Let's Not Be Too Hasty in Judgments

 

    On my way to work yesterday morning, I developed a sudden dislike for Citrus Municipal Court Judge William M. Martin.  And I imagine that, throughout the day, a lot of other people did, too.

 

    At least, they did if they were listening to the same newscasts that I was tuned in on.

    Judge Martin, I learned shortly after flicking on my car radio, had sentenced a 102-year-old Baldwin Park man to 30 days in jail for being a bad housekeeper.  The centenarian, Charles McKaughan, was guilty of permitting too much rubbish to gather around his small shack — the report continued — and he was slapped with 30 days in spite of his plea that at his age being tidy just wasn't that important anymore.

 

    By the time I reached the office, I had my tirade against the judge and his brand of justice mentally composed, just waiting to be put down on copy paper.  Jailing a 102-year-old man for a month because his humble home didn't have the Good Housekeeping seal of approval struck me as a pretty ruthless kind of justice.

 

    I'm afraid Judge Roy Bean is going to have to wait a while longer for a successor.

 

    I even thought of referring to Judge Martin in searing prose, as the West's new Roy Bean, and had composed an original clever line about the quality of mercy not being strained.

 

     But if you hang around a newspaper city room long enough, you learn that Rule No. 1 in the business is:  Leave your cover on your typewriter until you've checked both sides of a story.

 

    So I put through a call to Judge Martin and repeated what I'd heard on the radio.  I asked him if it was true.

 

    The judge cleared his throat, "Charlie McKaughan's 102?" he asked me.

 

    "That's what the radio said," I answered.

 

    "If that's so," he replied, "I guess I really must have aged him.  Because the first time he came up before me, last July, he was only 72."

 

    I suggested — as diplomatically as one suggests to a judge — that 30 days in jail still seemed like a pretty stiff sentence.

 

    "On the surface," he agreed, "I guess it does.  Maybe I owe some people an explanation.

 

    "When Charlie came up before me yesterday, he was dirty, he needed a haircut, he said he hadn't eaten for a couple of days, and had a very bad cold.  But I'll get to that part of it later.  First, would you like to hear his record?"

 

    I said I would.

 

    "Well," said Judge Martin, "he first came before me on July 27, 1959, on a Health Department complaint charging four violations."  They were for allowing rubbish to accumulate, harboring materials that were infested with rodents, maintaining a fire hazard, and too many weeds and too much paper on the premises.

 

    "He told me," the judge went on, "that he could clean it up in a couple of days, so I continued the case until Aug. 12, he came back with no progress to report, so I continued it over until Sept. 1.  Still no progress.  I kept continuing it, and finally on the seventh time I fined him $5 and $2 penalties."

 

    But still old Charlie — who was hale and hardy enough to make the five-mile walk to court every time — couldn't work up the ambition to remove the hazards on his property.

 

 

    Charlie made a couple more visits back to court in September, five more in October, two in November, three in December, five in February and two more this month.  On three scheduled court dates, he just didn't bother to appear and had to be brought back in with bench warrants.

 

    Everybody around the courthouse got to know Charlie pretty well — so well, in fact, that a deputy in the marshal's office eventually got in the habit of driving him to and from home for his appearances.

 

    "On this kind of a violation,"  Judge Martin told me, "there's a real dilemma with elderly people.  I fined Charlie McKaughan a few times, but he still wouldn't clean up his yard.  In fact, last February, he added a new violation by constructing an illegal privy.

 

    "I didn't want to send him to a crowded jail, but to make him 'eligible' for the honor farm, where he could rest up, eat well, and get medical care for his cold, I had to give him a minimum 30-day sentence.  After he's back in shape, I can cut that short."

 

    I asked Judge Martin if Charlie had a family  who might help him.

 

    "I hear he's got some sons and daughters living in the area," he replied.  "Including one," the judge added after a pause, "who's going to celebrate his first birthday this year."