What Did Frank Caprio's Father Say After Court?

Frank Caprio says his first day on the bench set the tone of a judgeship of over 30 years. From then on, he took everybody's personal situation into consideration when he imposed a sentence. He tried to find out what was really going on with the person, and he considered how a ruling would impact that person and the whole family.

Caprio got elected, put on the robe, and felt he had arrived. His father came to watch. A woman stood before him with a boot on her car. She owed a couple hundred dollars in tickets she could not pay, and she had four kids to get to school. Caprio would not take the boot off unless she paid. He continued the case and gave her a couple of days. After court, his father came into the chambers and asked how Caprio could do it. Suppose she could not feed the kids that night if she paid the tickets, and without a car she could not drive them to school. His father told him he was not brought up that way.

Mel Robbins says she thinks the woman was a gift. On page 110 of the book Caprio wrote, the lesson was that being a judge is much more about the person in front of you than it is about the law.