Prior to this Rose Cafe, my image of a judge was, in hindsight, slightly over-exaggerated: a faceless purveyor of justice whose cold shadow, cast down from their impossibly high seat, looms unforgivingly over every courtroom in which he/she sat. In reality, this is probably accurate half the time – as Judge Miller said, a judge must, in some capacity, be emotionally removed from the case in front of them. “[We’re] not there to be annoyed,” he reminded us. Every time he steps into the courtroom, someone’s life could be resting entirely in his hands.

However, it’s easy – at least for me – to forget that victims and criminals (or defendants, since Judge Miller also pointed out that the problematic connotations of the word “criminal”) are fellow people. They were born into the same world, walked the same streets, and maybe even once dreamed the same dreams as me. I believe a concept Judge Miller spoke about, and one that is commonly heard, is that in the courtroom, human lives are often intersecting in the most unforgettable, tragic way possible. In the courtroom, all of their past hopes and memories are suddenly irrelevant in the face of their uncertain futures.

One of the cases Judge Miller recounted was of a young girl who had physically fought her would-be rapist for twenty minutes, who was in turn apparently surprised by her resilience. If I had read about it on the news, I probably would’ve felt, at most, a pang of pity and sympathy for the victim, and immense anger at the attacker. However, listening to Judge Miller describe it in person, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that the fight lasted for twenty minutes – so far, I’ve spent twenty minutes on this blog post. I couldn’t imagine fighting someone for that long, or what would be going on in my mind. Would I only think of survival? Would I remember past regrets? Would I think of my family and friends and all the trials I’ve already overcome? Would I think of all the things I once saw myself doing five years from now? Would anything matter besides surviving those twenty minutes? The same goes for the rapist – what drove him to commit such a horrific act? What drove him to continue attempting to commit that act, even after the victim demonstrated, by fighting back, that she was another human being who had a life to live? Did he ever, even for a second, think about her?

How does a judge learn to sit there, high above the throne, and even begin to process all of those all-too-human feelings while making a just, informed decision?

Obviously, there must be a line drawn between humanizing someone, and excusing or being an apologist for them. The attacker committed a serious crime and deserved punishment, regardless of whatever good he has done in the past. Nothing he did before, or does after the attack, will ever come as close to defining him in the public eye as this single incident. Perhaps that’s good or bad; that’s not for me to decide.

However, I will no longer view criminal trials and court cases as stiff, detached, and – heavens forbid – boring events. Judge Miller has reminded me that, when you strip down a court case to its bare bones and lay it out flat, all you’ll find is raw, human emotion.