Law&Crime Sidebar - BONUS EPISODE: Michigan Man Moons Judge During Zoom Court Hearing

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

A Michigan man mooned a Wayne County Circuit Court judge during a bond hearing over Zoom. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and Judge Fanon Rucker break it down.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A defendant moons a judge during a Zoom hearing, and as you'll see, that backfired. Retire Judge Fanon Rucker comes on to give his perspective on this wild incident. to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Now, I'll tell you, I thought I saw it all with a defendant disrespecting a judge when we covered the Derell Brooks Jr. case. Remember that one? I mean, him yelling at the judge, slamming his fist on the table, it was rude, it was shocking. And then I saw this story. Let's go over to Michigan. A man named Hassan Schoker was in the

middle of a hearing in Wayne County Circuit Court, and he was appearing from jail via Zoom. Choker is accused of assaulting, resisting, and obstructing a police officer back in 2020. And during this hearing, he was not too happy. And at one point, he actually pulls down his pants and moons, Judge Regina Thomas. I want the record to reflect that while the court has muted the defendant's microphone at the Oakland County jail, he appears to be yelling and pointing at the camera. And now he has removed his pants to show the court. his backside. I'm putting him in the wedding room. Now, I tell you that Mr. Shoker has been charged in a separate case with two counts of ethnic intimidation for allegedly driving to a synagogue

in Jewish school and yelling and making racial threats against children and adults. So that kind of gives you an idea about who we're dealing with here. I'm joined right now by attorney and retired judge Fanon Rucker. Judge, it's good to see you. It's good to have you here on sidebar. So not only did this judge, Regina Thomas, mute Mr. Shoker in this Zoom, but she approved prosecutor's request to have the $1 million bond for Mr. Shoker revoked. Would you have done the same thing if this happened in your courtroom? Jesse, glad to be with you today. So would I have done the same thing?

I got to tell you, probably that and more. I also would have had the person submitted for a mental health evaluation for or a 72-hour hold, at least, to determine if he understood and appreciated the gravity and the implications of his actions on that Zoom. But, you know, I tell you, court can be an emotional place, and some of the defendants that appear in front of the court and some of the witnesses sometime, they don't know how to navigate or to negotiate their feelings in front of the bar. That's one way of looking at it.

And thank goodness we were able to blur that out or when the original video was blurred out. I think that was a site. No one wanted to see. Have you ever seen anything like this before? Anything like this happened in your courtroom? Maybe not to this extent, but anything, this kind of level of disrespect? Well, what's true?

I mean, I think every judge who has been on the bench for more than a year has had some level of disrespect imposed upon them by somebody appearing in front of them. I got to tell you, I had 13 years on the bench. I presided over several hundred thousand cases. People were not really quick to be disrespectful in my courtroom. I counted that as a badge of honor that, you know, people were very respectful. but there were a few times when people were not satisfied or not happy with my decisions or my rulings and there were a couple times with people let it be known but the worst that happened

was you know someone would make a a statement on a record that was insulting or there was one particular instance where someone I was arraining she wasn't happy about the bond that I imposed on her and in front of a room full of about 200 people she decided to um express her disdain for my race and the fact that I was a black man in a black robe and she screamed the N-word at me, adding the F word right before it, in stating her displeasure with the bond that I set for. And the courtroom erupted and almost into a riot. But that's about as disrespectful as I've encountered or I encountered in my time. Wow, that's awful. That's as bad, I mean, that's up there with what we just saw.

If you don't mind me asking, what did you do? So she was, at the time, she was locked up and she was being brought out for Abon to be said. And the person who was behind it was a deputy, a very large deputy. And so he tried to grab her because then she started flailing her arms and really just kind of out of control. My bailiff jumped up. He was a good friend and brother to me, and he started getting riled up. And so I told everybody just calmed down. This is words I can handle this.

I raised her bond, and I also held her in contempt and gave her an additional 30 days for being, for being disrespectful to the court. So one of the things that we learned in judge school, and that's an interesting dynamic, at least we have in Ohio, that after you are elected or appointed, sometime in the, in the five, months, you go to Judge School. When Judge School is supposed to kind of be a crash course in this idea of how you did. And one of the things they taught us is that you cannot countenance, disrespect toward the court. It's something that has to be immediately addressed and pretty aggressively so that as to not encourage others to engage in like behavior. The contempt powers, immediate contempt, direct contempt powers, were one that I exercised sparingly, but certainly was not afraid to when necessary. And that situation definitely warned, and I'm really sorry that happened to

you. You mentioned something about this man, Mr. Schoker, because Judge Thomas says that he seems to be mentally ill. And in fact, Schoker's attorney even agreed that a mental health evaluation may be a good thing in this instance. I mentioned him before that he's accused of, you know, basically going to this synagogue and racial, and excuse me, this synagogue and this Jewish school and yelling anti-Semitic remarks and threatening them. What would a mental health evaluation do here? Well, so, so there's, there's two mental health evaluations when it comes to court process. The first is what we know about, you know, not guilty by reason of insanity. And that question that at the time that the offense is committed, the person did not understand or appreciate the gravity or the implication of their

actions. That's the first type of mental health evaluation. The second is not about the time of the offense, but at the time that they're actually being held or being prosecuted for the offense. And that question really is whether the person is able to assist in their defense because of some type of mental defect or mental health issue that is preventing them from being able to process what's going on. That's more of a present issue. So you can be completely lucid at the time that you're actually being prosecuted, but at the time of the event having gone through an episode. Likewise, you can be completely fine at the time that you commit some type of offense. But by the time you get to court, you've deteriorated to the point where you don't know what's going on. You don't know who the prosecutor is, the judge.

You don't know what planet you're from. And that is a constantly evolving, potentially, position that the court has to monitor. And so when he did something like this, that was completely outraged, just depending on other things that he might have said, concomitting with that act, that might have led the judge and the lawyer and the court personnel to question whether or not this dude really knew what the hell he was doing when he decided to pull his pants down and whether or not his mental facilities were intact. See, it's interesting because my understanding of this is that he's been disrespectful to another judge as well.

And in fact, during this Zoom hearing, he wouldn't even acknowledge what his name is. He was pleading the fifth there. I thought it was curious. So at least he kind of has some understanding of the law, maybe the wrong application of it. I want to get your perspective real quick on this because Shoker's attorney, Dwayne Johnson, he reportedly claimed that his client was merely expressing, I'm going to quote here, expressing his First Amendment rights and freedoms of speech during that synagogue incident I mentioned, Judge Thomas said, quote, if we're doing things that are unsafe, we are infringing on other people's rights.

We don't get to say and do whatever we want to say without the consequences of those actions. And so that's where your client finds himself today. He exercised his rights. I'm exercising my right to give him a consequence for that. Nothing that any of us do in this life is without consequence. Would you make of that? I absolutely agree. You know, I've been hearing for years, people say, well, that's my right. That's my right to say this. That's my right to do that. But what we know is that rights and First Amendment rights in particular are not without qualification or consequence. Sure, I have the right to open my mouth and say certain things, but that doesn't mean there won't be consequences as a result. And that right is not absolute. We know what do we say? You can't scream fire in a crowded movie theater. That's not a right that's protected by any First Amendment.

free speech or constitutional provisions. So in the same way, sure, the question that's always asked in constitutional law and civil rights law is where does one person's civil rights begin and another one's in? So if you, in the expression of your First Amendment rights of free speech, infringe upon my right not to be threatened or not to feel threatened or to somehow be prohibited from going where I want to or being able to live where I want to, well, then there's where the rights start to butt against each other. And that begs the question. No pun intended. Did you know what he said? Buts the rights. Well, listen, I think that might be a good place to end it. And, Judge, thank you for sharing that story with us. I have to tell you, that's going to stick with me.

I'm really troubled by what was said to you. And that was so awful. And let alone, you're a sitting judge. And someone would say that to you, pretty unbelievable to think about. Rucker. Thank you so much. And that's all we have for you, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series, ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.