Two weeks before retiring as Chief Judge of New Orleans Criminal District Court, the Honorable Calvin Johnson, 61, looks down from the bench at the shackled prisoner in an orange jumpsuit. Christian Lawless has pleaded guilty to attempted simple burglary. Judge Johnson informs him that the maximum sentence for his offense is 12 years in prison.
Suddenly, the courtroom falls silent.
“Mr. Lawless,” Judge Johnson says, firmly, with his voice noticeably deeper. “It is the sentence of this court that you will serve one year in the custody of the Louisiana Department of Corrections.”
Moments later in chambers, Judge Johnson reflects on his 17 years as an elected state judge. He has sentenced thousands of men and women to “thousands of years” in prison. He has also released thousands from jail and placed thousands on probation.
“I worry about every decision I’ve made over the course of these 17 years,” he says.
“I know that I am one bad decision away from catastrophe, from something terrible happening to people generally, happening to people I know, happening to people I love — I know that.”
Johnson says he also worries about the people he has sentenced to jail.
Sometimes, the judge confesses, he doesn’t always know whether his sentencing decision has been the right one.
“I mean, this decision I made,” he says of Lawless’ jailing. “I pray [it] is the right one — I just do.”
The public always thinks a judge has made the right decision when a person goes to jail, he says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the judge believes that he’s made the right decision.” He pauses, then adds: “I’ve been in jail.”
In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Era, Calvin Johnson was arrested in his hometown of Plaquemine, a rural town across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge. He was 16. “I was falsely accused and convicted of inciting a riot,” he says. He was locked up for several days. He was later found not guilty. But the experience endures. “Just the idea of not being able to go out that door — of not being able to open that door and leave — is a helluva deal.”
He later graduated from Loyola University’s School of Law, where he has since served as an instructor.
Today, he urges other judges to visit jails to better understand “the gravity” of their decisions. “Go and see those people you’ve sentenced to jail,” he says.
He enthusiastically discusses the progress of the mental health court, which he founded in 2002. The first of its kind in the Louisiana, the court has reduced the number of mentally ill inmates deteriorating in jail, expensive competency examinations and long lines for psychiatric beds that cost $1,000 a day.
In addition, since Johnson was first elected to the bench in 1990, Criminal Court has adopted a number of in-house programs to reduce recidivism: job training, education, drug treatment and domestic violence prevention.
But he admits that Hurricane Katrina and “bench hardening” has hastened his retirement.
“I hope to say I didn’t become bitter but I know I became harder,” he says. “You see too much.”
When Judge Johnson learned a case manager in his drug court program was taking illegal payments from probationers, he alerted police and helped a FBI investigation that resulted in a federal indictment of the individual. “My concern was whether or not there was truly a cancer in the program,” Johnson recalls. “[The probe] honestly affected my health.”
In addition, Johnson says that Louisiana sentencing laws require judges to send persons convicted of the most violent offenses to life in prison, without the possibility of probation, parole or suspension of sentence.
“Sentencing young people to jail forever and knowing that it’s forever,” has been the toughest part of his job, he says.
And yes, the judge admits, Katrina influenced his decision to move on. “I came back here by boat twice, passing dead bodies, OK?” he says. “I still sometime wake up at night – [dreaming of] bodies that I passed.”
Johnson, of course, takes pride in leading the post-Katrina restoration of the historical courthouse, at the corner of Tulane Avenue and South Broad Street. “It looks better than it did before the storm,” he says. The city’s recovery from years of high crime is another matter, however. Johnson believes the “tipping point,” the beginning of New Orleans’ steady rise in crime, commenced years ago with the decline of local public education and its school buildings.
“We don’t understand why they think so little about us, well, partly it’s because we think so little about them.”
The restoration of education opportunities, long viewed by blacks as key to economic and social equality, will be critical to cutting local crime, post-Katrina, he says.
However, New Orleans blacks must return to the “village” model of disciplining black youths.
For example: “We can’t turn our heads to that individual who drives into the Winn-Dixie parking lot with the music blasting profanity on the radio.”
Even without his black robes, Johnson says he does not hesitate to publicly reprimand such violators. His 33-year-old daughter fears for his safety, Johnson says. “Strangely enough, I cannot think of an instance in which a [teenager] has done other than what I say [to] do.”
But too many black adults fear black youths. “We are so afraid of our offspring that we are allowing them to eat us.”
The local criminal justice system is less reticent, and more expensive, he says. Some days, he adds, his court alone would ring up a million dollars a day in costs to taxpayers, as a result of Louisiana’s sentencing structure.
For example, court research shows New Orleans averages about 15 arrests daily for possession of marijuana. Those arrests cost the city $1,500 a day ($547,500 a year) for jailing alone, not including the three hours required of a police officer.
“The criminal justice system has the biggest stranglehold on your pocket book of any [government function] in this town,” Johnson says.
Decriminalizing drugs is “something that society needs to truly, truly look at.” Meanwhile, local drug courts are cutting recidivism rates for drug abusers by half, according to recent court survey of 100 inmates.
Johnson predicts the city’s prison bed population [now at 2,400] will not exceed 2,500 beds, even though the Justice Facility Master Plan estimates 9,000 prison beds in the city by 2025. Johnson disagrees: “I don’t think we’ll see – by no stretch – the number of prison beds [7,000], the city had pre-Katrina.” The public will not stand for it.
As a retired judge, Johnson plans to teach, lawyer, or maybe write a book. Meanwhile, he says, job satisfaction comes by chance public meetings with people he once sentenced, “ex-convicts” to the rest of us.
About twice a week, people who have since turned their lives around greet him with news they are drug-free, homeowners, employed and/or married with children, Johnson says. And they thank the judge.
Recently, he met a man he sentenced to nine years. “He said, ‘I thank you, because you could have put me in jail longer. And you didn’t. I’m now straight; I’m productive.’”
“That gives me great joy,” the judge says, quietly. “It does.”
