Judges that Care

I had to go to court today for my speeding ticket. I won't go into it--I just ended up pleading guilty to speed much faster than I was actually going. It doesn't matter so much now and I need to stop whining about it. One friend I talked to today really put it in perspective when she pointed out that there are probably many times in my driving history when I actually was driving way too fast and I just didn't get caught. So I know I deserve to have to pay a fine....blah, blah. And going to Defensive Driving School can't hurt me, right? It's never a bad thing to learn how to be a safer driver I guess.

But what I really wanted to write about was how impressed I was with the Judge in this particular court. When I went today, evidently the Solicitor was not expecting me. So I presented my papers that said to be there and they went off in search of my paperwork. In the meantime, I was sitting through all of these kids who had to appear before the judge for DUI and underage drinking charges. Maybe it's just because I have never been present for the conversations between judges and defendants before, but it seemed like this judge really cared about what she was doing. For each case I witnessed, she required drug and alcohol awareness and counseling. But she didn't just assign this in general--she assigned the defendants to have counseling at a very specific place in Athens because she knows they do it well. She also had some of them write an essay about the importance of being responsible with alcohol or something along those lines. When she explained why she was giving these sentences, she expressed that she didn't want these kids to end up in a court again for DUI (if they weren't already) or in a bad accident or developing a serious problem with substance abuse that could ruin their lives. Her approach was kind of like getting caught is the best thing that could have happened to them because maybe they will learn something from it before spiraling to worse things.

Like I said, this could be the norm for most Municipal court judges. I just didn't know. I don't know what I expected her to say, but I was really surprised that she seemed to care so much.