Criminal Justice Experience: A visit to the Ada County Court House

For my “Criminal Justice Experience” I initially was going to visit the Ada County Police Department and take part in another “Ride-Along” again, but considering I have done that several times in the past it is time to experience something new. A fellow collogue and I decided on taking a visit to the Ada County Court House instead. We were not really sure what we were actually getting ourselves into so it ended up being quite the little adventure. There were numerous cases to chose from that were open to the public. Figuring that criminal cases would be more interesting than civil cases, we chose to view seven different individual cases which were set at the same time being 1:30 pm in room 201. The judge seeing these cases was Judge Cawthorne. They have seven cases at once because it is often the situation that about 75% of the individuals end up pleading guilty with the public defender before seeing a judge. Having been through the same situation myself and coming to court to fight what I felt to be an unfair speeding ticket, I sort of knew what was going to occur during the duration of viewing these criminal cases.
All of the seven cases were “State vs. _________”, which only two actually held in the court room with Judge Cawthorne. The first case was State vs. Soloche which was a young man probably middle aged and he was in court for his forth conviction of possession of marijuana. He had a female public defender with him to speak to the judge during the hearing. Before the hearing Soloche was supposed to have attended a substance abuse class and as for sentencing he charged a $500 fine with $250 suspended plus court costs, 90 days of jail with 90 days suspended, 100 hours of the community service, and probation. The deal with the probation was that if Soloche would take a urine test before sentencing and the results were negative then he would be given two years unsupervised probation, but if it were to come back positive for drugs then he would be under one year supervised and one year unsupervised probation. It was really neat to observe this kind of court room setting. Even though the hearing was not a major case, it was crazy how I was able to connect the class material to everything which was going on. As the judge was speaking to the court about what Soloche was supposed to have completed, she asked him if he understood what he was being charged with any everything that we was giving up if he pled guilty. The judge accepted Soloche’s plea, because she stated it was factual. Apparently, with this specific case Soloche stated he was unaware of everything he had to do besides the evaluation. Having this said the judge told him everything again and then the prosecuting attorney made statement to what he believes Soloche should be charged with. Soloche’s previous record up to now consist of: two different accounts of an invalid license, domestic battery charge which was reduced to disturbing the peace, three convictions of marijuana, and an inattentive driving conviction. The prosecuting attorney then stated what he felt Soloche should be charged with again and it happen to be very similar to what we was already told, only that the prosecuting defendant wanted him to spend 90 days in jail with 80 days suspended. From that point on Soloche agreed to taking a urine test and unfortunately the test did come back positive making it so that his final charges were to be: $500 fine with $300 suspended and had to pay court fees, 100 hours community service served within 10 months, 32 hours of drug/alcohol education and 90 days in jail with all 90 suspended. Judge Cawthorne confirmed the hearing to be a judgment of conviction and that Soloche needs to talk to the probation office soon as well as the community service representatives.
What intrigued me the most about this case is how nice Judge Cawthorne was and how stupid the defendant was. I could not believe that he seriously did not learn enough with the first three convictions of marijuana alone. I believe we got off very easily. I actually could not help but laugh during the hearing when the judge asked him if he wanted to take a drug test and that Soloche literally physically turned around and asked him parents, “How long has it been since I have been back from New York?” They replied with, “About a month.” The judge stated that it is about a month for marijuana to leave your system. Of course though, Soloche thought he was okay and ended up not being okay.
The next case was State vs. Border and this was concerning a DUI conviction which was in violation of her probation. Borders appeared pro se for the sentencing hearing. Borders had signed a police memorandum in the event that on the day of her sentencing hearing she would have paid off her fines and been to alcohol education classes in turn doing these things her prosecutor would be lenient with the final charges against her. Borders was unable to complete the things needed due to her mother being very ill the past six weeks and so she was actually living in Lewiston, Idaho with her mom and drove to Boise for the court hearing and planned on leaving court today to drive back up to Lewiston. Unfortunately, since Borders was unable to pay the fine nor attend alcohol classes up to the hearing, the prosecuting attorney said that be other side of the agreement was to do a “Pay or Stay”. She was said to have money on her, but if it was no enough then she was to be put into custody and stay in jail. The allegations against her probation violation are that she failed to pay the fines and costs and complete the 16 hours of alcohol education classes. Her payment withheld judgment so she could actually be completely re-sentenced for the crime. Since Borders decided to represent herself, she had a hard time understanding exactly what was being stated to her from Judge Cawthorne and so the judge asked her if she would actually like to cancel the proceedings and apply for the public defender. The judge stated that if Borders did decide to apply for a public offender that she would choose whether or not she was qualified for it. As this point Borders was to fill out an application, but when she was to be given one there were only Spanish forms in the court room. Judge Cawthorne stated that there had only been Spanish forms in there for a while. This indicated to me that either it is usually only Hispanic or Spanish speaking citizen that have actually needed to fill out this specific form for a while. What I learned to be very valuable information from this case was that the judge was actually trying to help Borders out in the sense that she kept saying things which should not have been stated just for the fact of the prosecuting attorney being able to use it against her. Once again, I feel the judge in this case was very lenient towards Borders with letting her reconsider representing herself so that she could be rightfully charged with the help of someone on her side. I was not able to find out the final conviction just for the fact that Borders did apply for a public defender and that was to be reviewed in the near future by Judge Cawthorne.

This is a side note to my experience…
I was quite unaware that I was actually not allowed to voice record the actual court cases. A Marshall came in with the urine sample results from the State vs. Soloche case and informed me that I was not allowed to be recording. I have yet to research this further. One thing that gets me though, is that apparently it is okay to take notes and write anything you want down, but you can no voice record anything? That does not seem very fair to me. Any suggestions or answers feel free to let me know! Thank you!!!