As The Sun Sets Over the Courthouse...

This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008

As the summer comes near its close, we look at the symbolic winter of the Chester County Courthouse. Within weeks of this writing, the halls here will be empty, the courtrooms vacant, the prisoners' lock-up void of its normal inhabitants. By the time we celebrate Halloween, our daily quarters will be blocks away and years ahead. The Justice Center awaits, shiny and new, unexplored territory.

In the meantime, the quest for justice in the old building moves on.

Or at least most of the time.

Over in Courtroom Five, Judge Thomas G. Gavin has just noticed an old familiar face sitting in the pews. It’s veteran defense attorney Paul Rubino, looking harried. “Why aren’t you off somewhere working on your tan?” Gavin wants to know.

“Not me,” Rubino sighs wearily. “Everyone else at the office is on vacation, and I’m left to slave like a dog.”

“Oh my. Poor you,” Gavin commiserates, the barest hint of sarcasm dripping from his voice. Rubino wants to know when he can squeeze in a guilty plea on Gavin’s trial schedule for a client he just picked up. Not next week, Gavin warns him; the judge will be away.

“I’ve got to work on my tan,” he smiles.

In Courtroom Three, however, there is real work to be done – at least while everyone waits for the deputies to bring up the next prisoner. The task at hand today is complex, but timely: a critique of the best event so far in the Beijing Olympics. One attorney picks the synchronized diving; another chooses the on-going Michael Phelps medal saga. But Judge James P. MacElree II knows what it is he really wants to see.

“How about synchronized belly-flops?” he opines from the bench.

Imagine two great oxen of Olympians jumping off the diving platform in tandem, twirling their way ever downward side-by-side, and flat-lining on their bellies on the calm surface of the pool at the exact same moment, MacElree says dreamily. No penalties for a big splash in that contest. In fact, the Japanese team would likely score winning rounds every time just by putting their top sumo wrestlers on the squad, he predicts.

The judge is rolling now. It would be, he says, like a skit from “Saturday Night Live” with John Belushi as the contestant. You could get defensive linemen from the NFL and power forwards from the NBA to compete in a Dream Team of belly busters to bring back the gold from Tokyo. Points would be added if your trunks came off and …

Oops, there’s a defendant shuffling into the courtroom.

“What is your name sir?” MacElree instantly intones, his voice now a model of judicial decorum. “Have you had adequate time to speak with your able counsel?”

Meanwhile, in the semi-stately, oak-paneled confines of Courtroom Two, Judge David Bortner has some serious business to discuss with his two assistant district attorneys, Andrea Cardamone and Cristin Kubacke. There’s a open week coming up for Courtroom One this month and if they put together at least one trial there’s the possibility they might get to try the last case in that stately space before the move to the new digs.

It would be a historic “last,” said the rookie jurist who was sworn in just eight months ago in that same courtroom. But we have competition, he advises the pair; Judge Ronald Nagle might have a trial and he could also put in a claim on the space.

And so it comes down to which of the two newest judges on the bench will have the last go round on the county’s grandest bench.

Don’t push it, Bortner counsels the prosecutors, If you’re going to get a guilty plea, take it, even though a plea can come in any of the shoeboxes they call courtrooms around here. History would be nice, but...

“The pursuit of justice comes first,” Bortner concludes.