On Tuesday, August 14th, 2012, I attended court at the Mount Laurel, NJ courthouse with Nicholas Shankin to observe his 7th court appearance for his drug charge. Thankfully, his case was dismissed and all charges dropped because the prosecutor did not have the evidence to back up the state’s case against Nicholas.
While there for only an hour, I witnessed a tragedy of people having their names called out and one by one they trudged up in front of the judge, in his beautiful robe! I decided that I would take a tally on how many victim crimes vs victimless crimes were taken up that hour.
Here is the tally, in all its glory:
Victim Crimes  Â
Animal Cruelty
Check Fraud
Victimless Crimes
Speeding
Possession of marijuana
Littering
Soliciting w/o a license
Soliciting w/o a permit
Storing construction material in an unauthorized zone
Possession
Careless driving
DUI
Reckless driving
Throwing rocks into road
All of this in under 1 hour, oh the humanity! I estimated that the state garnered well over $3000 in less than one hour from mostly victimless crimes.
I also witnessed the judge being the daddy that we all need, lol!
The judge:
1. Take your hands out of your pockets! (He said this to 2 different people)
2. Grilled a woman about her living arrangements and wages.
3. Don’t interrupt me!
After Nicholas’s case was dismissed, I threw my arms into the air in victory (said nothing) and Nicholas danced his way out of the courtroom! The judge screamed at us and said that he would not tolerate that kind of behavior in his courtroom and then he yelled that we were not at a baseball game! I wanted to laugh at him, especially since I was wearing my Copblock t-shirt! I then got up slowly, all the while smiling sweetly at the judge, picked up my belongings and slowly walked out of the courtroom! The judge glared at me the whole time!
What a farce the state is, instead of focusing on real victim crimes, they spent about 96% of the hour I was there prosecuting victimless crimes. I kept thinking about what a financial racket the court system really is. This was the first time in many years that I had been inside a courthouse and I couldn’t believe it. In a few instances, people were not allowed to leave until they called each and every person they knew to pay their fines.
I walked away that day with mixed feelings, while I was ecstatic that Nicholas was exonerated, I was saddened by the victims of the state who had their hard earned money stolen from them by a man in a dress.
I also talked about Copblock outside the courthouse and handed out cards and literature!
