Courtroom 302

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and substance use disorders. They also touch on topics of sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, and hate crimes. This guide obscures the n-word when reproduced in quotes.

In the first few chapters, Bogira quickly alerts the reader to the imbalances in the US justice system. Most of those taken into custody on 26th Street were African American, poor, and, in many instances, dealt with substance use disorders. For those who received a D-bond, their freedom depended on whether they had the money to post the cost of the bond. Many of those taken into custody, such as Walter Williams—someone with one leg, asthma, and a heroin addiction who was on disability—did not have the hundreds of dollars it would cost not to spend the next several nights in jail awaiting their hearings. 

Williams and others brought in for drug possession were in the felony lockup, while domestic batterers sat in the misdemeanor lockup alongside those caught shoplifting grocery store items. Bogira highlights that the state of Illinois considered the possession of “a minute amount of cocaine” to be “a graver offense” than beating up a wife (15), girlfriend, or other woman in the household. 

In later chapters, Bogira underscores Judge Locallo’s starkly different treatment of those defendants in possession of small amounts of drugs—all African American—compared to his treatment of white, large-scale dealers. The latter were allowed to go free, while the former were forced to languish in jail. The latter always used expensive defense lawyers, while the former were represented by overworked public defenders. 

The defense lawyer in the Dino Titone case, Fred Cohn, who had once been a civil rights activist, presents an argument for the value of fairness and mercy in the criminal justice system. As a defense attorney, Cohn identifies himself with Abraham—the Old Testament patriarch who asked God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because the land held righteous people as well as wicked ones. Abraham, according to Cohn, was “the first criminal lawyer” (216). The story of Abraham reinforces the notion that even those who seem past redemption deserve fairness and justice. Cohn exaggerates the legend by claiming that Abraham, like defense lawyers, argued “on behalf of bad people to try to save them” (216). More accurately, Abraham sought to save people who risked being punished as a result of God’s “prejudice.” The ease with which African American residents of poor parts of the West and South Sides of Chicago are punished for small-time drug felonies reflects a similar tendency to condemn swaths of people without understanding their unique circumstances.

In Bogira’s retelling of these courtroom stories, he presents justice as an elusive and nearly inexplicable concept. There is nothing just about violent offenses being treated as lesser offenses than possessing just enough drugs to use. There is also nothing just about defendants who pumped drugs into communities—like the one in which Bates lived—being treated more leniently than defendants who used those drugs to escape dire poverty and hopelessness. Bogira relies a great deal on these juxtapositions to show the reader how imbalanced the scales of American justice are.