A congressman called Judge Caprio mid-hearing — and got put on speaker for the whole courtroom He tried to make a parking ticket case “disappear” for a young man… but the judge wasn’t having it. | HO

A congressman called Judge Caprio mid-hearing — and got put on speaker for the whole courtroom He tried to make a parking ticket case “disappear” for a young man… but the judge wasn’t having it. | HO

A veteran Rhode Island judge has revealed how a routine parking ticket hearing turned into a dramatic confrontation with political power — after a sitting United States congressman called his courtroom mid-proceeding to ask for special treatment for a defendant, only to be publicly dressed down on the record and told exactly how he could actually help.

Judge Frank Caprio, who has presided over Providence’s municipal court for 36 years, said he has never been afraid of power.

He has had lawyers try to intimidate him. He has had wealthy men try to charm him. He has watched people walk into his courtroom believing that money or status or connections would change what happened to them.

‘They were always wrong,’ Caprio said.

But even after nearly four decades on the bench, he was not prepared for what happened that Wednesday morning — a phone call in the middle of an active hearing from a sitting United States congressman asking him to make a case disappear.

The young man at the center of it all was Deshawn Carter, 24 years old.

He came to the podium in a blue work uniform, clean and pressed but worn at the elbows, carrying a folder with papers organized neatly inside.

‘That told me something right away,’ Caprio recalled. ‘He’d prepared. He’d taken this seriously.’

Carter’s charge was simple: five parking tickets over four months, all in the same area near St. Augustine Medical Center in Providence. Total fines with penalties had grown to nearly $900. He couldn’t pay, so he came to court.

‘Your honor, I’m not here to say I didn’t do it,’ Carter told the judge. ‘I parked in those spots. I know that. But I’d like to explain why, if that’s all right.’

Caprio told him to go ahead.

Carter worked the overnight shift at the hospital in patient transport, moving people from rooms to imaging to surgery. He started at 10 p.m. and finished at 6 a.m.

‘The employee lot is about a quarter mile from the entrance,’ he explained. ‘The path between is not lit well at all. There have been two incidents near that lot in the past year, both at night. I’m not going to walk through there alone at 2 in the morning to get to my car. So I’ve been parking on the street nearby. I know it’s permit parking. I didn’t have another answer.’

Caprio studied him.

‘Have you reported the safety concern to the hospital?’

‘Three times, your honor, in writing twice. Nothing changed.’

The judge asked about the tickets. Carter explained he hadn’t been able to pay them when they were issued.

‘I send money home to my grandmother every month,’ he said. ‘She raised me after my mother passed. She’s 71 and has diabetes. The money helps with her medications and groceries. What’s left over I use for my rent and bus fare. $900 — that’s more than a month of my take-home pay.’

Caprio sat back and let that settle.

‘This is the part of my job that I don’t think people understand,’ he later reflected. ‘When they picture a courtroom, they picture arguments. They picture lawyers in suits making clever points. They picture dramatic rulings. But most of what I do is listen. Really listen to the story underneath the paperwork, to the human being standing behind the charge.’

He was about to speak when Officer Reyes, his bailiff, appeared at his side.

‘Judge, there’s a phone call for you,’ Reyes said quietly. ‘They say it’s urgent. It’s regarding this case.’

Caprio frowned. He had taken perhaps four phone calls during active hearings in 36 years — all genuine emergencies involving safety situations or hospital matters.

‘Who’s calling?’ he asked.

Reyes lowered his voice further. ‘He says he’s Congressman Gerald Booth, sir, from the district office.’

The courtroom was small enough that people heard. Heads turned. Carter’s eyes went wide with something between confusion and alarm.

Congressman Gerald Booth had represented the district for 11 years. Caprio had met him twice at civic functions. A friendly man. Good at shaking hands and saying the right things in the right rooms.

What Caprio could not imagine was why he was calling during a parking ticket hearing.

But he had learned something over the years: when something feels wrong, shine a light on it.

‘Put him through on the speaker,’ Caprio said. ‘I want the record to capture this conversation in full.’

A smooth, confident voice filled the courtroom.

‘Judge Caprio, thank you for taking a moment. I’ll be brief. I understand you have a young man named Deshawn Carter before you this morning. I know Deshawn — good kid, works hard. I’ve spoken with some folks at the hospital about the parking situation there, and I just wanted to put in a word. This is the kind of case where a little flexibility could go a long way. I think we both know this young man deserves a break.’

The room was completely silent.

Caprio took a long, slow breath.

‘Congressman,’ he said carefully, ‘I want to make sure we’re all clear on a few things. This call is being recorded as part of the official court record. Mr. Carter is standing right here and can hear everything you’ve said. Is there anything you’d like to reconsider before continuing?’

A brief pause.

‘No, no, I stand by what I said. Deshawn’s a good person, and I just want to make sure he’s treated fairly.’

‘I see,’ Caprio said. ‘And how do you know Mr. Carter?’

‘Well, I know of him. The hospital staff spoke highly of him.’

‘So you don’t know him personally?’

‘Not personally, no.’

‘Have you reviewed the actual case file?’

‘I’ve been briefed on the general situation.’

Caprio’s voice remained level, calm.

‘Congressman, let me ask you something directly. In all your years representing this district, how many times have you called a judge during a hearing to advocate for a constituent?’

A pause. Longer this time.

‘I make calls on behalf of constituents regularly to judges during active hearings.’

He didn’t answer the question.

‘Because I want to be precise,’ Caprio continued. ‘What you have done this morning is call a sitting municipal court judge during a live proceeding with the defendant present to suggest how I should rule. I want you to hear me say that clearly so there is no confusion about what has occurred here.’

‘Judge, I think you’re reading too much into a friendly call.’

Caprio’s voice changed. Everyone in the courtroom heard it change.

‘Congressman, I have been on this bench since before some of these people in my gallery were born. I have presided over tens of thousands of cases. I have never, not once, taken a call like this one. Because calls like this one are not friendly. They are pressure. They are a person with power suggesting politely that power should influence a legal proceeding. And it doesn’t matter how polite the suggestion is. What it is is wrong.’

Carter was staring at the phone on the bench. His face was hard to read. Part of him, Caprio thought, had a moment of hope when he heard a congressman had called on his behalf — the way any of us might feel if someone powerful stepped in to help.

But then something else moved across his face. Discomfort. Almost shame.

‘Your honor, I need to say something,’ Carter said, raising his hand slightly.

‘Go ahead, son.’

‘I didn’t ask anyone to make that call. I don’t know how the congressman even knew I was here today. I don’t want — I don’t want to win this way. I came here to explain myself and let you decide. That’s all I wanted.’

Caprio looked at him for a long moment.

This young man working nights, sending money to his grandmother, filing written complaints about a dangerous parking lot, standing here in a pressed work uniform with a folder of organized documents.

‘This young man has more dignity right now than the congressman on the phone,’ Caprio later reflected.

‘I know you didn’t ask for it,’ the judge told Carter. ‘And that matters.’

He turned back to the speaker.

‘Congressman Booth, I’m going to close this call now. But before I do, I want to say one more thing, and I want every person in this courtroom to hear it.’

‘Go ahead, Judge.’

‘If you truly want to help the Deshawn Carters of this district, I’ll tell you exactly how to do it. Don’t call judges. Fix the parking lot. Put in the lights. Add security to that path from the hospital entrance to the employee lot. Work with the city on permit parking solutions for night shift health care workers who have no other options. That’s what a public servant does. That’s the work. Making one phone call to try to make one set of tickets go away does nothing for the next young man or woman in the same situation. Do you understand the difference?’

A long silence.

‘I hear you, Judge.’

‘Good. This call is concluded and will be submitted as part of the court record. Goodbye, Congressman.’

Officer Reyes disconnected the line.

The courtroom was quiet for a moment. Then someone in the gallery started clapping. Another person joined. Caprio raised his hand for order and they stopped, but he understood it.

‘People are hungry,’ he said. ‘They are genuinely hungry to see someone with authority say that rules apply to everyone — that access and influence don’t quietly decide outcomes behind the scenes.’

He took a breath and turned fully to Carter.

‘Mr. Carter, I owe you an apology.’

Carter blinked. ‘Your honor?’

‘You came here today prepared to stand on your own — to explain yourself honestly and let the process work. And instead you got caught in the middle of something that had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics. That’s not fair to you, and I’m sorry it happened in this room.’

Carter pressed his lips together and nodded.

‘Now,’ Caprio said, ‘let’s talk about your actual case.’

He reviewed the file. Five tickets. Same block. All between midnight and 5 a.m. Photos showed a poorly lit stretch of sidewalk, construction fencing on one side, a gap between buildings on the other.

He asked the prosecutor if there was any prior record on Carter. None. He asked if the hospital had responded to his written parking complaints. No documentation of any response.

Caprio sat quietly for a moment, thinking about what justice actually looked like here. Not what a congressman wanted. Not what would look good. What was right.

‘Mr. Carter, here’s my ruling,’ he said. ‘I’m dismissing three of these five tickets. The reasons are these: you identified a genuine safety concern. You reported it properly through official channels. You received no response, and you had no reasonable alternative given your work hours and the conditions of that lot. The law allows me to consider circumstances, and these circumstances are real.’

Carter exhaled slowly.

‘However, I am not dismissing all five. You knew the signs were there. You made a choice, even if it was the best available one. Responsibility still matters. So you will pay the remaining two tickets. I’m reducing each one to $75. That’s $150 total on a payment plan of $20 a month. Can you manage that?’

‘Yes, your honor. Absolutely.’

Caprio paused.

‘Now, I want to ask you something personal. Your grandmother — what’s her name?’

Carter softened immediately. ‘Lorraine, sir.’

‘How is she doing?’

‘She has good days and hard days. The diabetes is managed, but it takes a lot. She doesn’t complain, though.’ He smiled a little. ‘Never has.’

‘She sounds like a remarkable woman.’

‘She’s everything, your honor.’

Caprio reached into his desk.

He kept a small discretionary fund for moments like this — contributions from community members over the years who wanted to help in quiet ways. He wrote a voucher for $250 made out to Carter.

‘This is not from the court,’ he said, handing it down to Officer Reyes to pass forward. ‘This comes from a fund contributed by people in this community who believe in helping their neighbors. I want you to use this for Lorraine’s medications this month. And I want you to give her a message from me.’

Carter was holding the voucher carefully, like it might dissolve.

‘Tell her she raised someone worth being proud of. Tell her that a judge in Providence said so.’

Deshawn Carter, 24 years old, overnight hospital worker, grandson, looked down at that voucher and completely fell apart.

Not loudly — he was too composed for that. But tears came, and he didn’t try to stop them. He just stood there and let them fall, nodded, and pressed his hand to his chest.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Two months later, Caprio received a letter from the administration of St. Augustine Medical Center.

Following contact from Congressman Booth’s office and a separate inquiry initiated by the court, they had completed a safety assessment of the employee parking area. Improved lighting had been installed along the full path between the building and the lot. A security escort system for overnight staff had been established. A block of closer parking had been designated specifically for employees working between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The letter thanked the court for bringing the matter to their attention.

At the bottom, someone had added a handwritten note. It wasn’t signed with a full name — just initials and a department: ‘Patient transport, third floor. We all thank you.’

Caprio also heard from Carter directly about four months after the hearing.

A short note written by hand on plain paper.

‘Your honor, I wanted you to know that Grandma Lorraine is doing well. The new parking setup at work has made everything easier. I sleep better knowing I’m not choosing between safety and my job. I told her what you said. She cried. Then she made me write this letter because she said, “A man like that deserves to know his words landed.” Thank you for seeing me. Not the case. Me.’

Caprio has thought about that phone call many times since that morning.

He thought about what would have happened if he had taken it privately — if he had listened to a friendly voice make a friendly suggestion and quietly adjusted his ruling. Nobody would have known. The congressman would have felt like he’d done a good deed. Carter might have walked out with all five tickets dismissed and never known why.

And the next overnight worker at that hospital — the one without a congressman making calls — would have stood in that same courtroom with the same situation and gotten a completely different result.

‘That’s the rot that starts when we let influence into the room,’ Caprio said. ‘It doesn’t announce itself. It comes in quietly, wrapped in the language of helping, of advocating, of doing someone a favor. And then justice stops being justice. It becomes a game where the outcome depends on who’s playing, not what’s right.’

He recalled his father, who came to this country speaking almost no English and worked in a textile factory for 22 years. He believed, deeply believed, that this country offered something rare in the world: the idea that you could stand before the law and be treated the same as anyone else.

‘That idea is fragile,’ Caprio said. ‘It has to be protected every single day. Every time a judge takes a phone call and lets it change a ruling, that idea gets smaller. Every time someone in power makes a quiet call and gets a quiet result, ordinary people lose a little more faith that the system works for them, too.’

He wasn’t going to let that happen in his courtroom. Not that day. Not any day.

‘Deshawn Carter didn’t need a congressman,’ Caprio said. ‘He needed a judge who would listen, who would look at the full picture, who would apply the law with both firmness and humanity. That’s not a special favor. That’s the job.’

Representatives for Congressman Gerald Booth did not respond to requests for comment. The congressman remains in office, representing Rhode Island’s district.

As Caprio put it: ‘Justice isn’t a complicated word. It just means that when you walk through that door, what happens to you depends on the facts, the law, and your character — not on your bank account, not on your connections, not on who picked up a phone that morning.

‘If we protect that, we protect something worth protecting. If we let it erode quietly, one favor at a time, we lose something that’s very hard to get back.’