GETTING PLUCKED IN CIRCUIT COURT

      Our courts are called Circuit Courts because it was intended judges would “ride the circuit” thereby assuring they wouldn’t become too subject to i9nfluence by their hometown lawyers. It was foolish to think traveling judges couldn’t be influenced just as easily. 

      I found myself waiting for court to begin in a rural county courthouse one morning when I was a new lawyer still learning the lawyer’s credo, festina et expectare, hurry up and wait. After a good hour or more, a bailiff took pity on me and confided the judge was duck hunting and I might have a good while yet to wait. Time enough for him to take me under his wing and educate me the way things worked in his county.

      Bailiffs tend to be older, retired men and women, whose job it is to keep order in the courtroom. They direct people where to go, advise judges when everyone is present and ready to proceed, and attend to the needs of jurors. What they lack in formal legal training, they make up for with years of experience observing trials. They know more about how a given case is going to turn out than just about anybody and so can be of invaluable assistance to young lawyers who are polite and nice to them. The bailiff who told me the judge was duck hunting decided to clue me in on a few of the finer points of trial advocacy.

      As with most counties, one family managers to garners all the wealth and power and rises to the top. In this county, that family’s ancestry stretched back to the antebellum days of plantations and slavery. Their side losing but the Civil War was hardly a bump in the road for them. When it was over, and their slaves emancipated, they still owned huge tracks of land and branched out into law and politics to retain their wealth and power. The law branch represented railroads and insurance companies lining their pockets with exorbitant hourly fees. They passed down elective office to their kin like family heirlooms. As to whatever political offices they didn’t want for themselves, nobody could be so much as dog catcher without their blessing.

      The bailiff began my education by explaining how a visiting judge would find himself duck hunting during a term of court. He would have been approached casually, in an offhand manner, by one of the family lawyers and offered the opportunity to go duck hunting on the family’s private estate. Didn’t have a gun or gear? No problem, they’d loan him whatever he needed. They’d have somebody pick him up from his motel and drive them out to the estate. From there a tractor would carry him, a guide, and hunting dog out to a rustic duck blind before the crack of dawn. He’d have been assured they’d have him back in time for the start of Court. It was an offer no judge, away from home and stuck in a cramped, musty smelling hotel room could resist. To get out into nature and watch the sun rise over a pristine lake was a chance for a judge to be a real Southern outdoorsman.

      So, the judge would find himself, sitting in his borrowed camouflage hunting jacket and rubber boots, with his borrowed 12 gauge double barreled shotgun draped across his lap, starring at the red dawn reflecting off the tranquil water at the edge of paradise.

Meanwhile, not far from the blind, further down the shoreline, in a non-descript building, handlers would be chasing farm raised ducks down a hidden tunnel towards the edge of the lake. The panicked ducks, fleeing for their lives, would exit the tunnel and immediately take flight directly in front of the blind where the judge was waiting. The grizzled hunt guide waiting with the judge would have been knowlingly staring off into the distance before helpfully alerting the judge to incoming ducks. The judge, amazed by the guide’s knowledge of all things natural, would raise his shotgun and blam, blam the double barrels would discharge and a duck would fall out of the sky. The waiting dog would splash into the water and swim out to retrieve the Judge’s trophy.

How lucky the judge would feel having only been in the blind fifteen minutes and already having bagged himself a duck. Just about the time the guide would finish complimenting the judge’s natural shooting skills and admiring the fine duck he’d shot, out of the chute another couple of ducks would pop and the whole performance would be repeated. After a round of spiked coffee toasting the judge’s incredibly good fortune, the guide would suggests it was time to head on back into town so the judge could preside over court.    

      The Bailiff let that sink in for a minute before he continued. Later in the week, the judge would thank the family’s lawyers for his morning duck hunt. As he embellished the story of the two ducks he shot, he probably wouldn’t give a second thought as to why the family’s lawyers were gathered in his chambers on a late weekday afternoon. “Of course,” the judge would say, “I’ll be glad to hear that special matter that somehow didn’t get on the regular court docket.” All quite proper, gentile, and professional. Opposing counsel grateful he hadn’t wasted a trip to the rural county on his unscheduled motion wouldn’t realize it was he who was about to get plucked. He would simply assume that’s just the way things are done in the county’s Circuit Court and he’d have been be right.

Later, before the Judge left the county at the end of his term, he would receive two ducks all neatly wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string. Hand delivered to his hotel room to take home to his Missus. The deliveryman would casually comment maybe next time the judge came to town, it would be deer season. Left unsaid was that the family’s baited fields would be waiting.