Remarks on the Judge's Role and Moral Certainty

First, I am a trial judge on D.C. Superior Court—a court of general jurisdiction. Thus, my personal experiences and approach are grounded in the intense and heart-rending world of live testimony and real human beings—not the rarefied appellate atmosphere of cold transcripts and brilliant analytical arguments. To put some of my remarks in context, and to present a totally atypical situation which raises all the analytical issues of Cruzan , I would like to describe a real case—one that I actually tried—about 10 years ago, involving a committed patient at St. Elizabeths Hospital—a large local hospital for the mentally ill. I will call him Vladimir—he was a real person, not a faceless mental patient. Vladimir had escaped from the repressiveness and brutality of pre- Glastnost Russia—to the freedom of the West. Sometime after locating in America and working here, he became mentally ill and was hospitalized.