Recess or Not, This Court Is in Session

The officer was quite right, Gasia Mazmanian was saying, Laurel Canyon Boulevard is indeed a very curvy road, which is why she had to turn the steering wheel back and forth, which caused her arms to pass in front of the speedometer, which prevented her from seeing her true--allegedly excessive--speed.

In the back of the “courtroom,” two high school boys with shaved heads snickered. Several more students rolled their eyes.

Welcome to traffic court at James Monroe High School, where being found guilty--as Mazmanian soon discovered--was the easy part. More grueling, perhaps, was having your defense argument critiqued quietly but not always subtly by 70 high schoolers with a taste for justice.

“I felt that my infraction would be forgivable,” the 26-year-old Mazmanian told the court.

It would be, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Tricia Bigelow informed her, after she spends eight hours in traffic school.

“That’s fair,” one student whispered with a nod.

To observe Law Day on May 1, the Municipal Court invoked California Government Code Section 71341, which declares, “Sessions of a municipal court . . . may be held at any place or places within the district for which the court is established.” The plan was to show high school students how the courts work.

So four Angelenos accused of vehicular malfeasance learned the hard way that justice can be meted out just about anywhere, in front of anyone.

“The People vs. Dorothy Stosic,” called Municipal Judge Anthony J. Mohr, who succeeded Bigelow on the bench. A fresh-faced 19-year-old--who students of the school’s law and government magnet program had assumed was one of their classmates--Stosic strode with nervous determination from the audience area to the defense table. She shuffled papers as the onslaught began.

Officer Mitch Windsor, a 14-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, launched into a well-polished speech that detailed precisely how much experience and expertise he had in catching speeders. Not only could he visually estimate a vehicle’s rate of travel within 3 mph, he explained in measured tones, he was certified to teach other police officers how to do the same.

And on the evening of Feb. 12, Windsor testified, Stosic was doing 53 mph, an “unsafe speed,” as she passed a Jewish temple on Roscoe Boulevard where he had parked his police motorcycle.

“Ms. Stosic,” Mohr said with a nod.

With six dozen pairs of young eyes on her, Stosic studied her notes briefly, paused, and began her counterattack, asking Windsor if he remembered on what day of the week Feb. 12 fell.

No, Windsor replied, he did not.

“I will refresh your memory,” Stosic said. “It was a Wednesday. Was church in session?”

“Yes, it was.”

Stosic looked up, seemingly surprised at the answer. “Were there pedestrians on the sidewalk?”

“Yes, there were.”

“I don’t recall that,” Stosic fairly snapped.

And then it happened. The bell rang, filling the courtroom with a startling metallic clamor. It was, in school parlance, time for “nutrition.”

“I’m starving,” one girl mumbled, and all but a handful of the students headed for the door as teachers sought in vain to quiet, if not halt, the exodus.

Unfortunately for Stosic, however, order was soon restored in the now nearly empty court. And despite Stosic’s detailed and theoretically valid argument that her speed, while above the posted limit, was nonetheless safe, “the People” claimed their second victory of the morning.

“Ms. Stosic, I find you guilty in this case . . . but your presentation was excellent,” Mohr smiled from the bench. “While it may be small consolation to you, I think it helps the class.”

If holding court in a high school seems a bit unfair to inexperienced traffic defendants, there is certainly no law against it. As long as it is held in public, in fact, a trial can take place just about anywhere, and plenty have.

“In the Old West, frontier justice was always very informal,” with court held in pool halls and churches, as well as under the hanging tree, said UCLA law professor Clyde Spillenger. “Even today, it wouldn’t be a violation of law if judicial proceedings were held in a less dignified setting.”

Indeed, after the San Fernando Courthouse closed following 1994’s Northridge earthquake, “we converted everything into a courthouse,” including mobile trailers and a meeting room in San Fernando City Hall, said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Judith Ashmann.

“The Supreme Court of the United States will have tourists come in dressed in shorts to watch the proceedings,” said Washington, D.C., attorney David Frederick. And until 1935, the justices gathered in an unremarkable room on the ground floor of the Capitol building, he said.

Former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, currently teaching law at the University of Miami, said he once conducted a jury trial in a hotel room. “It went forward with great dignity,” Reynoso said. Regardless of the surroundings, he said, “folks understand it’s serious.”

Indeed, it was life-and-death serious, Joseph Shirian testified when he was called before Mohr. He was doing 51 mph in a 35-mph zone in Van Nuys because it was night and he was being followed.

“I had to speed up,” Shirian said. “I thought it could have been a gang member or something, endangering my life.”

Guilty, Mohr ruled, noting that Shirian might have had more luck if he’d told the officer who cited him about the threatening car.

Finally, only defendant Nick Feir was left. The bell was about to ring again. And regardless of the consequences, he was going to lodge a complaint. The judges only seem to know one verdict, he told Bigelow: guilty.

The students cracked up. Bigelow said she didn’t find his comments amusing. And she found Feir guilty of speeding--but not before she dismissed another charge, of tampering with his license plate.

“Nobody wins. All are guilty,” the Romanian-born Feir said afterward in a lilting accent. But, he confessed with a grin, “it was kind of fun. Not too bad.”

And the 100% conviction rate this day was only slighter higher than the average in more traditional courtrooms across the city. About 95% of people who contest traffic tickets lose.