a Moscow murder retrial where Kerrick has been officiating, then driving back to Lewiston to take up his regular court calendar.
Much of what happens is routine. Some isn’t.
A young man is there on a parole violation for a non-violent crime. He changed his residence without telling his parole officer and ordered a restaurant meal with no way of paying for it.
“It’s a tricky case,” said his attorney, public defender Danny Radakovich. The soft-spoken young man who never addressed the judge without saying “sir,” is somewhat special needs, the lawyer said. “Whatever you do, I don’t think you send him to prison because I don’t think he would survive there.”
Kerrick continues the hearing to let the attorney check into an alternative, a closely supervised shelter home if one can be found.
The young man in striped jail uniform and orange clogs, like most of those from the county jail, stands up. “Thank you, your honor,” he says. He returns to the jury box where the other prisoners set, taking a seat at the farthest corner, by himself.
Another prisoner wants to read his presentence investigation, but he has to pay his attorney for anything over 10 pages, and he doesn’t have any money. If he did, he told the judge, he wouldn’t be relying on a public defender.
It’s part of the agreement all the public defenders signed and the county commissioners approved as a way to avoid uncontrolled printing costs, Radakovich says.
Work it out, somehow, Kerrick says.
They discuss motions in a case where the alleged victim acknowledged while testifying during an earlier hearing using methamphetamine before an altercation. A man with a heart condition is sent to jail. In the audience, a woman cries.
Another woman comes in with proof she’s holding two jobs and can start making restitution in a forgery case. “I told you what I would do and I did it,” she says, crying. Part of it was apologizing to people she defrauded, she said, people she liked.
She’s already served some jail time, and now she will get a chance at five years of probation, during which she will repay more than $10,000 she took plus $500 for her court-appointed attorney and other fees.
Another young man has finished a “rider,” and is recommended for release on probation. “I just want to thank you,” he tells Kerrick. One of his teachers told him there are no tough guys in jail; the tough ones are out there taking care of their families. That’s what he wants to do now, he said.
“That’s what I hope for when I send someone down there,” the judge says, suspending the rest of his sentence but giving him two pages of conditions he must abide by or go to prison for up to two years.
