DETROIT – Judge Lydia Adams is not the kind of person you would normally see in a TV interview. She likes to keep a low profile as she serves on Michigan's 36th District Court in Detroit. But when a rule change resulted in the violation of a citizen's most essential constitutional right, she said she had to speak up.
Hundreds of people who miss their court date at 36th District Court, which is one of the busiest courts in the country, have a bench warrant issued against them.
When they find that out, they want to get to court quickly before they are arrested. Court administrators thought they had a solution: open the court for walk-ins so no appointment is needed to take care of business.
"A pilot walk-in docket was, I guess, configured. The judges had nothing to do with this, as far as I know, as a whole," Adams said. "That first and second day was just mass chaos."
The problem, according to Adams, was that those who came in were given one option and one option only, to plead guilty and pay the fine.
To Adams, it looked like a money grab. "When you are encouraging house counsel to tell people to plead guilty, that's a problem," she said. "Just trying to make it so people could pay money and get out. That's what I had noticed and I wanted to see it for myself."
Adams decided to do her own surveillance and took off her judge's robe, wore civilian clothes and watched what was happening in the courthouse.
"Some of them were being directed to have people plead guilty. It was kind of an all-or-nothing case," Adams said. "It's a big deal, and constitutional rights, I felt, were being violated."
Having been a judge for 20 years, Adams said people shouldn't just be lined up to plead guilty.
"We need a factual basis before you plead guilty," she said.
Why would court administrators do this?
"There are rumors, things like that, that money is the concern now because the court was losing so much money because people weren't paying their fines and costs. But to do that at the expense of peoples' constitutional rights, I just couldn't stand for it I just had to say something," Adams said.
She sent an email to all the judges, administrators and the Justice Department.
"I didn't want to be on the wrong side of history. I didn't want it to be said that I knew about it and I didn't do anything because I was scared of the reprisals that could occur," Adams said.
Court administrators stopped the walk-in policy immediately, saying it was simply an attempt to relieve the massive case load, and nothing more.
"This was supposed to be a plan to take care of all the matters we have, and it's just not working," Adams said.
For now, it's back to crowded courtrooms with judges, magistrates and attorneys explaining all the options to defendants, who then decide whether they want to plead guilty or not guilty.