Tangi Boston (TAN-jee, rhymes with Angie) was rather rambling and circular in her interview, and I’ve tried to piece it together here in a way that makes sense. Boston mostly touted her being a part of the black community as a reason for candidacy. She grew up in North Philly, in Strawberry Mansion, and attended Temple Law. “I have the experience and general common sense that comes with being a citizen that interacts with the regular citizenry. I have seen the deficiency and lack of trust in the justice system in my community, that is, the black community. …There is a desensitization and general prejudice from a lack of understanding of the community. If you don’t live in the community, it comes from a source. People are impeded by a belief that is not based on what is real-TV, the news, general media depictions-they have no other basis for their opinion for them to make decisions. Some people understand that not everything is as it is on the news, that it’s just fear-mongering.”
Her background is as law clerk for general practitioners. Then she served five years as hearing officer in family law / as a presiding judge in the sense that she issued child support orders. She now is a ‘general practitioner’ herself. “The people I grew up around call me. It’s not limited to one court. There’s property sitting there, and nobody to advise them to go through probate court when grandma dies. There’s a lack of knowledge, so they call me. And I can research and represent them. It’s kind of like a medical general practitioner. I deal with basic things.”
She has a rather positive outlook when it comes to the justice system. One that takes me aback a bit, with statements like “I have never seen an innocent person go to prison–because they’re innocent.” She thinks the system is working. “Thank God it’s not my experience that it doesn’t work. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be pursuing this. There are moments when something goes wrong, but that’s a particular person or judge. It may appear not to work, but it relies on universal justice not being broken. Right always prevails and is made manifest. Maybe there is fractured social justice, fractured community that is saturated in the justice system, but I’ve seen it work too often to say it’s not working.”
She also has a definition of justice that makes me a little squeamish. “Justice is the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, good and bad–it’s the ultimate good, the ultimate balance. It’s what you can expect at the end of your life when you appear before god. It’s karma. The arc of the world bends toward justice.” I’m a religious person personally, but talking about god when you’re running for judge can’t be done lightly with the importance of separation of church and state. It’s not that she is a member of a particular church, “I don’t go for organized religion. That’s a mess.” It’s just an instinctive, flinching mistrust of mine any time someone running for office inserts religion into the mix.
What bothers her most? “Perjury. Suborning perjury. It takes away from the whole process and happens all day, every day in the courtroom. There’s not enough respect, first of all, for the bible you put your hand and swear on, and for the court. Not enough fear of the consequences because they’re not pursued. They go unpunished, unprosecuted.”
Truth is a big deal for Boston. In court, she would emphasize “Truth from both sides. I don’t think it’s a game. It’s not a contest of who tells the best lies or gives the best presentation. Truth is constant and consistent. You know when you don’t hear the truth. Lies unravel if you give them time. I’m not an attorney that tells lies. I will not present lies to the court just to win.” Attorneys don’t tell lies though, they tell stories that could be a plausible defense. If that’s not something she can handle, she’s not going to sit easy on the bench.
Then there’s her views. Here’s what she had to say on sentencing: “There are guidelines. I don’t have a philosophy. I don’t go easy on people. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Am I trying to rehabilitate society one person at a time? No. I encountered people given their circumstances–you look at them and you know they don’t stand a chance of understanding social norms. Nothing has ever been normal for them. It’s sad, but true. And then you have deviants who succumb to external things, peer pressure. They are not the more dangerous ones. The more dangerous ones are the ones who never had a shot. And there’s a lot of them.”
She gave me an example of the kinds of cases that she sees. It’s a side that is a little bit hard to hear, but I think one that should be expressed, just with a little more politicqally correct finesse than she presents.
“A lot of women are not victims. They watch TV and they become manipulative in order to empower themself. There’s no medical records, no police reports, the guy moved on and has another baby, and she wants her revenge. ‘If I can’t have him, nobody will.’ Then she gets wrapped up in groups that are there to protect victims. She’s clearly not a victim. She’s taking away someone’s freedom. You should need more than her testimony to do that. And it happens too often. A guy is sitting in prison for months until she’s decided he’s had enough and stops showing up to court and eventually the case gets noelle prossed. ”
Although all she had to say about Black Lives Matter was that it wasn’t new, she did speak to some of the issues underlying the movement. “Then there’s the ‘driving and walking while black’ cases. Patrolling officers–I don’t know what they do all day. But if you don’t live in this community–how do you define what’s suspicious in an unfamiliar environment? There’s an assumption that truth comes with the uniform. It does not. And there’s this whole thing about how they put their life on the line. I was in the Air Force. In Desert Storm. It didn’t make me better than anyone. There’s no presumption I don’t have other motives, baggage, am capable of lying. There should be that someone is not a criminal just because a guy in a uniform says so. Especially when the testimony is not credible. If making an arrest is your motive, you can lie.”
Despite her personal level of understanding of what goes on in her community, she doesn’t seem to have a deep understanding of what it might take to be judge. To prepare for the bench, she only suggested that she would read the judicial code of ethics. And when it comes to whom she looks up to as a judiciary role model, she cites Tama Meyers Clark because “I walked into her courtroom and she was pretty and smart–it never left me. She was so dignified.” Dignified is just not enough for me.
She did validate my efforts, saying, “[Voters] need to take judicial elections a lot more seriously. You need to know and talk to these judges because they are amenable to voters. You need to know who is going to touch your life directly. More than presidents, senators, and the mayor. You need to know what baggage, beliefs, and valued, and community they bring with them, because you’re more likely to encounter a judge in your life than anyone else [on the ballot], no matter who you are.”
Boston is listening to inspirational music about faith, belief, and morals. “I like morals. I like jazz a little. If I’m going to listen to secular music, I listen to old school stuff. I hate popular music. It creates a subversive culture-sex, drugs, drug dealing, materialism, greed, the ends justify the means.” As for where she gets her news, “I’m selective about the stories that I read. I go for ones that are not geared toward influencing the way people think but on informing. World news, occasionally local. Not stories about the black community going berserko. That’s propaganda creating a wider divide in the community.”
Philly Judges 