Tampa Bay Times22%
Most people want out of jury duty. For these Pinellas women, court is a calling 3%
By Natanya Friedheim9%
8/3/2026, 6:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 10 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Appeal to Authority, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 7.3% saturation with 128 hits. Analysis detected 387 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,757 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 9.6% and a BS Rank of 3% (25,968 of 26,612 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.60% of the article peer group.
Colleen Sullivan and Lorae Malec empty their pockets and walk through a metal detector.
“You are entering a secure facility,” a man’s voice booms over the speakers, first in English, then in Spanish.
Most people would rather be somewhere else.
But over the last year and a half, Sullivan and Malec have become fixtures at the Pinellas County Justice Center.
“They’re legends,” Assistant State Attorney Nathan Vonderheide said as he passed them outside a courtroom on a recent Friday.
The duo represent a rare breed in today’s courtroom: impartial observers.
Most people seated on the wooden pews of each courtroom’s public gallery have a stake in the cases before the judge.
Wives and girlfriends weep as they lose their men to prison.
Families of victims root for prosecutors.
Trials were once well-attended spectator events.
The gallery emptied as plea deals replaced trials and witness testimony gave way to legalese.
“Court is supposed to be this public, open thing,” said Jocelyn Simonson, a Brooklyn Law School professor who studies courtroom audiences.
“But so rarely are there people there just from the community because they’re interested and care.”
Showing up, she said, makes a difference.
Before she crafts her closing arguments, Assistant Public Defender Kaelee Ayers makes a point to ask Sullivan and Malec for their thoughts.
“They’re the exact kind of people who end up on a jury,” she said.
Judge Pat Siracusa concurs.
A former prosecutor, Siracusa used to stand in parking lots to hear what the jurors had to say once trials concluded.
In several murder trials, he said, jurors could not wait to mock him.
“The appraisal of the true juror, the person that’s listening without legal experience, is so helpful,” he said.
“You need to see things the way they see them so you can shape your case to fit their expectations.”
Seven months ago, Malec and Sullivan decided their retirement gig warranted a business card.
Depicted as caricatures designed by Malec’s girlfriend, the two give wide grins.
“CRIMINAL COURT OBSERVERS,” the card reads.
“Opinions given upon request.”
Malec’s knee replacement means she fails the walk-through metal detector every time.
So she spreads her feet wide and stretches her arms like a star as a deputy scans her with a security wand.
“Literally, it’s like seeing our co-workers,” she says.
Sullivan’s first stop is always the restroom.
At an empty reception desk, Malec thumbs through a 30-page binder listing the day’s courthouse schedule.
Fridays are a grab bag: plea deals, pretrials and status checks.
A young man in a zip-up hoodie approaches.
“You know how to do this?”
he asks, looking at the binder.
Malec helps him find his last name among the hundreds of defendants.
“You are in Courtroom Two,” she says.
Fourth floor.
Felony cases.
“You’re supposed to be there by 8:30.”
It’s 9:05 a.m.
Malec and Sullivan spend most of their time on the fourth floor watching trials, which typically take place Tuesdays through Thursdays.
Courtrooms have long offered free entertainment.
Trials in the Roman Republic were held in the forum, or central marketplace.
“You couldn’t not see legal activity going on in Rome,” said Leanne Bablitz, a professor of Roman history at The University of British Columbia.
“If it’s some big muckety-muck getting tried for some case, your lower-class people might want to see his dirty laundry get washed in front of everyone.”
In the U.S., the First and Sixth amendments guarantee public access to most criminal court proceedings.
The public has taken advantage.
A sensational 1854 murder case in Cincinnati drew an audience so large spectators crowded behind the judge’s bench.
One woman took the judge’s seat, “compelling him to stand up a large portion of the time,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
In the first half of the 19th century, daily newspapers clipped trials down to the essentials.
Then radio, and later TV and the internet, offered even shorter soundbites and summaries of major cases.
And now, audiences can watch virtually on programs like Court TV.
Another 20th-century change deterred the public from trials.
“Mostly, they grew less exciting,” writes Stuart Banner of the University of California Los Angeles Law School in “Trials and Other Entertainment.”
Two centuries ago, trials consisted mostly of witness testimony — people telling stories.
Judges and jurors joined attorneys in questioning witnesses.
Today’s jurors sit quietly for hours as expert witnesses explain technicalities of forensic science, like how a hair follicle’s age affects the accuracy of a DNA test.
“It is an ordeal to sit through a whole trial today, in a way that wasn’t true a couple of centuries ago,” Banner writes.
Backdoor plea deals have largely replaced trials.
The vast majority of criminal cases never make it that far.
Nationwide, about 95% of state convictions result from pleas, according to the American Bar Association.
The outcomes are no less significant.
In his two-decade tenure as a 6th Judicial Circuit Court judge, Siracusa estimates he’s handed down quarter-century sentences to more than 600 people, and life sentences to at least 150 others.
“It is tough to take people’s lives away from them,” he said from his bench after his docket cleared on a recent Friday.
“And I have to do it every day.”
A day in the life
Malec and Sullivan bound down the fourth floor hallway.
Their sneakers and pragmatic attire, hiking pants for Sullivan and gym shorts for Malec, contrast with the click-clacking high heels of passing attorneys who carry armfuls of documents.
“Let’s go to, wanna go to LaBruzzo?”
Sullivan asks.
“Where are we going?”
Malec says.
“LaBruzzo,” Sullivan repeats, “the one that wants you to sketch him.”
At her retirement party, Malec, 60, fielded suggestions for activities that would keep her out of the bar.
Sullivan’s wife recommended she check out the local court.
The hobby stuck, and evolved.
Malec, a former firewall security engineer at AT&T, started sketching courtroom scenes.
She and Sullivan, 62, enrolled in the Sheriff’s Citizens Academy, a 10-week course that includes shooting 50 rounds at a firing range and a car chase.
Sullivan, a retired inventory controller at a medical equipment company and true crime enthusiast, finished the advanced class, making her eligible to ride along with police forensics teams.
In the public gallery of Judge Christopher LaBruzzo’s courtroom, they sit among a dozen people.
The warm air smells of body odor and cigarettes.
A 24-year-old agrees to a plea deal on charges of choking his girlfriend and throwing her mother to the ground.
A pastor in baby blue plaid slacks and a matching vest stands to ask the judge if the defendant can do community service at church.
LaBruzzo agrees.
The week prior, Malec and Sullivan sat through a three-day murder trial.
Today, defendants come and go before the judge in minutes.
Most say little beyond a muted “yes, sir” or “no, sir.”
Over the last 18 months, Malec and Sullivan have learned to follow negotiations that at times confuse defendants.
“Alright, Mr.
White, would you like to enter a plea today?”
LaBruzzo asks a new defendant standing before him.
“No, sir,” the man says.
A lawyer approaches the lectern where his client stands, puts a hand on the man’s shoulder and whispers in his ear.
LaBruzzo repeats his question.
This time, the answer is yes.
“The plea is your decision,” LaBruzzo says.
“I just got to make sure that whatever you’re doing is knowing and voluntary, and you understand what’s going on here today.”
Sullivan and Malec duck into the courtroom of Judge Philippe Matthey, where a woman in orange jail scrubs stands alone before the judge.
“I’ve been locked in jail for seven months,” her voice echoes off the walls of the near-empty courtroom.
“I’m not trying to sit here and hold trial right now but, I mean, this is just crazy.”
Within minutes, another defendant replaces her.
Lawyers discuss points and guidelines.
A woman in the gallery whimpers.
Finally, a 61-year-old man in a wheelchair faces Matthey.
Graying hair covers the “Pinellas County Jail” stamped across the back of his orange jumpsuit.
Methamphetamine possession.
Driving with a suspended license.
Violated probation.
Ninety days in jail.
A deputy wheels him away.
The last audience member aside from Sullivan and Malec, a white-haired woman in the pews, slumps and puts her head in her hands.
Sunlight, the best disinfectant
Mike’s, a nearby Italian restaurant frequented by deputies, has become their second home.
Over unlimited refills of unsweetened iced tea and slices of pizza — pepperoni for Malec and sausage for Sullivan — the pair discuss cases.
So far, they say they have accurately predicted the outcomes of every jury trial they have observed.
Sometimes, prosecutors convince them of a defendant’s guilt.
Then at the end of the trial, the judge reads the jury instructions.
“We will sit there and go, ‘OK.’
And change our mind,” Sullivan said.
“We may not like it, but it is what it is.
That’s the law.”
The last decade has seen a rise in organized court watching, when activist groups attend hoping their presence will affect the outcome, said Simonson, the Brooklyn College law professor.
Simonson shadowed Court Watch NYC, a group whose members fill pews in matching shirts like Pinellas’ animal rights courtwatching group.
Court Watch NYC has not accomplished their ultimate goal of abolishing prisons, but Simonson said their presence makes a “palpable” difference.
“The judge knows they’re being watched.
The prosecutor knows they’re being listened to,” she said.
Philadelphia Bail Watch, an activist court watching group, found their presence at bail hearings reduced the instances of cash bail, meaning magistrates opted instead to release people without requiring them to pay.
Sullivan and Malec, meanwhile, arrive as blank slates.
“I don’t get any inkling of bias,” said Assistant State Attorney Alexandra Spadaro.
“They come and they watch and they learn and are supportive.”
The way Malec and Sullivan see it, everyone in Pinellas County has a stake in the courthouse.
Sullivan remembers the trial of a man convicted of murder after he sold a fatal dose of fentanyl.
The victim died in a Home Depot bathroom — the same Home Depot where Sullivan shops.
“It’s the streets that you travel,” she said.
Injustice drives Sullivan bonkers.
She stopped watching the news, she said, because it makes her too upset.
As federal institutions buckle under the weight of partisan fighting, the humdrum work of a state circuit court can be reassuring.
“Justice is being served in these four walls,” she said.
Speakers
9speakers21%attributed speech1,389writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageNathan Vonderheide
19 attributed words5.2% of attributed speech19% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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