‘Do you stand by your mother?’
and other inexcusably stupid questions reporters ask after tragedies

Snaring the last available seat in the tiny, overcrowded courtroom yesterday was a stroke of good luck. It was in the front row, where you stand a chance of actually hearing what’s going on. But that seat was my only reward. The arraignment wouldn’t happen for at least another 90 minutes, after dozens of other cases were called and dispensed with, one way or another. There’s nothing to do but wait. Wait and watch — and wonder if this will be time well-spent.

I silently debate the merits of waiting it out. I could just call the court later on to find out the defendant’s bail status. I could also call the police sergeant for additional details on the arrest. And I could probably find 50 more productive ways to spend the morning of my first day back from vacation than sitting in this stuffy little courtroom watching the most fundamental processes of the criminal justice system at work.

But a 90-year-old man is dead. A 65-year-old woman is charged with DWI in the accident that took his life. Families are devastated. Shock is reverberating through my community right now. I feel the pull of responsibility to be here, in this courtroom, to hear first-hand what is said, to watch the proceedings with my own eyes and record what happens in my notebook. I am a reporter. So I sit and wait.

Speeding tickets reduced to equipment violations. Fines imposed. Pleas taken. Adjournments granted. Papers shuffled. And so it goes. Some people look scared, some embarrassed, others just downright cocky. The judge makes his way through the morning’s lengthy docket and the courtroom is slowly clearing out.

Another reporter, a young man wearing a News 12 jacket, steno pad in hand, sits down next to me after the seat’s previous occupant has her vehicle and traffic law case disposed of.

At long last, the case I’m waiting for is called and the woman accused of driving drunk when she hit an elderly pedestrian on Main Road in Jamesport Tuesday night is brought into the courtroom by police.

Diane O’Neill, hands cuffed behind her back, stands before Judge Allen Smith, who reads aloud the charges against her: Upon arriving at the scene of the accident, the police officer noticed the odor of alcohol on the defendant, who, according to the officer’s report, was unsteady on her feet and had glassy, bloodshot eyes. It’s the textbook language of misdemeanor DWI complaints.

“It appears that a blood sample was drawn,” the judge says. Results aren’t in yet. There is no report of the defendant’s alleged blood-alcohol content, usually determined in the field by a breath test administered by police. A blood test, being more reliable and less susceptible to attack by a defense attorney, is preferred when an accident involves serious injury or death. According to the district attorney’s office, she told police she had two glasses of wine Tuesday evening.

An average-looking, well-dressed woman, O’Neill has no lawyer in court. The judge asks if she has contacted an attorney. She tries to answer, explaining that her son called a family lawyer last night. The judge, worried that the defendant may unwittingly say something self-incriminating — tainting her arraignment proceedings at which she’s appearing without counsel — cuts her off.

“I’m sorry. I’m nervous,” O’Neill says. She turns around and looks toward the back of the courtroom. A bearded young man wearing rumpled clothes and a worried countenance makes his way to his mother’s side. Sean O’Neill explains that he contacted a family lawyer the night before, who referred him to a lawyer in Melville, who he called first thing this morning but was unable to reach.

The judge orders a clerk to call the lawyer. Court is recessed in the interim.

“This could mean my whole afternoon is shot,” the reporter next to me grumbles. He gets up and walks out of the courtroom.

The proceedings resume after the lawyer on the phone tells the clerk he hasn’t yet been retained in this case. The judge, following some discussion with prosecutors and legal aid lawyers, appoints a public defender for a “limited appearance,” i.e. just to handle the initial arraignment.

The judge conducts the standard bail inquiry. Bail is set to secure the defendant’s return to court. It’s not supposed to be a reflection of the seriousness of the charges. The court needs to determine whether the defendant is likely to flee from justice. Her ties to the community are the key factors in that determination. So Judge Smith asks her what she does for a living. She answers that she’s a teacher at Southold High School. For how long? Twenty-one years. He asks her where she lives. Farmingville. For how long? 34 years. Do you own your home? Yes.

The limited-appearance defense lawyer asks that the defendant be released on her own recognizance, or if bail is set, asks that it be in the $5,000 to $10,000 range.

The prosecutor asks for $100,000 bail, noting that the matter is being investigated by the vehicular crimes bureau and that the results of the defendant’s “blood draw” are pending.

The judge sets bail at $10,000 and asks O’Neill if she’ll be able to make bail. The woman turns around again to find her son in the courtroom. He returns to her side and tells the judge, yes, he’ll be able to post it.

“How long do you need?” the judge asks.

“An hour,” the son says.

The judge orders the defendant be held at the police station for one hour to allow her son the opportunity to make bail. After that, his mother will be brought to the county jail for processing and he will have to post bail at the jail.

The judge puts the case on again for the next day at 2 p.m. and directs O’Neill to return with a lawyer.

Mother and son exchange looks as she’s led from the courtroom by way of a side door. As I exit the court, I’m not surprised to find the gaggle of TV cameras that’s assembled in the building lobby during the two hours I spent in the courtroom. Cameras are not allowed inside. I wonder whether the defendant’s son is expecting this. I wonder whether the TV reporters will know who he is, since they were not in the courtroom themselves. Except that one guy from News 12. He was there, and that’s all it takes.

When O’Neill’s son leaves the courtroom, they pounce.

I am making my way out at about the same time and I witness the commotion. The big cameras and microphones shoved in his face. The stupid questions being shouted. One cameraman, an older dude, gets special credit for being able to run backwards with a massive camera on his shoulder, its lens less than three inches from his subject’s nose.

O’Neill looks terrified, understandably so. He picks up his pace, breaks into a sprint in the center of the swarm, and hustles past me in the parking lot.

As the gaggle pulls even with me, one pert and pretty TV “reporter” shouts above the din:

“Do you have anything to say? Anything at all?” she asks, running alongside the fleeing man.

“Do you stand by your mother?”

They stick to him all the way across the lot, all the way to his pickup truck parked on the opposite end, cameras rolling, continuing to pepper him with questions in the hope that he may crack and utter something, “anything at all” that might make a suitable sound bite for the evening news.

I watch him struggle to get in his truck, close the door and leave. He’s got less than an hour to get back with the bail. They’ll still be here, so they can repeat the same ridiculous exercise when the defendant emerges from the courtroom, shoving cameras in her face and asking her moronic questions.

I return to my office and sit at my desk for the first time in more than a week, feeling heartbroken and depressed. A man is dead. A high school teacher’s life is destroyed. Families are devastated. A community is reeling.

I have to find words to explain what’s happened in a way that people can understand, to make sense of it all. I’m motivated by the hope that people care, that they want more than to simply gawk at other people’s tragedies. As I sit down to write my story, I’m not so sure.

Tragedy is popular. It collects a lot of page views. Tragedy, crime, scandal — people lap it up. They may “tsk, tsk” at the behavior of “the media” — as I do — but the public’s insatiable appetite for such stories is what fuels the media frenzy.

Nevertheless, I woke at 2 a.m. today still bothered by the indelible stupidity of the question hurled at a scared young man whose mother is accused of driving drunk and killing someone with her car.

“Do you stand by your mother?”

If that reporter had been in the courtroom actually being a reporter, she wouldn’t have had to ask.

Denise Civiletti is an owner of East End Local Media Corp., publishers of RiverheadLOCAL.com and SoutholdLOCAL.com. An award-winning reporter, she is an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman (1988-1991); she lives in Riverhead with her husband and business partner, Peter Blasl and their two college-student daughters. The views expressed in her blog are hers alone.