When a Minnesota Supreme Court panel removed Harvey Ginsberg from the bench, they noted that he had three diagnosed mental illnesses that prevented his functioning as a judge. They awarded him a pension of $75,000 a year for his 13 years of service and suspended his law license for one year. Ginsberg is 51; he has been behaving in odd ways for some time. The court has left door open for Ginsberg to be fully rehabilitated. The panel even noted that he could not function as a judge “now or in the foreseeable future:” the way back to a judicial role is not totally blocked.
What’s wrong with this picture? In one way, nothing. A group of people who are in a position to have maximum empathy with the defendant evaluate his conduct and settle on a penalty that preserves the public order, prevents him from doing further damage to himself and his reputation, and leaves open the possibility of renewal for a talented and accomplished person. So far as I can tell, this is the kind of decision we should all applaud. Justice has worked itself out in humane ways.
When my friend Mary was in prison for crossing the line at the School of Americas, she met a lot of women imprisoned on drug possession charges, far from their children, for long sentences. I wonder how many of these women had anybody take the trouble to count their mental illnesses. I wonder how many of them had put in some years of public service, one way or another, that might warrant a pension. I wonder who was caring about making a path back to dignity and full citizenship for these folks. In most cases, I think, the separation from their children at a distant prison made the path back to motherhood very rocky.
Brecht’s Threepenny Opera contains the epitaph for the U.S. system of justice: “There are those who live in darkness, and there are those who live in light. One sees those who live in light; one doesn’t see those who live in darkness.”