Is an apology meaningful when it is coerced?
I get this question all the time, usually from parents of young children who wonder if they are doing the right thing when they make Johnny apologize to his brother.
The issue gets even more complicated when adults try to use force to extract an apology from another adult.
Court Deputy at the Defense Table
We are seeing a classic example of this kind of dynamic in Phoenix, Arizona. On October 19, 2009, Maricopa County Detention Officer Adam Stoddard was caught by surveillance cameras helping himself to a document from a defense attorney's files. The video is astounding.
As defense attorney Joanne Cuccia is talking to the judge during a sentencing hearing, the video shows officer Stoddard walking behind her, inspecting some documents at the defense table, slowly sliding one document out, reading it, and taking it away. The video makes compelling viewing. Watch the uncut surveillance video.
When attorney Cuccia sees what's going on, she's at first confused and then angry. Responding to a formal complaint, Judge Gary Donahoe ordered the Stoddard to apologize orally and in writing or face jail time for contempt of court.
Apology or Jail
So the choice is simple.
But it's never that simple when force is involved. The issue of power overwhelms the issue of apology. That's one reason I don't think parents extracting an apology from a child by force is justified. The parents want the lesson to be about apology, but the child always sees it as an issue of power or the parent taking sides. So it is with this case.
These were the judge's conditions:
1) On or before November 30th, 2009, at a time convenient for Ms. Cuccia, a news conference to take place in the plaza on the north side of the central court building where he is to give Ms. Cuccia a sincere verbal and written apology for invading her defense file and for the damage that his conduct may have caused to her professional reputation.
2) If at the news conference, Ms. Cuccia does not state that the apology is sufficient, Stoddard will report to the jail on December 1, 2009 and be detained until further order upon a finding that he has complied with the purge clause.
Defending the Deputy
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio immediately complicated the situation. "I decide who holds press conferences and when they are held regarding this Sheriff's Office," Arpaio said. "My officer was doing his job and I will not stand by and allow him to be thrown to the wolves by the courts because they feel pressure from the media on this situation."
In fact, Stoddard made a defiant statement.
I am Maricopa County Detention Officer Adam Stoddard. I work in the Court Security Division of the Sheriff's Office and have been with the Sheriff's Office for five years.
Recently, Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe ordered me to hold a press conference to publicly apologize for doing the job I have been trained to do.
Part of my job in providing security to the court is to inspect documents brought into the courtroom. On October 19th, I saw a document that I had not yet screened, and that raised security concerns. I retrieved that document in plain sight and had court personnel copy it to preserve it as evidence in case it was a security breach.
It was a split second decision and I do not regret my actions.
Judge Donahoe has ordered me to feel something I do not and say something I cannot. I cannot apologize for putting court safety first.
The judge therefore puts me in a position where I must lie or go to jail. And I will not lie.
In short, we have a classic power struggle. I think the judge was unwise making the contempt of court charge conditioned on the officer's apology. The way the conditions are written, it is apparently Cuccia's call whether the officer goes to jail. That's just not sound judicial process and possibly unconstitutional.
I'm not even going to entertain the possibility that the officer had a legitimate reason for his actions. His statement that his concern was with court security simply is laughable. The video demonstrates that for over a minute the deputy's attention was fixed not on the inmate being sentenced, where any source of risk centered, but on some document that was none of his business.
Stay tuned to see how this situation plays out. Whichever way it goes, the judge squandered a genuine chance to give the officer an opportunity to take responsibility, apologize, and resolve the conflict.
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