A day in court

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OUR VIEW: Much to be thankful for this holiday
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On the wall behind the bench in District Judge David Arceneaux’s courtroom is a bronze plaque bearing the great seal of the State of Louisiana, and in this it bears little difference to any other courtroom wall in Terrebonne Parish.


The seal, you should recall, consists of a mother pelican at a nest, her wings spread partially open as if to shield the three chicks at her feet. The chicks are looking upward, as if to be fed. The mother pelican – consistent with an old French mariner’s tale – is pulling fresh from her breast in order to feed them.

Three barely discernable drops of blood fall from the place where she injured herself.

Some state seals show emblems of progress or heritage. Others show military readiness and others more serenely reference natural resources.


This state’s great seal has always left me gaping in wonder.

How truly do we hold to the message of the pelican, the selfless parent who will do whatever is necessary for her chicks to turn out OK?

One only need review Louisiana’s Medicaid program, an example of how things don’t get done when the federal government leaves major decisions to the state, for answers. On occasions like these it is easy to wonder if one day the seal will be amended, to reflect tears falling from the pelican’s eyes. But that is another story for another time.


On this day the pelican gazes down at the man on the bench, a jurist who has served since 1999. Tall, soft-spoken and unassuming, David Arceneaux carries himself with the kind of grace one might wish to see in a courtroom of this judicial district.

A product of Nicholls State and then LSU, Judge Arceneaux prides himself on love of the law as it evolves before him. He reads Supreme Court decisions with the elan of a focused teen reading a favorite comic; this is evident because of how he speaks of the law to those who ask him about it. This year his bench was up for renewal. Nobody tried to unseat him. Members of the local bar will tell you the reasons are evident if you spend any time in the courtroom.

It is located on the top floor – well almost top floor – of the old Houma courthouse. Compared to the one downstairs occupied by Judge Timothy Ellender it is small and sparse. The acoustics are lacking, and the décor is unremarkable, save for the pelican already described.


On this particular day the dock to the right of the judge is full with men in orange jumpsuits, with shackle-bound chains around their waists, wrists and ankles. It is not a heavy calendar day.

The judge moves his eye from one prisoner to the other, regarding each as he takes up the matter before him, whether a bond reduction or a calendar change.

One of the prisoners – not the only one that day either – has some sort of glitch in his paperwork.


“I have been here since August,” he tells the judge.

Arceneaux reviews the paperwork and asks the man some questions. What about this charge here? The man gives the judge some basic information, not about guilt or innocence but about the bond, and what has occurred to keep him in the jail. Yes there was that charge, and this one that was added. The judge nods.

To the men in the courtroom this appearance before the judge is an opportunity to be heard, if only on a bond question. With the exception of their original magistrate appearances this is the only time their lives as recorded on official papers have undergone review by someone acting in place of the state itself.


It is easy for those who are not true judges to put themselves in the place of someone who actually wears robes for a living, to look askance at these unfortunates, most of them not hardened criminals but, in the words of Bob Dylan “misdemeanor outlaws chained and cheated by pursuit.” Most have harmed nobody but themselves. You can see the differences between them.

But a lot of people and also actual judges sometimes act as if each of them was a town fool, or perhaps John Dillinger himself.

This is not the case in Judge Arceneaux’s courtroom. He asks questions and appears interested in the answers. In the case of this one man, it appears there was an entry that was never made, that his bond for an additional charge was not entered. The judge has the District Attorney’s office check. On the face of the man in orange is a bit of relief. This encounter may result in him awaiting trial at home. Maybe not. But it appears obvious that he knows he was heard, that the law for a moment has not seen him as a faceless number.


And that is one of the reasons why the judges are so important to the process. The pelican on the wall, if she could see, no doubt she would approve. Because nobody is more helpless than the men in orange with the chains, except maybe for her famished chicks. The judge has not shed blood or even sweat, but did expend time and a little bit of courtesy.

And sometimes that is all it takes to make the system appear, at least, that at some level it is working.