Parting Judge Offers Offenders A Break

Judge Tom O’Keefe gave drug abuser Corrine Smith a choice: Enter rehab and keep her record clean. Or plead guilty and go free that day.

The public defender recommended treatment. O’Keefe left the decision up to Smith.

For Smith, as for many of the 138 petty criminals whose cases came up in Courtroom A Wednesday morning, O’Keefe offered the chance to reassert responsibility over their lives. ​“My hope is that, if they have choices, they make the right one,” he said.

But, as O’Keefe knew from 45 years in the courtroom as a prosecutor and a judge, sometimes it isn’t so easy to change.

This week O’Keefe presided over what was likely his final session in criminal court. At 70 years old, he’s being shipped off to Meriden to resolve divorces.

But before he could depart, O’Keefe — who was appearing in the Elm Street courthouse as a prosecutor four decades ago before he became a judge — - had a full docket to hear in Courtroom A, the very back room of the old courthouse at 121 Elm St.

The docket included a nurse who’d flipped into a road rage. A teenager who’d fallen in with rough guys against his mother’s wishes. A burglar who’d broken into 47 homes. And Corrine, the addict arrested at the Branford Motel who couldn’t decide if she’d be ready to quit.

Courtroom A. the starting point for many of the region’s criminal prosecutions, is not the kind of place one might choose to spend a morning. But Wednesday morning the defendants were lucky, in their own way, to appear before O’Keefe. Whether they liked the ruling or not, he was determined to give them a break, or at least treat their cases with sympathy.

“I consciously talk to every single person who appears before me, because I need to acknowledge that they are a human being. I’m going to listen to their side respectfully — they’re not going to B.S. me — but I’m going to listen,” O’Keefe explained in his chambers Thursday morning. ​“I’m like a doctor writing prescriptions: I do the best I can with the situation presented to me. If that results in them walking out of court happy, thinking that they somehow avoided jail-time, that’s fine with me. I’m going to do what I think is right.”

A Superior Court judge since 1986, O’Keefe usually handles more the serious cases that are forwarded over to 235 Church St. (such as the Lishan Wang murder trial). This week, he subbed in for a colleague who’s out.

At the Church Street courthouse, ​“a murderer is a murderer, and you have to deal with the public safety issues. But [at Elm Street], people aren’t that dangerous. You’re trying to create a situation where they can break out of whatever cycle they’re in,” he said. ​“The approach is almost therapeutic.”

Court’s scheduled to begin every morning at 10. Defendants who’ve made bail take a seat in wide, wooden chairs whose polish has started to go, worn away or carved up in graffiti. The airy, wood-paneled room fills with brawlers and drug dealers, drunk drivers and thieves — as well as their friends or relatives. (On Wednesday, two little girls napped on their mothers’ chests in the front row.)

Soon, the court marshal warns the crowd against using cell phones or holding side conversations. After a knock at the chamber door, the guard yells, ​“All rise!” and court’s officially in session. The judge gives a preamble, explaining all the rights that America’s legal system offers. Then, it’s back to waiting, praying for — or maybe against — the next name, shouted at random, being one’s own.

“This is a rough and tumble town. It’s like Tombstone,” O’Keefe joked when hearing about a dispute in the Popeye’s parking lot on Whalley Avenue. After handing down a $50 fine, he told the suspect, ​“That’s a pretty expensive bag of wings.”

The humor has a point. He knows that the audience in the court is paying attention, and he wants them to develop some trust. He said he hopes they think: ​“He listens to their side. He doesn’t just accept everything the prosecutor says.”

Road Rage

That’s how O’Keefe handled one of Wednesday’s first cases Wednesday. According to the state’s attorney, on Aug. 19, Stiles Winterhalder, 32, threw a wrench and was charged with a misdemeanor.

“This happens on roads; I’ve seen it. What do they call it? Ah, road rage. Some people, once they’re behind an engine, they become like Rambo,” O’Keefe said.

He asked Winterhalder what he does for work. (O’Keefe asked this of everyone, and no matter the answer, he called it a good job to have.) Winterhalder said he is a nurse. ​“Good, you know how to be nice to people,” O’Keefe answered, then approved a $50 fine for a lesser infraction that wouldn’t go on the man’s record.

Later, Kavon Franklin, an 18-year-old junior in high school, was brought out from lock-up in handcuffs. His family had been unable to raise $20,000 bail, and when his mother saw him, she clapped.

Police had arrested Franklin and three others on June 20, 2017, on robbery, assault and other charges. Around 8 p.m. that evening, East Haven cops heard that a group had ripped off a drug dealer. Police pulled over the car of suspects. A 25-year-old passenger suspiciously dropped a Zip-loc bag filled with two blunt rolls, seven dime bags of weed and $17 cash. The man who got jacked said Franklin had struck him in the back of the head.

On the stand, Franklin was joined by a social worker from the BHcare agency. She noted that Franklin had avoided clinical appointments for psychiatric help in the weeks before his arrest, even when social workers came to pick him up and bribed him with McDonald’s meals.

O’Keefe took that all into consideration as he made his decision.

“I know already he’s at an age where ultimately he’s not responsible for everything. And he’s got a psychiatric social worker there, so he’s not totally in control of his destiny,” he explained. ​“I’m going to be more sympathetic, more understanding. That was my motivation to take a little more time with him: I know he needs it. Is it going to make a difference in his life? I really don’t know.”

The judge let him off with a conditional discharge. Among the conditions: that he obey his mother, go to bed and wake up on time, and attend school. The judge asked that he return to court on Sept. 20 to check in.

O’Keefe’s not a pushover. He reprimanded prosecutors for almost letting a career burglar, who hasn’t yet been convicted, off with a light plea deal. The man had been convicted of 47 prior offenses up and down the East Coast. Police were able to trace the robbery of $650 cash and $10,000 worth of jewelry back to him because his DNA matched evidence that Florida cops had found.

“How many homeowners have to come to this before we do something? This is bad. This is not creating a public disturbance,” O’Keefe said. ​“I don’t want him to come into my living room.”

Hours passed. In the early afternoon, in one of the day’s last cases, Corrine Smith faced charges of selling hallucinogenic drugs, possessing a controlled substance, and using drug paraphernalia. She’d been picked up with other users in a roundup at the Branford Motel on July 8, 2017, the state’s attorney said.

The judge has been around long enough to know that a zero-tolerance policy always doesn’t lead to the right outcomes. ​“The whole concept of deterrence appeals to some people. But I read in court that over 1,000 people are going to die from drug overdoses this year. That’s roughly three a day. And if that doesn’t scare people out of drug use, Judge O’Keefe is not going to scare them by threatening them with a year of jail,” he said. ​“We have to take a more thoughtful approach.”

Still, even though O’Keefe hoped that Smith would choose rehab, she decided to walk, to plead guilty with no promises of attending rehab as suggested by O’Keefe.

The judge momentarily halted the case to look over her files, then he signaled that he’d let her go.

“It’s her choice; it’s her life,” he said in court. ​“That life has its own risks. I’m going to give her a conditional discharge, the condition being that she does her best to keep herself alive out there.”

O’Keefe watched Smith motion to a man in the seats and rush with him out the courtroom doors. The prosecutor was already mid-way into calling the next case. O’Keefe paused him, asking for some extra time.

Raw & Unvarnished

In an interview in his chambers Thursday, he explained why he had paused.

“It’s hard to switch focus from what you’ve just done, especially if you’re really thinking about what you’re doing and evaluating the chances of a solution that you’ve come up with being successful. You’re wondering, ​‘What’s going to happen here? Did I make the right decision?’ For me, it’s not just names on a piece of paper.”

O’Keefe cleared out his chambers at 235 Church on Thursday morning, recycling old files into a trash bin and giving away framed photos. Court personnel stopped in to shake his hand and say goodbye. He reminisced about some of his old cases, like the one time that a detainee hopped onto Courtroom A’s radiator and out an open window; O’Keefe, then a young prosecutor, had chased him into the library next door and found a pile of the jail’s clothes in the stacks. He said he’d seen three generations of some families appear before him.

The daily events in Courtroom A that he’d witnessed regularly for close to a half-century are a ​“slice of life,” he said. ​“The human drama: all day, every day. And it’s not behind the scenes; it’s in the lobby — the crying, the anger — and sometimes, they take it onto the steps — the arguments, the finger-pointing. Then, there’s the bondsman and the lawyers, hustling.”

“It’s real, it’s unvarnished, it’s raw,” he said. ​“It’s people at their worst, and sometimes, at their best.” O’Keefe said he’d miss it.