Welcome to Courtroom 14, Where Justice Is Served in Short Order

Picture a room that starts the workday at top speed, packed full by 8:30 a.m. with cops, lawyers, clerks, criminal suspects and a judge.

Picture a room where that judge must hear up to 190 defendants each day, and decide their fate (jail, bail, hearing, trial, probation, work-release, work-furlough, drug counseling, drunk-driving school, restitution, prison, freedom) in a matter of minutes without making an error that will come back to haunt him on appeal.

Picture Courtroom 14, a room bustling with the kind of stories I love to cover and the kind of noise that almost makes my job impossible.

They call it Master Calendar, the central scheduling point for almost every criminal case that comes through the courthouse. After covering stories in the Ventura County Courthouse for more than seven years, I am still amazed that the place functions as well as it does.

Like most of the other 27 courtrooms, Courtroom 14 is an unassuming, carpet-lined box. Rich wood rails outline its physical functions--bench, bar, stand, dock and well--with the clinical precision of an artificial heart.

Through it flow crooks, addicts, scofflaws, losers. And the otherwise innocent first-timers--the average folk who one way or another have run afoul of the law and hope for justice.

What they get, considering the workload, is the very best the judge can offer: mini-hearings no more than a few minutes long, some barely 30 seconds.

In an eye blink--on the O.J. scale--justice becomes a brisk dance, with the defendant’s fate in the role of prima ballerina, and the bailiffs, attorneys and judge as the corps de ballet.

Fortunately, most defendants seek little more than a continuance to postpone their fateful day. Others want to take their medicine in one fast gulp with a quick guilty plea.

And with a quick pirouette--and sometimes a little legal lambada or Lindy Hop thrown in--most defendants are quickly waltzed off the floor so the next dancer can step in.

As in even the best ballets, the audience can be more fascinating--and noisy--than the show.

Surly inmates in jailhouse blues snort and shuffle from seat to seat in the sheriff’s holding box like rumpled birds on a wire.

Husbands and wives, parents and children, homies and drinking buddies sit on the edges of rust-colored seats, ready with a sympathetic ear, an injured look or a ride home.

Defendants confer among themselves, their faces showing a mask of forced sobriety, a bundle of tics, a wince of despair.

It is like a Hogarth print of 18th-century London, the rogues and rustics of Old Bailey’s court come to life a la Ventura County.

Burly, buzz-cut bruisers with tattooed necks hunch in the front row, beefy arms folded and feet firmly planted on signs on the rail that warn futilely, “ATTORNEYS ONLY.”

Two young women flounce in at 9:45, hair still wet and fragrant from the shower, only to have the judge tell them to come back at 1:30 because they were late. They flounce out, leaving behind a “NutRageous” wrapper.

“Oh, I really love them Moon Pies,” confides one fidgeter in sleeveless T-shirt and too much cheap perfume. “I’ve gotta have my Moon Pies.” She fishes a jar of vitamin E cream out of her shapeless black purse, slathers the stuff all over her arms.

Out come the nail clippers--click-click--and two quarter-moon nail clippings hit the carpet. She resumes fidgeting.

A young man who blew a deadline escapes the judge’s wrath. He slinks back to his seat with a new court date, hand shielding his mouth so he can cackle to his friends, “Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

A goateed inmate scowls in the glass-walled prisoners’ box. He has taken computer training and wants to enter a restitution program, argues his attorney, pleading for early release.

But the judge notes he has also been cited and punished repeatedly by jail deputies for rule violations great and small.

“Fifteen write-ups? Unh-unh,” the judge says. “Motion’s denied. Next case, please.”

Later, the judge slaps a third-time drunk driver with $2,952 in fines, 150 days in jail and probation. “Whoaaa,” three other DUI defendants murmur simultaneously.

“DO NOT TALK OR COMMUNICATE WITH PRISONERS,” warns a red sign. “VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO ARREST PER PENAL CODE SECTION 4570.”

No one dares make that kind of noise.

But doors slam. Defendants and attorneys hobnob and mutter. Bailiffs jingle their keys. Inmates flush the lockup toilet. The clerks’ printer hums, phones bleat and interpreters call out in hushed Spanish for anyone needing translation.

One clueless kid grips a beeping Game Boy, which trumpets his apparently flawless video-game skills to the entire courtroom.

And throughout Courtroom 14, people natter and mumble, grumble and gripe.

Bailiffs shush the crowd, but noise washes through a storm tide, the attorneys’ arguments, defendants pleas and judge’s orders barely sticking up through it like the pilings of a flooded pier.

It is a wonder anyone can hear anything at all.

But it is the rough-and-tumble sound of justice being done.