ASK THE JUDGE: Judge Glynn worked to fix the ‘screwed up’ system

From 2003 through 2007, Judge John M. Glynn led Baltimore’s criminal division. As ex-officio chair of the Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, he played peacemaker at the monthly meetings of the major players in the city’s crime-fighting infrastructure. Glynn consistently advocated focusing the court’s and prison system’s limited resources on the most violent criminals. As Glynn prepared to take over the asbestos docket within the civil division, The Daily Record’s Brendan Kearney sat down with him to get his thoughts on Baltimore criminal justice.

Why not five more years?

I’ve had all the fun here I’m entitled to. It’s time to go on to do something else. … It’s kind of a grinding job; it’s not morally uplifting. The cast of characters is a depressing crew. … I didn’t really start out with a particularly high opinion of the human race, but doing this doesn’t improve your opinion of the human race. … I probably wound up as judge in charge of the criminal docket because I tend to gravitate to screwed-up situations. I tend to like the heat and the opportunity to figure out a system that’s complex and screwed up, which this is. And that’s what I enjoy. … I wound up doing this because it was the most difficult job in town in this particular world. So I did it.

So you’re essentially saying you’ve figured out how the criminal justice system works?

I think I’ve figured out how the criminal justice system works in the city of Baltimore about as well as I’m going to understand it from the position of being a judge. … The police understand their job better than I do. The criminals understand their job better than I do. But I understand how this system works internally and I’ve watched it unfold for a long time.

What works? And what is really wrong and isn’t changing?

On a sort of macro basis … we’re paying the price for the ’60s. We’re dealing with the consequences of policies of indulgence. We’ve indulged aberration for a long time and the result of indulging aberration is you get more aberration. … We’ve forgotten about the idea that seeing society in a godless sort of way … basically alleviates people of the moral responsibility of doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing. And that has a cost. … On the micro level, the criminal justice system has been burdened with the drug problem. Somehow, the medical profession [and] the social work profession failed to resolve the drug problem. It got thrust into the criminal courts. Courts are not really well designed for dealing with that problem. … This problem has distracted us from our true mission, which is dealing with the truly evil people in society. Jail is for people who frighten us, not people who annoy us.

Why does the court get distracted? Whose fault is that?

That’s the consequence of the dismal failure … that is the war on drugs. The war on drugs has had, to use a popular phrase, a lot of collateral damage. The war on drugs has discredited the police … If you think about it, the way drug laws are enforced involves the direct conflict between the police and the citizens. It involves searches and seizures that are invasive; it involves the direct testimony of the police officer versus the defendant. … The war on drugs has created a situation where large segments of society are defined as criminals, and their principal adversary is the police. And that’s a bad thing for society.

What role do the courts play in, say, the murder rate, or the highest-profile crime statistics that come out of Baltimore?

Every time someone gets acquitted here … in the face of substantial evidence only decreases the deterrent effect. Now, some people ought to be acquitted. [For] some people the case was not properly investigated or they didn’t do it or there is no evidence that they did it. But people do get acquitted here. Actually, people get convicted here in the face of weak evidence. I think juries tend to respond to the emotional content of the case more than the rational content, so if the state has a lot of emotional points, maybe they win a case where they don’t have such good evidence.

What about your biggest disappointment here?

I can’t say I’m disappointed. I never expected to save this world. I always knew this was an overwhelmingly dark scene here. It would be nice to say I saved the world, but it’s not happening. I can’t say I’ve been disappointed by it. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a challenge; it never stops being a challenge because it never really gets fixed. … I feel like we’ve done some good things.

Is there anything you’ll miss here? What kept you coming to work every day if it was so bleak and grim?

I’ll miss the madness. It made me feel sane in comparison. And I’ll miss the energy and the constant challenge of trying to bring order out of chaos.
Is there a particular case for reasons of humor or poignancy or justice that you’ll remember?
It’s really not about the individual cases. It’s about the sheer volume that’s most amazing, the endless stream of the dead and the wounded and the damaged.

When you talk about the heat of it, has there ever been a time when you feared for your safety?

No … I’ve found over the years, if you edge into personal animosity toward a person in your courtroom or a defendant or a lawyer, it doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help them, so I don’t do it. I think that’s how you get people really hostile to you is if you’ve been hostile to them and you’ve made it personal. … The citizens who appear in front of you, you have to treat them with a modicum of respect even if their behavior doesn’t tend to encourage respect. You have to, because after all, they’re humans, they’re people. They’re damaged, usually, but you’ve got to treat people like human beings, and then they usually treat you with respect.