Ontario Superior Court, 361 University Ave. (Edward Wilkinson-Latham) They never need to be told to take their sunglasses off or to stop chewing gum or not to hang their coats over the back of the benches in the courtroom. They have a pretty good relationship with Alan, the concierge of 361 University Avenue, who sits on the ground floor and oversees all the court dockets and can recommend the best item on the menu – whether it be a biker trial, a murder or an arson leading to an accidental death. They are typically retired and come from as far as Etobicoke and North York just to catch the action. They’re court buffs, and they are one of the many players at the Ontario Superior Court, where the spectacle is free to the public and it never ends. At 361 University, a lineup forms at the doors around 10 a.m. Restive people wait to empty their pockets for the police, put their bags through an X-ray machine. Inside, the halls are thronged with high-school kids, prowling around in packs, clustering around doors: “Yo, yo, it’s just drug possession charges!” “Are there any murders, do you know?” “Excuse me.” A woman in a long black robe, lugging a massive briefcase, pushes through a knot of teenagers, into the doors of courtroom 4-2. “You’ll have to turn off your cell phone,” says a guy in uniform to anyone entering the courtroom. “Make sure you take your sunglasses off your head. If you’re chewing gum–” he proffers a piece of paper towel. I spit my gum into the paper towel and shove it into my purse with my sunglasses. For days, I’d been sitting in on the Jordan Manners trial, waiting to find court buffs to interview. The first day, I had my eye on a pony-tailed young woman, maybe 20, who had a Guyanese/Indo-Caribbean look, but the clerk told me she came a lot because she was the girlfriend of one of the accused. I gawked doubly hard after that. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the room sat a weary looking black woman in a headwrap, Jordan Manners’s aunt. I snuck peeks at her, trying to wrap my head around how it would feel to be sitting 20 feet from people accused of shooting someone I loved. A.A., who I watched testify, delivered her lines on the stand so flatly, acted so bored and disengaged, it seemed an invitation to pry further. One day, a whole crowd of family and friends of the two young men charged showed up, and on break they spilled into the hallway, chatting and laughing and carrying on with surprisingly, almost infectiously, good cheer. Lawyers also talked to witnesses out there, and to each other, little clusters of ravens chattering around a patch of seed. It was a strange feeling, like a stage play where the actors could step into the audience and mingle, but of course what made it so riveting was that nobody there was acting at all. It seemed wholly natural to be fascinated by what was unfolding. Here was a part of the city on display, all its rawest truths laid bare, even where that truth was the everyday presence of deception, as people weighed justice against the safety of their own family and friends. Here was a Toronto where 20-year-olds still said, “I seen,” where gun talk was a normal feature of high school life. I immediately, passionately wanted everyone I knew to attend a trial. But the people who do so as a habit are still regarded as eccentrics. “You mean I’m a ‘court rat’?” says Joe Dixon when he’s told the common nickname for people like him. “No! I use this just to break up the monotony of what I do at home!” Joe Dixon, Yvonne Rees and Leroy Siemon are three perennial observers at 361 University who agreed to talk about their hobby. The Old Hand: Yvonne Rees, 78 When I was a child, my mother took me down to Chatham on the train. Her brother was up for non-support of his wife. She wanted to go down and hear the case, so she took me. I found it interesting. I was maybe 11 or 12. When we came back to Toronto, I was getting a little bit older, and my mother said, “Anyone can go into a courtroom and listen to a case.” So my girlfriend and I were downtown and I said, “Let’s go hear a court case.” We were over at Old City Hall and we spoke to the guy at the door and he said, “Come on in, but be quiet.” So we went in. I know people looked at us, two young kids coming in and sitting in the courtroom. Remember the Evelyn Dick case? In Hamilton? I remember my parents talking about it at home. She killed her husband and also put the baby in cement and threw it in the river or something. I was just old enough at the time – my parents were talking about it because it was all in the news then. I glanced at the paper and it seemed interesting, so I read whatever I could get out of the paper at that age. I went to the courthouse right up until just the last few years – I haven’t been well enough to get down there. I’d just happen to be downtown and I’d decide, “Oh, I’m going to stop in at the courthouse.” I’d just wander in and sit and listen. A couple of friends would go with me once in a blue moon but I would go by myself quite often, maybe once a month. I was an accountant. I wish I had had a career in the law, it would have been more interesting. But I never considered it. I did have two or three trials of my own. One was for wrongful dismissal. I represented myself and I won – I don’t believe in paying lawyers if I don’t have to. I consider a court case being like a jigsaw puzzle. You listen to the prosecution side and you listen to the defence and you try and figure out which side is telling the truth and which side is lying. Just like a jigsaw puzzle: Does it fit? No, it doesn’t fit. Just as a game, like. My favourite type of trial is murder. Or something more serious than a parking thing. The Rookie: Leroy Siemon, 59 I was on jury duty in 1990, ’91. I was accounts manager at the CBC. I was in bargaining with CBC so I’ve always enjoyed the labour-law aspect of it, I’ve always had a propensity to go in that direction. But somehow, I never became a lawyer. I’d never been on that side of the law before. They chose me as foreperson of the jury. I got a bit of a bug from that. Every time I went by 361 University Avenue over the years, I’d say, “I’ve gotta go in there.” I couldn’t get enough of it. When I got a retirement deal, I got asked to be on jury duty again a few months later. That was February. Now I try to make it a couple of days a week. If I’m following something, I can go three days a week. It’s not about rubbernecking. It’s not like looking at a car accident. It’s just looking at the way the prosecution approaches the case and the way they question. I like to see how the defence presents, how they have the arguments against each other… watching the jurors – how much are they really absorbing? I don’t need the press now that I actually see the case. I can do my own summations. They’re after that sound bite, they’re after that sensational side of it – it’s human nature. It’s just the way it is. But that’s not why I’m at the court. I look at a lot of these people sitting in the prisoner box and I feel empathy for them. What’s the difference between the judge up here on his pedestal and then you have the prisoner there and then me, and it’s like: Why? Why am I not there? And he could be here! The panhandler that stabbed the preppy guy on Queen Street? Early March was when she received her verdict. Packed courtroom. She was 21 years old, and I have a daughter, she’s turning 16. Looking at what happened – there was alcohol and drugs – had he answered a little better than he did, calling her a piece-of-whatever, and just said, I don’t have any money, or here’s five dollars, whatever, it wouldn’t have broken him and she would have been on her way… but she got convicted for murder. She’s 21 years old and I thought, it’s just too bad. I suppose she got the right sentence but it’s just that it was almost, to me, a manslaughter thing. I wasn’t comfortable with that. And I’ll be honest with you. I went to the Keg after that. I had a couple of beers because it shook me up a little bit. Her past was a little bit suspect too. Maybe with a little coaching, maybe with a little –she could’ve been a little closer to the straight and narrow… I go over to Quinn’s when they break and I go and have a beer there and I talk to the bartender and then I say, “Gee, I gotta get back!” I phone my wife and say, “It makes me think of Seinfeld!” I say, “I feel like Kramer, who pretends he has a job, but he doesn’t have a job!” I’m more punctual going back for the court at two o’clock than I was at work! The Oddball: Joe Dixon, retired I first came to the court maybe three years ago. I was bored with renovating my house and I wanted a break. I saw the Constable Green case from the beginning to end. I saw it in the newspaper first and that aroused my interest. How can a policeman get into trouble? I gotta see this, I says. It was quite good. The lawyer who defended Constable Green was spectacular, I really liked him a lot because of his methods. The second case was a Toronto Argonauts case. I followed that one from beginning to end too. I want to see the people in the flesh. I want to know who commits crime or who is accused of crime and who is innocent and how they look. One thing about me is that I study people and personalities. I’m deciphering who I want to talk to, who I don’t want to talk to. These two ladies came from down east and I figure they came to trial to make some money out of this. They came to Toronto to make their money. Can I tell you where they worked? For Your Eyes Only. They’re strippers. I like cases that deal with hookers because I think they’re pretty. I’m a broad-minded person and I like to know what’s going on in our society. I’m interested in many things. I was an X-ray technician until 1985 and then I became a bus driver until I retired in 2000. I took evening courses in labour law, it was really informative. In the case I watched yesterday, there was a conspiracy to blow up the business to set fire to damage a company, but instead the person trying to set the fire exploded and he died as a result. Now three people are involved in a conspiracy. Now this case is becoming uninteresting because the lawyers are very picky. Picky, picky, picky. And I thought the lawyers were being very silly. So because of silliness, I lost interest. Lawyers are silly people! You mean I’m a court rat? No! I use this just to break up the monotony of what I do at home! People who say that are not interested in what’s happening in society. They just want to mind their own business.
