Looking at judge\'s tough talk from both sides: Phillip Morris

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"I detest these street hoodlums. And that boy was wrong as two leftshoes. But the judge had no right to give him the business,"Beatrice said Wednesday morning, taking a break from laundry.
"I think he disgraced his bench."
I looked down at my phone to make sure I had dialed the rightnumber. Beatrice, a 75-year-old pistol of a woman, is morelaw-and-order than Charles Bronson. She doesn't mince words.
That's why her reaction to Common Pleas Judge David Matia's heavilyscrutinized parting shot at a weeping defendant earlier this weekdidn't sit right.

Matia called the defendant an "idiot" and a "punk" beforesentencing him to 25 years in prison for a violent assault. Hemocked him by telling him that he would be a welcome addition tothe maximum security choir at the prison in Lucasville.
I thought all of this would pass muster with Beatrice. She hatesthugs with a passion.
I've heard her curse them as they parade across her television onthe nightly news. I've watched her bristle as she talks about theincreasing number of thugs who roam parts of her beloved ClevelandHeights.
Few things make her blood boil hotter than seeing young wannabes,pants falling down their backsides, strutting defiantly in themiddle of the street when there is a perfectly serviceable sidewalkavailable.
That's why I had assumed she would celebrate Matia's "punk"lecture.
So I tried again.
"Explain to me why you aren't celebrating this judge."
Not only did he clear the streets of one more violent thug. He toldthe boy something his parents should have told him before hedecided it was cool to jump on a jogger and rob him.
"He gave him something to think about until 2033," I said, hopingthat Beatrice was reconsidering her take on Matia's words.
"That's the problem. It was too late for a lecture," Beatriceretorted.
"It wasn't Matia's job to talk to that boy like that. When he getsout of prison, he'll be a middle-aged man. The judge's job was tosend him away -- not beat him up.
"Look at it like this: When you go to a funeral, you don't expectthe preacher to look down at the casket and say, 'Yeah, sucker.You're going to hell. You were a bad man. You're going to burn.'¤"I thought I spotted an opening, so I pounced. I never win argumentswith Beatrice, but I smelled victory:
"Funerals are for the living. Not the dead. Matia's lecture wasn'tfor the thug in the court. It was for the thugs in the streets. Itwas a photo-op designed to let street thugs all over Cleveland seethe end game: They end up in court crying like babies, while amiddle-aged man in a robe gets to call them a punk and put them ina cage. I call that justice."
Beatrice was unmoved. She said that if the judge spoke to hergrandson in such fashion, she would have cursed the judge out.
"Then two of us would have been on our way to prison," Beatricesaid before hanging up the phone and getting back to her laundry.
Matia may have lost Beatrice's vote. But by washing some dirtycommunity laundry and hanging it out to dry, I suspect he's gainedmany more.