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 Now in session: The 'Seamus Show' 01/28/01 - by L. Stuart Ditzen - Philadelphia Inquirer He rides a Harley. He totes a gun. And nothing seems to cheer him like a punk or a petty crook overdue for a trip up the river. When the side door of his courtroom swings open and the sheriff ushers in a slouching reprobate, Seamus P. McCaffery folds his hands, smiles down from the bench, and says: "Remember what I told you? My favorite four-letter word is J-A-I-L." Then - Pow! McCaffery dishes out the max. That's what this former policeman turned Municipal Court judge is best known for - snap-bang justice for vandals, druggies and two-bit predators who make life scary and miserable for honest folk. In seven years on the bench, McCaffery has become Philadelphia's most famous, and sometimes most outlandish, judge. From Eagles Court to night court to daily adventures in his regular court, he has attracted attention all over America. McCaffery gives long jail sentences to graffiti vandals. He slaps drunken, obstreperous football fans with big fines. He rails at protesters who assault police. And if a brawl breaks out in his courtroom, he wades into the middle of it. The 50-year-old judge has become a media star. He has been on talk radio, TV magazine shows, the nightly news, the morning news, the noon news, the Internet, and the front pages of daily newspapers large and small. And he loves every bit of it. "I'm a character," he says. "I admit it." But there is more to McCaffery than grandstanding, a giant-sized gavel (he came up with that for rowdy Eagles fans), and the pro-police image that trails him from his 20-year career as a decorated member of the Philadelphia force. His colorful and sometimes cartoonish style masks an intense, focused and ambitious man. In recent years, McCaffery has been mentioned as a possible candidate for mayor or district attorney. He ran for Commonwealth Court in 1997 but lost. At the moment, he is considering running for Common Pleas Court. But only as a stepping-stone. Ask McCaffery what office he really wants, and he answers without pause. "My ultimate goal? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court would be my ultimate goal." A daily parade of drug users, prostitutes, brawlers, thieves, vandals, and, lately, protesters from the Republican National Convention trudges through Courtroom 603 in the Criminal Justice Center. This is the theater where McCaffery berates, derides, lambastes and preaches as he delivers his memorable brand of pungent justice. The "Seamus Show," he calls it. He can be snide, acerbic and brass-knuckle tough. But despite McCaffery's man-with-the-big-gavel image, his style of justice is frequently sprinkled with kindness and moderation. "I show a lot of compassion," he says. "I show a ton of compassion. But when I see a recidivist, I think they should go to jail." Each day, McCaffery gets a list of 50 cases. He moves them swiftly, hearing guilty pleas, sentencing probation violators, and ruling on misdemeanor cases. When cases aren't ready - and many aren't - McCaffery scolds the lawyers and the police officers, apologizes to victims who, having made the fruitless trip to court, will have to come again another day, and remarks in frustration to no one in particular: "Remember what I told you? I don't have any more hair to lose." Jan. 11 was a typical day for the Seamus Show. The first two hours were spent rescheduling cases that weren't ready. Then a sheriff's deputy led a slender man with a beard and a shaved head into the courtroom. McCaffery scanned the paperwork on the defendant, chuckled, glanced at an assistant district attorney, and asked: "Did you bring this to make my day?" The defendant, Darren Fruster, 35, of Frankford, was a car thief. Here he was, arrested for the 37th time. And he was before McCaffery for a probation violation. "What a guy," the judge said with a tight little smile. "You up for citizen of the year?" McCaffery turned to the prosecutor and asked: "What's the maximum amount of time I can put this gentleman away for?" Two to four years, came the answer. "I'm giving you the maximum," McCaffery said. "Looking at your record, you're a problem. You're a real problem. . . . Take him away, sheriff." Next case: A scrawny youth with mussed hair named Michael Bahm shuffled into court. McCaffery had sentenced Bahm to prison for a drug violation. Soon afterward, he had received letters from Bahm's mother and father, begging him to reconsider. McCaffery had summoned Bahm back to court. Now, as the parents stood silently watching, McCaffery preached a fiery sermon to the youth. "Nobody on Earth loves you like these people," he told Bahm. "Do you see how you've embarrassed them? ... They didn't raise you to be a punk.... My mother and father would have broken my legs.... You see what you're putting these two people through?" McCaffery nullified the jail term and sentenced Bahm to an inpatient drug program. He warned him: "If you're not afraid of these parents and you have no shame, you better be afraid of me." As the young man's parents left, the father turned and called out: "Thank you, your honor. Thank you very much." So goes the Seamus Show. Some days, it can get exciting. Two years ago, a man whom McCaffery had just convicted of stalking a TV anchorwoman tried to break free of a deputy sheriff. As the deputy tried to grab him, the man fought ferociously. McCaffery hustled down from the bench, robe flapping, grabbed the defendant in a headlock, and slammed him to the floor. Bingo, order was restored. The story instantly circulated through the Justice Center and onto the street. By the end of the day, McCaffery was hearing, as the story came back to him, that he had climbed onto the bench with a .45-caliber pistol in hand and dived into the fray. "My wife and I have an adage," McCaffery said. "We call that a 'Seamusism.' " Only about 25 percent of what people say about him is true, McCaffery says; the rest is all Seamusism. McCaffery's wife, Lise Rapaport, was educated at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She formerly worked as an assistant district attorney. Now she is her husband's secretary. McCaffery has three sons by a previous marriage. McCaffery is built like a bowling ball on a beer keg. He is nearly bald, with white hair clipped close on the sides. His muscular torso bulges under his dress shirt. He has the erect and confident bearing of a military commander, which is fitting, because he is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Every morning, he works out in a gym in his Northeast Philadelphia home. Then, with a pistol on his hip, he rides to work on his Harley-Davidson Softail Classic. The judge dearly loves that huge rumbling machine. It has a custom yellow paint job with flames. The license plate says JUDGE. McCaffery was born in Ireland, came to the United States at age 3 with his parents, and grew up in Germantown. After high school, he did a two-year tour with the Marines and then joined the Philadelphia Police Department, where he became a homicide detective. For 11 years, he went to night school to earn a bachelor's degree from La Salle University and a law degree from Temple. But he didn't want to be a lawyer. He wanted to be a judge. As an officer, it drove him crazy to see cases he believed were absolutely solid ("The guy's caught coming out the window!") thrown out of court. "I used to be so frustrated," McCaffery said in an interview. "I decided the only way to have an impact was to become a judge." He retired from the Police Department in 1989 and soon was running for judge. To win the support of the Democratic Party, he provided free service, at the party's direction, to constituents in need of legal help. In the process, McCaffery became friends with city Democratic chairman Bob Brady and, with Brady's backing, was elected to Municipal Court in 1993. He was elected to a second six-year term in 1999. The Philadelphia Bar Association has rated him "not recommended" because McCaffery refuses to participate in its screening process for judicial candidates. McCaffery says most lawyers live outside the city and shouldn't be rating Philadelphia judges. Even so, a bar association survey in 1999 showed that more than 70 percent of lawyers who practiced before him had confidence in McCaffery's integrity and legal ability, and 85 percent found him efficient and industrious. On courtroom demeanor, he did not score as well. Only 56 percent rated him as having "proper judicial temperament." Defense lawyers and prosecutors interviewed for this article were unanimous in the view that McCaffery works extremely hard. In 1996, he started holding night court in police districts to foster a crackdown on troublemakers who were eroding the quality of life in the neighborhoods. The next year, McCaffery set up Eagles Court to prosecute drunks and bullies who caused trouble at Veterans Stadium during football games. Daniel-Paul Alva, a defense lawyer and former head of the criminal-justice section of the bar association, said he had been skeptical of Eagles Court and went to the stadium to monitor the proceedings. "I was pleasantly surprised," Alva said. "It was orderly, it was done correctly, people's rights were not being violated, and it appeared that fair decisions were being made." McCaffery's critics - who often are defense lawyers - say he tends, by virtue of his police background, to believe police testimony over that of other witnesses. Stuart Schuman, supervisor of the Municipal Court unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said McCaffery's career as a police officer and street savvy enable him to read the truth in some cases very clearly. "On the other hand," Schuman said, "where the issue is the credibility of police witnesses or excessive police force, that same background prevents him from sometimes seeing the total picture." McCaffery says he has been stereotyped as a pro-police judge as long as he's been on the bench. He denies the label. He says he tries to rule down the middle in every case. His latest battle has been with public defenders who represent protesters arrested in August at the Republican National Convention. On Oct. 25, public defender Shawn Nolan heatedly objected when McCaffery, after convicting a protester of kicking a police officer, asked the officer what the sentence should be - "jail or probation?" The officer declined to choose. McCaffery sentenced the protester, Scott Matthews, to 30 to 60 days in prison. Matthews later was retried in Common Pleas Court, convicted of resisting arrest, and given a probationary sentence. McCaffery insists he has no bias against protesters - so long as they don't assault police. Perhaps to underscore that point, McCaffery on Jan. 19 acquitted 12 young people who had been arrested while blocking a ramp to the Vine Street Expressway during a demonstration on Aug. 1. The judge said the protesters were merely exercising their legal right to engage in free speech. "Not guilty," he declared. "That being said, that's all she wrote." L. Stuart Ditzen's e-mail address is sditzen@phillynews.com |
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