Room 306 looks pretty much like any other courtroom in the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center, with its witness stand, counsel tables and jury box. The seal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hangs on the paneled wall behind the massive, brass-trimmed mahogany bench where the judge sits. What's different is the "bubble"—a wall of bullet-proof glass that divides the gallery from the judge and jury and extends all the way to the ceiling. This is the murder room, and it gets a lot of use in a city that averages more than one homicide a day, a city that has been dubbed Killadelphia.
The glass is there to protect the defendants, attorneys and judge in a room where emotions can run high and more than one judge has been attacked. Some prosecutors have claimed it unjustly implicates defendants. But it also heightens the sense of solemnity in the room. The decisions made here have the power to permanently alter the lives of people on both sides of the glass, and before he walks in from his robing room, Judge Jimmie Moore '72 always says a prayer.
For Moore, the path to Room 306, and the other courtrooms where he presides in his role as municipal judge, has taken many twists and turns. The outcome was hardly a given. Asked if he could have pictured Moore as a future judge when they were roommates at UNH, John Laymon '73 is emphatic and amused: "Hell, no. Hell, no. Hell, no!"
On hearing about the remark, Moore laughs out loud. "I done a few things," he explains. "I understand every 'hell' he said and every 'no.'" There's an air of ease about this judge who slips seamlessly between the poetry of street talk and the prose of the law. His manner is warm and expansive. "I've learned to just let life be life," he says. "Life grows us up. You just let it be. It's going to find you."
Once a child of the housing projects and a gang member himself, he may be uniquely qualified to sit on the bench where, he says, "you hold people's lives in the palm of your hand." Increasingly, he also reaches out to others outside the courtroom—from ex-convicts to executives—who hope to start a new life. "I believe you can alter your destiny," he says, speaking from experience. "And people can help you alter it."
Jimmie Moore came to UNH in 1969 quite by accident. He grew up in a federal housing project in Hartford, Conn., where he lived with his mother and younger brother. His father wasn't in the picture. Jimmie belonged to a gang and had a knack for getting away with things. Things he'd rather not talk about today.
But there were other factors working in his favor—namely some key people in his life. Moore describes his mother, Nura Elmi, 80, as an adventurer and a character. Today she is into raw foods, quilting and computers, and, having recently moved to Philadelphia, takes classes at Temple University three nights a week. She was always keen on education, Moore recalls, and she was always pushing her boys into some program or other, or putting them on a bus to visit relatives in Boston or down South. Jimmie was an Upward Bound student. Even the older members of his gang recognized his potential and cautioned him to stay out of trouble.
Enter a soft-spoken high school guidance counselor, who had learned about a new program for African-American students at UNH. "Mr. Holland kept at me," recalls Moore. "He'd say, 'I wrote a letter for you, and you need to apply.'" To appease him, Moore applied to UNH with no intention of going. Upon his return from a visit to historically black colleges in the South, however, he learned that Holland had unexpectedly died. Moore decided on the spot to honor the memory of the man with a vision for his future, even though it didn't exactly jibe with his own. Equipped with a full scholarship, he set off for UNH, sight unseen.
By his own admission, Moore did not come to college for "the academic pursuits," and both his personality and his stereo helped pave the way for some good times in the 7th-floor room he shared with Laymon in Stoke Hall. Often soul music could be heard blasting from their dorm-room window, especially James Brown's anthem "Say it loud—I'm black and I'm proud!"
To be black and to be in Durham, N.H., in 1969 was a matter of some complexity. The College Opportunity Program Experiment (COPE), instituted to recruit disadvantaged students at UNH, had begun with the admission of 10 students in 1967. Against the backdrop of race riots in Detroit and Newark, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, student groups were demanding change at UNH. In the spring of 1969 a joint faculty-student board on black student affairs proposed that the university recruit African-American students and faculty members and initiate a black studies program. Despite concerns about lack of funding, the proposal was accepted by the university senate, and eight Martin Luther King scholarships were added to COPE. Moore had received one of those scholarships.
Laymon and Moore were part of a group of 30 African-American students who enrolled at UNH that fall. Culture shock ensued. "There were people in New Hampshire who had never seen a black person in the flesh," says Laymon. "Little kids in the grocery store would look at you like you'd escaped from the zoo." At a time when student activism may have reached its peak, a few of the black students from Chicago were trying to "outbad" each other, says Moore. Because it was a crime to openly carry a arge knife back home, the students took advantage of the lack of a similar law in New Hampshire, and swaggered around Durham with large Bowie knives strapped to their belts.
Ultimately, "COPE-King" was disbanded, partly for lack of support and funding. Still, the experiment was a success for many of the 70 students who participated. Moore's potential was evident from the beginning, recalls Myrna Adams, who became the university's first black administrator when she was hired as assistant to the academic vice president in 1969.
"Jimmie was the life of the party," she says. "But once he sized up a situation and said, 'This is what I've got to do,' then he'd do it." Moore believes that the change to a rural setting helped by giving him a new perspective on his old life in the city.
Even in this new environment, Moore had a way of making things happen. Although freshmen were forbidden to do so, he somehow managed to keep his little yellow sports car on campus without getting caught. When Dick Gregory performed at the Field House, Moore and Laymon learned that the comedian and civil rights activist would attend a reception at a private home afterwards. "We hitchhiked there," recalls Laymon, "and then at the party we just walked around like we belonged there." Before the evening was through, the two had a conversation with Gregory, who advised them to get the best education they could.
Moore wound up on academic probation his freshman year, but soon he was following Gregory's advice. After he made a comment in class, political science professor Bob Craig encouraged him to speak up more often. "I began to understand that a liberal arts education is all about the critical thinking that has to go on," says Moore, "and not necessarily regurgitation of what you think the professor wants. This was a great experience for me because law school is not about being right or wrong, it's about arguing both sides of a case, and on any given day you can win or you can lose depending on who you appear before, or what law you can cite."
One night late in freshman year, Moore announced to his incredulous friends that he would be completing his bachelor's degree in three years. The next year, he became a resident assistant, lived in a single room, joined student government and started taking five or six courses at a time. Toward the end of his third year, he went to the registrar's office, convinced that he had the requisite credits to graduate—plus two. There was a tense moment as the skeptical woman at the counter went out back to check the files, but she returned to announce that he had achieved his goal.
Moore went on to earn a master's in urban education at the University of Massachusetts and a law degree at Rutgers. He worked at the Brooklyn Legal Aid Society before serving briefly as the first black assistant attorney general for the state of Delaware. In 1976, he and his wife (they have since divorced) and their two children moved to Philadelphia, where Moore started his own law firm specializing in real estate, personal injury and collections. "I practiced law for 25 years," he says. "I never thought in my wildest dreams I would be a judge."
Looking back to his UNH days, Adams says she might have imagined Moore not so much as a judge, but as "a super-politician—someone who could navigate in almost any environment." In Philadelphia, where judges are elected, a judge does have to be part politician. And as Moore became increasing involved in municipal boards and the civic affairs of the city, running for a judgeship became a next logical step. That meant campaigning in an exhausting series of 12-hour days, attending innumerable ward meetings, church services and other gatherings. Once elected, he faced a significant cut in pay. After nine years on the bench, he says he makes less today than an entry-level associate lawyer in a corporate law firm. But he had already achieved the good life—now he was fine-tuning the definition of "good."
Moore, who clearly loves his work, is highly regarded. Both parties endorsed him in 2005, when he ran for re-election. In a bar association survey, he received favorable comments from 86 percent of the lawyers who had appeared before him. And he was praised in numerous postings on RatePhillyJudges.com, including this one from a lawyer: Doesn't take crap from anyone. My kind of judge, street smart, book smart, he's one of the best.
As a judge, Moore has witnessed all kinds of behavior, from the gruesome to the outrageous to the courageous. A murderer apologizes to the victim's mother, who shrieks "I don't want an apology from him!" as she is carried from the courtroom. A man hurries into the courtroom to pay a fine, making a squeegee sound with every step as blood drips into his sneakers from a stab wound beneath his raincoat. A boy who caused the accidental death of his girlfriend by showing off his father's gun at a party regresses further with each courtroom appearance. A 38-year-old woman stands before the court upon her 53rd arrest.
Moore handles a wide variety of cases, from domestic violence to prostitution, parole violations and armed robbery, but the most disturbing cases usually wind up in the murder room, where the stories may unfold for the first time during the preliminary hearing, as the commonwealth lays out its case.
Here a whole subculture is revealed. It is a culture quite different from the street-gang world Moore grew up in, where youths avoided swearing in front of elders and disagreements were seldom settled with guns. In fact, guns were much harder to come by. Now, he finds that the decision to use deadly force escapes logic. "What were you thinking?" he muses. "That is a question that is out there for me almost always." One young man, tired of being reminded repeatedly of a minor childhood slight, asks his friend, "What are you going to do, kill me?" The friend kills him. A 14-year-old, annoyed by her teenage uncle's singing, stabs him to death. The most poignant cases involve innocent victims caught in the crossfire, like a 10-year-old boy crossing the schoolyard or a pregnant mother of seven standing outside her apartment. Moore has suffered the loss of his own brother, John, described as a drifter in newspaper accounts, to a street shooting in Philadelphia in 2007. The murder remains unsolved.
Moore notes that municipal judges only spend two days in the murder room about once every three weeks, "probably because that's all we can take." (And after one day in the "rape room," he determined early in his career that he couldn't take any of that.) Yet he is adamant that a judge must maintain the ability to care. "You must look at the people who come before you first as human beings. I hear some very despicable crimes, but I am a judge and I'm responsible."
On a sunny day in June, the first case on the docket in Room 306 is the high-profile preliminary hearing for a man charged with shooting and killing a police officer. The case has been taken under advisement by Moore. One after another, the cases are "statused" but not heard—put on hold, perhaps, while a detective testifies in another courtroom, or "continued" because a witness, also wanted for murder, fails to appear. On a typical docket of 60 cases, only 10 or 15 will go forward.
During a break, veteran prosecutor Richard Sax shares his opinion of the judge with a courtroom visitor: "He listens to the arguments on both sides," says Sax. "I know he cares. You can see it in his facial expressions and his demeanor." After the break, as a hearing finally proceeds, Moore sits very still, his eyebrows carved into an arch of perpetual attention and concern.
A young man with close-cropped hair and a beard sits at the defendant's table in a black straitjacket, his head bowed much of the time. He is accused of killing someone for selling drugs on "his" block. Throughout the entire proceeding, he jiggles relentlessly, in a motion that pulses from the toe of his black and white Converse All Stars to the top of his head.
Called to the witness stand is a 21-year-old man, the only one of six witnesses who came forward to police. In a world where people are killed over trifles, it can be very dangerous to testify in court. It is not uncommon for witnesses to fail to appear--or even to be murdered before they get there. (In response to death threats, the municipal judges have been instructed to pull the drapes in their offices, and Moore carries a handgun.)
Yet this witness is as solid as the defendant is tremulous, answering "yeah" to most questions and holding firm in the face of cross-examination. In the end, this hearing, too, is continued, because a second victim, allegedly shot in the hand, has never come forward. There's something Dickensian about the whole courtroom enterprise, with its multiple plots and susceptibility to melodrama, coincidence and happenstance. The incidents that bring people into court make Moore acutely aware of how suddenly life can take an unexpected turn. Even the assignment of judges is done at random, now with a computer, but previously with a sort of roulette wheel.
Moore is known for taking every opportunity to nudge, even push, offenders in a positive direction. That could mean ordering an evaluation for drug and psychological problems followed by in-patient treatment. But often the offender is a healthy young man in his 20s whose mother, says Moore, "is going out to work while he's sitting all day looking at cable TV." As a condition of probation, Moore can order someone to get a GED or, with the help of the probation department, to find employment. "McDonald's!' is the reaction he often gets, to which he responds, "Yes, McDonald's—or go out and find a better job." Often the offender's mother can be seen, seated in the gallery, nodding her head in thanks.
When he had his own business, Moore trained an 18-year-old department store clerk, who had never been to college, as a paralegal. Today he works at a major law firm, making upwards of $100,000. That gave Moore an idea for going far beyond the court system to help people find their own path to prosperity and gratifying work. "There are a lot of ways to segue into a profession that aren't traditional," he says, and he has founded two programs at Eastern University in Philadelphia that do just that.
He both directs and teaches in the first program, which enables highly motivated students to earn a paralegal diploma in one year. Designed to help the unemployed, under-employed, and workers in transition, the program draws some of its students from nontraditional sources like back-to-work programs for women on welfare. Others, like Alice Ogletree, an executive in a Philadelphia nonprofit and a former business owner, already have a college degree. Ogletree and 30-year-old Kevin Sweeper both completed the program last summer and hope to go on to law school. Sweeper was particularly inspired by a course he took with Moore. "When you have a judge who knows your work telling you that you can reach your goal," says Sweeper, "that really builds up your confidence." Of the 20 or so participants who started the intensive program in 2007, 12 or 13 made it through the year of Friday night and weekend classes.
In the fall, the program was expanded to train legal secretaries as well, and a second program was established to provide similar training for ex-offenders. Moore has received a grant to study the feasability of a third initiative, Work Green Solutions, designed to provide "green collar" jobs for the underemployed as well as recent college graduates. Its first project will be the production of biodiesel from used cooking oil.
It's hard to imagine how Moore accomplishes so much, and especially with his unorthodox sleeping schedule. (He gets up to do legal work every night from 2 to 4 a.m.) But it is easy to see what motivates him. He has not only reached many of his own goals, he's watched his children do the same—his son is an attorney and his daughter, who has an M.B.A., is a recruiter for an accounting firm. Now at an age when many successful professionals start to think about easing back, Moore seems to be doing the opposite. "He's reached some mega milestones in his life," notes Agnes Ogletree, "and yet he's always trying to look back, to reach out and help others. That's the real core of who he is." ~