WSB's Veronica Waters reports while Fulton County Superior Court Judge Marvin Arrington says the approach may have been a mistake, the message he wanted to deliver was not.

• WSB's Veronica Waters reports

  It happened last Thursday, March 27, during court proceedings. Arrington says when he walked out of his chambers and took his place on the bench, the crowd appeared to be "99.9 percent" black. Fed up with a parade of black defendants before him in his six years on the bench, the judge decided to talk privately with the suspects. He says there was nothing "racist" about telling the white lawyers to leave so he could talk pointedly to their clients.

  "I didn't want to appear to be condescending, talking them down," says Arrington. The judge, who points out that he grew up on Atlanta's inner-city streets decades ago, urged the crowd to take a hard look at their lives.

  "Get your life together, get in school, you can be a better you if you work hard," Arrington says was his message. "I essentially said the same thing to them that Bill Cosby said a year ago."

  Arrington says in retrospect, segregating the courtroom for those few minutes was a mistake, and that the next time he lectures those in his courtroom—this Thursday—he's inviting all comers to listen in.

  "My Sheriff said to me, 'Judge, that message should be given to everybody,'" says Arrington.

  Wednesday, 2 April 2008