Night Court: Lumberton Edition

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Although I requested to have the venue of the trial changed, I went to court tonight to see Judge Anderson in action. When I entered the board room/court room, Anderson was in the middle of pronouncing a sentence but he stopped talking and stared at me while I was looking for a seat. At that moment, I realized that it wasn't necessary for me to introduce myself. I'm not a regular at court and most of my appearances in court has involved department heads in the City of Lumberton. After sitting down, it seemed like Anderson was administering some seemingly fair justice but it was soon evident that there was some bias to his action. I noticed that some of the people that stood before him were given more grace than others; especially those that were telling him how it was to see him again. I noticed that one person was getting some advice from the judge on how to make sure the incident didn't get placed on his record while several others were found guilty in absentia.

There was an interesting case involving a couple of families. Anderson went from quoting the bible to scolding a guy for wearing earrings "in his courtroom." While there, I was taking notice of the sentences and fines. There was some people that were given fines of $400 for disturbance of the peace, $500 for simple assault, $250 for marijuana possession, $140 for failure to stop, $50 dismissal fee for expired license (you pay if you're innocent or guilty) and there was another man that knew the judge and his fines were drastically reduced but I didn't stick around to hear the final tally but he was very chatty with the judge. The trip to night court was interesting to say the least. As I'm sitting here typing this blog, I wished I would have recorded one of the hearings since they're a matter of public record. But based on the icy stares of Anderson, I probably would have been held in contempt and I didn't want to go to jail in the middle of the night over some bullcrap.

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