Nah, they get a lot of bad press, but in real life your typical judge just guides things along. The real problem is the law. There must be 6 trillion pages of it. It needs to be scrapped and built anew.
No matter where you might stand on marijuana, I think everyone can agree there is something seriously wrong when a man in (forget the state) is facing more prison time for sharing a joint with a teenager than he would be looking at had he forcibly raped that same teenager. State legislatures are even worse than congress when it comes to special interests and cause celebres.
Hell in Texas, it's often jokingly said that you'll spend more time in jail for leaving a dog in a hot car than a child, and it's not far from the truth.
My son who is 19, was having words with the homosexual brother of a girlfriend a while back. I had to tell him to back off, because if he hurt a gay kid, among other things his picture might be plastered all over the newspaper.
T