Clear the courtroom, exclamation point.

Now, you can spend your life working in courtrooms

and never hear those words, clear the courtroom.

And if you have spent time in Judge One Mershawn's courtroom,

it would feel all the more impossible that you are hearing the words clear the courtroom and that

you were hearing those words said repeatedly and loudly and most chalkingly of

all angrily. and most chalkingly of all, angrily by Judge Wannmer-Shaugh, as we did today at 401 p.m.

and as I was walking out of the courtroom, I asked a retired New York City judge who was in the audience today,

how many times he had to clear the courtroom when he was a judge.

His answer was what I expected.

Never.

In a multi-week trial, a courtroom becomes a community.

Everyone gets to know each other, visually at least. We members of the news

media make new friends at other news organizations. During the breaks when we can

talk the jury becomes very familiar with all of the lawyers and they know

which of us in the audience section are the regulars and who are the tourists

popping in for a day.

And the leader of every courtroom community

is the judge.

He or she sits literally above us all

at a higher altitude as a symbol of the authority that the judge

actually does have a good trial judge who keeps things moving efficiently does not waste time and is very solicitous of the jury's needs and does everything he or she can to accommodate the jury and treats the jury as the most important people in the

...