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Judge's tactic: Show future

When people facing drug charges are in his courtroom, Judge Ric Howard presents a clear picture of what could be next.

By ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published August 8, 2005

	[Times photo: Ron Thompson]
	BEFORE AND AFTER: Circuit Judge Ric Howard shows jail mug shots of a woman addicted to methamphetamine. Howard shows the photos to defendants facing drug charges. "(Meth) is even more powerful, more terrible than crack cocaine," he told one defendant. "It steals spirits and homes."

INVERNESS - Circuit Judge Ric Howard reached across his bench for a stack of photographs minutes before he announced Julie Dawn Cline's sentence for cooking methamphetamine.

These are my latest photos, he told Cline. From a distance, the images looked like photo booth snapshots of a young woman. Up close, it was clear those photos weren't the result of a fun day at the mall. They were jail mug shots.

"She was a complete meth head," Howard said, holding up the photos.

The woman in the photos had been arrested 30 to 40 times in New York, he said. In the first shot, the woman was attractive. By the final one, she had turned into "basically a skull with skin attached to it," Howard said.

"(Meth) is even more powerful, more terrible than crack cocaine," he told Cline. "It steals spirits and homes."

The judge's photos have become as much a fixture in his courtroom as his "happy robes," brightly colored robes he wears on the bench when people finish probation ahead of schedule. He's nicknamed the photos with gruesome titles - the "Face of Living Death" and "Time Machine." Both show the effects of drugs on the body. The photos are so popular that lawyers have asked him to show them to their clients.

Lawyer Paul Militello asked Howard to show the photos to one of his clients, a young girl who was using crystal meth.

"It's just one of those - I thought to myself - it can't hurt her to see those photographs," he said.

The idea for the photos started two years ago when Howard saw mug shots of an Indiana woman whose body was ravaged by drugs. One was a mug shot of her first arrest. The second showed her years later. He had the photos enlarged and started showing them in court.

A few weeks ago, another court employee was poking around the Internet and found mug shots of meth addicts. They were "before and after" shots, similar to diet photographs, only these showed the terrible toll of drugs on the body.

Howard thought the photos would be the perfect addition to his courtroom. Howard presides over felony court. He presides over the most serious criminal cases. He sees dozens of people dealing with the ravages of drugs in his court each week. He gets worked up when he talks about the families who come into court. The photos are for the addict's parents to see, too.

"That might show them what's going to happen to their precious daughter," he said.

He's pleasant and jovial with most defendants. He tries to relate to their lives by telling them about the odd jobs he worked to pay for school. He cautions them on the dangers of drugs. But he fears his words don't always stick.

"A lot of these defendants have the attention of a hummingbird," Howard said as he thumbed through the photographs in his office on a recent afternoon.

Howard's not the only person who has come up with the photo idea. The August issue of Esquire magazine includes a series of before and after mug shots of meth addicts from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office in Oregon.

Cline, 29, was just the sort who gets to see the judge's photos. She's a young woman with two small children. Her December arrest made headlines because it was the second meth arrest in two months. Deputies accused her and another woman of cooking meth in Cline's Inverness apartment.

She had been arrested that November after authorities accused her of cooking meth at the apartment. One of her children, a 5-year-old, was there.

"Most families are thinking about cooking turkeys and pies. You're cooking methamphetamine," Howard said.

Cline pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to six years in prison. Before she was led out of the courtroom, she and her attorney, Lisa Gerstner, told the judge a little about Cline's struggle with meth. By the time she was arrested, Cline had dropped to 80 pounds. Her face was gaunt. But when she looked in the mirror, she saw a fat woman, she told Howard.

These tragic stories are becoming more common in Citrus County. Howard said meth is increasingly the drug of choice for many.

That's why it's important to show people photos of what can happen if they keep using meth, he said.

"Now, this one looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones compared to the newest ones," he said as he flashed the blown-up photo of the Indiana woman. He pulled out more images from a file on his desk.

Next were the photos he showed Cline. So what happened to the woman in the pictures? Did she turn her life around?

Hold on, Howard said. He called Randy Wertz, the teen court employee who found the photos.

"Okay, so he burned her alive then cut her throat?" Howard asked, nodding his head. Apparently, that woman's life didn't have a happy ending.

"Now, the Face of Living Death," he said. "Do you know how old the Face of Living Death was when she was killed? Ball park?"

He hung up the phone and asked if the reporter had heard his Time Machine speech.

"We have a little bit of theater, a little bit of drama," he said as he pulled out another before and after shot. By the final photo, the woman's teeth looked blackened and mushy. He explained how the speech started.

"This is the time machine. If you look really close, you can smell the goo between her front teeth," he said.

He paused.

"And if we do it just right, we'll get a gasp from the audience," he said.

--Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Abbie VanSickle can be reached at 860-7312 or vansickle@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 8, 2005, 02:45:22]