JUDGING THE JUDGE IN ELGIE CASE (Editorial)

Author: DONN ESMONDE

I was wrong.

The other day, I wrote that justice was not only blind, but deaf.

I was writing about the Jessica Elgie case, and how the judge didn't allow relatives and family friends to be heard in the trial.

In court Friday for Elgie's sentencing in the death of her 5-year-old son, C.J., I found out something else. Justice is not only blind and deaf. It is also mocking, imperial and arrogant.

It was quite an education, and I've got Judge Joseph Forma to thank for it.

Forma sentenced Elgie to probation and community service. Not even a day in jail. The sentence came after he found Elgie guilty (in a non-jury trial) of child endangerment -- instead of the tougher felony charge -- for her part in C.J.'s death four summers ago.

The boy, for whatever reason, drank laundry detergent that day. Some seven hours later, when he was finally brought to the hospital, he had no pulse.

In his presentencing statement Friday, Forma mocked the prosecutor, belittled efforts of longtime family friends who had tried to help the boy and implied that Jessica Elgie was a victim.

Not bad for a morning's work.

No adult other than Jessica Elgie knows what happened that afternoon. But doctors testified the boy suffocated on the detergent he'd sucked into his lungs. They said he struggled for hours -- not seemed fine until collapsing at dinner, as Elgie claimed. Autopsy findings backed up the doctors. But it didn't sway Forma.

"I could not believe," he told Elgie in court Friday, "that you would watch your boy struggle and suffer."

The judge took the word of a woman he'd seen in court for a week over the testimony of medical experts.

He was blind to the notion that, by getting help sooner, Elgie would've opened the door to child protection workers -- who'd ask C.J. what happened and wonder why he was so thin.

Forma discounted statements of relatives and longtime family friends who tried for years to help the boy. They said Jessica Elgie was a domineering wife and mother. Her actions that day fit a pattern of constant criticism, punishment and disdain for C.J., a Vietnamese orphan whose adoption was in the works when she unexpectedly became pregnant with twins.

Several concerned couples, including Sal and Kathy Aurilio, offered to take the boy for the summer, for a year, forever.

"It's so unfair, the judge only focusing on (what happened) that day," said Kathy Aurilio after Friday's sentencing. "She didn't love that boy, and that colored her every decision."

Prosecutor Ken Case, at the sentencing, noted Elgie's lack of emotion during the trial, even as courtroom spectators wept. Elgie followed with a statement, sobbing as she talked more about people trying to "destroy" her than the loss of her son.

When she finished, Forma mockingly said to the prosecutor, "Well, Mr. Case, it seems you have your tears now."

Other judges who'd earlier heard the case reacted differently. Family Court Judge Marjorie Mix called Elgie's behavior "reprehensible."

Elgie pleaded guilty to a felony in an earlier criminal trial, in return for no more than a year in jail. But Justice Penny Wolfgang couldn't keep the bargain after reading statements about the way C.J. was treated. They were from some of the same people whose observations Forma decided weren't relevant.

All that mattered, in his mind, was what happened that day. His partial explanation was there was no sign on C.J. of malnourishment or bruises.

Huh? Doctors that tragic night said C.J. had bruises on his forehead, shoulder and leg (his mother claimed he'd fallen). The 5-year-old weighed barely 30 pounds. He was buried in the same clothes he was baptized in 2 1/2 years earlier. That's not malnourished?

Little C.J. and the people who tried to help him deserved better than they got from Forma. The judge bought into Jessica Elgie's delusion that the real victim in this case was her, not C.J. Just before passing sentence, Forma said Elgie had lost her health, her marriage, her profession.

"I don't know," he said, "what more I could do."

Forma is right about that. He has already done enough.

e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com