A one-woman cleaning army: How a Charlotte court goes on through the pandemic
Georgette Charles is a one-woman army in a one-of-a-kind effort by the federal courthouse in Charlotte to fight off the spread of COVID-19.
Each day, she takes the same seat in the back left corner of the same first-floor courtroom as the judges, lawyers, clerks and other courtroom staff gather for a series of hearings.
She says she pays particular attention to the defendants who mostly have been brought in from the Mecklenburg County Jail, and to members of the public who have ignored the judges’ pleas to stay home and who now take seats 6 feet apart throughout the visitor’s gallery.
Charles says she makes mental notes of who sits where, who touches what, who coughs, who wears masks and who doesn’t. Then, when the judge gavels the hearing to a close and the security staff begins emptying the courtroom, she springs.
Armed with a spray bottle and paper towels, the 52-year-old Huntersville resident wets down the tables, chairs and microphones with a chemical disinfectant so strong that she said she had to “dumb it down with a lemon scent because you want folks to be able to breathe.”
For luck and toward the end of her cleaning flurry, Charles fires a couple of shots of the cleaning spray into air to take down any passing bugs. All the towels she uses are put in sealed bags before being thrown away.
Only when her 15- to 20-minute cleaning cycle is complete does the judge call the next case. The process is repeated throughout the morning and, when needed, deep into the afternoon.
Falling back on old-school elbow grease to sanitize a room is not exactly a scientific breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus.
But U.S. Clerk of Court Frank Johns says the Western District of North Carolina, with main courthouses in Charlotte and Asheville, is the only federal judicial circuit in the country cleaning before and after all court activity to keep the wheels of justice pandemic-free.
The idea, Johns says, came from Chief U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney, who saw it as a way to further increase the safety of the courthouse’s slimmed-down judicial schedule.
Last week, Johns turned to George, a supervisor with the courthouse’s cleaning contractors who has worked in the building for 16 years. She started her additional duties on Monday.
At first, Charles said, she wondered if she was exposing herself to the disease.
“Then I thought, this is an opportunity for me to continue to take care of the people in this courthouse,” Charles told the Observer this week. “Not only them, but all the people who come here to do business.
“I’m honored. It’s important to me that they all remain healthy so they can get home to their families and take that healthiness with them.”
COVID-19 hits jails, prisons
As with most courthouses around the country, the western district has taken significant steps to fend off COVID-19. Johns and the judges have delayed dozens of hearings, juggled schedules and assigned staff to work at home. Last week, Whitney delayed all civil and criminal jury trials until at least June 1.
Whitney said the court activity that remains has been limited to one courtroom each day. Only essential hearings over custody and sentencing and protected rights of the defendants are heard.
While the judges have experimented with teleconferencing for certain matters, Whitney says they’ve found that basic courtroom interactions, such as confidential conversations between an attorney and a client, work best when both are in the same room.
The cleaning efforts by Charles, and her counterpart in Asheville , should make those gatherings safer, Johns says.
How much? Well, that’s still a concern.
“The problem is none of us have solid information to go on,” says Charlotte attorney Noell Tin, who’s scheduled to be in the courthouse later this month for a client’s sentencing hearing.
“On the one hand, cleaning between hearings is a very good thing for the courthouse to be doing. On the other hand, considering all that we don’t know about the coronavirus, we just don’t have enough information to feel comfortable.”
Charles said she felt that tension during her first day on the new job Monday.
“When you see all these people coming in the courtroom with masks and gloves on, or bundled up in layers of clothes, and attorneys are talking through these masks, it’s scary,” she said.
Both the state and federal criminal justice systems in the Charlotte region have largely escaped the virus so far, though a Mecklenburg Superior Court judge has tested positive for the disease, as has a jailer and nurse at the Mecklenburg jail.
Despite ongoing concerns about an outbreak at the county jail, none of the more than 1,400 state and federal inmates being held there have come down with the disease, the sheriff’s office says.
But the disease has made its present felt. The federal prison in Butner, north of Durham, has reported dozens of new cases. A courthouse security officer in Houston has already died.
Between all the wiping and spraying, Charles says her new duties have given her a greater appreciation for her workplace. While she’s cleaned the courtrooms for more than a decade, she’s never sat in on any of the proceedings before now.
She says many of her co-workers are now stopping her in the hallways to say thanks for what she’s doing.
‘Built for this’
U.S. Attorney Andrew Murray of Charlotte also issued a note of thanks.
“The job of protecting the public places the U.S. Attorney’s Office employees on the front lines next to dedicated law enforcement and court personnel,” he said. “We appreciate the court’s significant cleaning and sanitizing efforts to keep everyone as safe as feasibly possible.”
Charles says she’s happy to help.
“I tell them, ‘It’s OK y’all. I’ve got you. I’m here for you,’” she says. “I’m surrounded by a bunch of unique and cool individuals.”
For now, she says, they are all dealing with the unknown as best as they can.
“We’re troopers in here. We’re built for this,” she says. “And I guess I’m built for it, too.”
