LA judge to be honored for humanizing the court experience

Vance Harris is filing his first ever tax return this year. It's one of many firsts for the 33-year-old.

"I'm not going through life as a traditional adult person would," Harris said. "From losing my job and filing for unemployment - this is the first year I'm doing taxes - it's nerve-wracking. There are things you second-guess and overthink."

Harris is a bus driver for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He got a late start on conventional adult life because he was imprisoned from age 18 to 32 for carjacking, he said. He was released in March 2023 to a halfway house and has been trying to adjust to daily life ever since. Key to that are efforts by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald Owen Kaye.

Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Kaye to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2020. Kaye was placed in the mental health court in Hollywood. That assignment, he said, was fortuitous, because it balances the protection of society and defendants, many of whom struggle with schizophrenia and other mental disorders. It also meshes with his decades of civil rights work and criminal defense.

"When I was first appointed to bench, the first month I went on retreat with people returning to society. It was my son, me and about 30 former inmates in the wilderness, in the mountains," Kaye said. "Everybody went around in a circle and talked about what it was like to be back, how they were dealing with trauma."

One of the men on that trip was locked up in the supermax Pelican Bay State Prison for 30 years, Kaye said. The judge said he did not recall the crime for which the man was imprisoned.

"He started crying. He said, 'I can't believe a judge is treating me with humanity and addressing me as a person,'" Kaye said.

That trip inspired Kaye. He currently works with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, whose formerly incarcerated members visit his court twice per month. Unlike their past experiences with the court system, they enter the building through the front door, go through security like the public, and observe the proceedings from the gallery. When Kaye is done with his calendar, he stops to talk with his visitors.

"They have never been addressed in a positive way by sheriff's deputies," Kaye said. "They watch litigation.

They watch mental health court. They're basically taken aback. They talk about what it was like engaging with their case. They talk about their hopes for the future."

Kaye said he also has talked informally with other judges about what it means for defendants to be treated as human beings, without impacting their sentences.

Harris said he was arrested after he stole a car in Northridge. One of his charges was attempted murder, which he beat at trial.

"As a defendant, I did not feel I was innocent until proven guilty. I did what I did. I'm not trying to downplay it," Harris said.

"But how you get treated [in court] is so nasty," Harris continued. "You get treated as if you're invisible. They talk to the attorney and the DA. There is no acknowledgement of you. The only time you speak is when you say what is your plea."

Kaye's interaction with former inmates is "heart-warming," Harris said. "When you're in the system you're a number. It doesn't matter if you're there for murder or petty theft. Judge Kaye pays attention to details. He asks you, 'How are you? How are you feeling?'"

That work is why the Criminal Courts Bar Association of Los Angeles will give Kaye an award for outstanding community service in April.

"The award is usually given to a lawyer. It is given to somebody that does a great job but is willing to go outside the legal profession to do community service work," said the association's executive director, Christopher Chaney.

"He goes above and beyond being a judge," Chaney said about Kaye.

"He goes to different prisons and counsels people on mental health issues. He's a very active man outside being a judge, and where he's a judge is very difficult, with long calendars, lots of people."