The title of the book was taken from Ecclesiastics: “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers
that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great
power from the beginning. Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men
renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and declaring
prophecies: Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their
knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent are their
instructions.”
Agee had turned the
passage on its head. The book he and Evans produced was not about rulers; its
subject was the subjects of rulers, the poor of Alabama, the forgotten of the
earth, who were in a different sense noble, their pain suppurating through
their poverty like the waters of a spring: “The spring is not cowled so deeply
under the hill that the water is brilliant and nervy, seeming to break in the
mouth like crystals, as spring water can: it is about the temper of faucet
water, and tastes slack and faintly sad, as if just short of stale. It is not
quite tepid, however, and it does not seem to taste of sweat and sickness, as
the water does which the Woods family have to use.”
Judge Raymond Norko, who
retired from the bench on March 10th, is the opposite of pontifical,
as anyone who knows him will testify, and he is slightly uncomfortable in the
presence of praise. Yet, for the people in his courtroom who bade him farewell when
he left his post as the presiding judge of the Hartford Community Court, Norko
is the wise counselor of Ecclesiastics. Wisdom knows that the rich spring of
justice, tempered always as it must be by mercy, lies within the heart of the
just judge. One acquires wisdom though understanding, and understanding
through modesty; one must stoop to enter the door of wisdom that lies always above
us. This is the true meaning of understanding.
In a brief farewell
message, Norko wrote,
“I am writing to let you know that, after thirty-three years on the bench, I am
retiring on March 10. It has been my honor to serve the people of Connecticut,
in particular the people of Hartford, as a Judge of the Superior Court. Since
1985, I have served on cases ranging from motor vehicle to capital felonies;
I’ve seen the very best and the very worst of human nature from my place on the
bench. It has been an exciting journey, one that I have learned a great deal
from. I am perhaps most proud of my service during the development and
continued success of the Hartford Community Court. When I was first asked to
lead the development of the Hartford Community Court in 1997, I said no. It was
a radical concept, with only two other community courts in the nation at that
time, and I wasn’t sure it would work. After thinking about it for a short
time, and seeing the commitment of the community, the Judicial Branch and our
other partners, I felt that we could make a big difference in our city and our
courts, and decided to accept the challenge. Happily, it has been an extremely
rewarding experience and, over 18 years since opening, the Hartford Community
Court remains vital.”
During a farewell
party in the Hartford Community Court building, dozens of people stepped
forward to commend Norko, who had shaped the court from its inception. The crowd was an assembly of pilgrims
marching toward Canterbury, each bearing a singular tale.
One woman told the famous story
of the ice cream truck, an account of which appeared in People Magazine. The
ice cream truck was the terror of the neighborhood – loud, insistent, rude, its
message and bells tearing the peace of the community. She brought the matter to
Norko’s attention. We need a judge who is for us, the woman pleaded. The court intervened and convinced the driver
to lower his decibels and reduce the repetitive message to, say, one message
per block. Almost two decades later, the lady still marveled that Norko had
intervened, quickly and decisively. Sometimes justice marches on cat paws to its
appointed destination.
The judge who will preside
over the Hartford Community Court now that Norko has resigned, the Honorable
Tammy Geathers, told her own story. She first met Norko under stressful
circumstances. As a relatively new public defender, a wheelbarrow full of cases
was dumped on her desk. She found herself summoned to court to argue a case she
thought had been postponed. Silently stewing
over the mix up, she was a little abashed and astonished to find that Norko was
that day presiding over the case. “Are you prepared to argue this case?” he
asked. She briefly explained why she was not prepared. “This case will be
postponed,” Norko said, “until you have been given a chance to prepare for it.”
Much later in her career, she was asked during an interview to name someone she
might wish to emulate as a judge. Instantly she responded – Judge Raymond
Norko. Sometimes fate is kind; that is exactly what happened.
The court under
Norko’s hand has been very busy. “Since 1998,” Norko wrote in his farewell
message, “we have handled more than 154,000 arraignments, more than 568,000
hours of community service has been performed (at a value of $4,389,035 based
on minimum wage at the time the work was performed) and tens of thousands of
social service referrals have been made.” In addition, the court has had a very long
reach: “I am also proud that the Hartford Community Court has become an
international model for other communities looking to develop their own
community courts. In 2009 and 2014, the US Department of Justice Bureau of
Justice Assistance and the Center for Court Innovation selected Hartford as one
of four recognized mentor courts. We have hosted visitors from throughout the
United States, and we have had visitors from across the globe including
Australia, China, Ukraine, France, Japan, Peru, Russia, Cape Verde, Columbia,
Sweden, India and the Slovak Republic amongst many more.”
The principal lesson
drawn from both Ecclesiastics and the Walker-Evans book is this: Justice seen
from the outside and justice experienced from the inside are different. Wisdom
and true justice lies in the reconciliation of these differences. The dozens of
people who bade farewell to the architect of the Hartford Community Court, all offering their own stories, have good reason to hope that true justice will prevail
in a court constructed by so wise a counselor.
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