Judges Are Seeking Cover on The Bench

"He does have a temper."

"I was gonna fistfight him."

"I was done dirty."

Case after case -- 729 times last year alone -- Petrie is the one to make a decision that inevitably leaves someone upset. And although that has always been part of being a judge, the increase in hostile responses is changing the very nature of American courtrooms. Once universally accessible, the modern courthouse now features not just the Kevlar-reinforced benches and panic buttons, but camera monitors, walk-through magnetometers, X-ray scanners and, just in case all of those measures fail, "safe" rooms and detailed evacuation plans.

There are guides to making courthouses safer ("Are spectator seats solidly built and fastened to the floor?" asks one checklist. "Are public restrooms routinely searched?"), and there are measures to make judges feel safer, including a recent $12 million congressional appropriation for federal judges to install alarm systems in their homes.

"Obviously, had the Lefkow family had such a system at home, this horror could have been avoided," Joan Lefkow told the Senate Judiciary Committee when she testified in May. "We judges are grateful beyond words to this committee and the Congress for authorizing this appropriation so quickly after this latest tragedy."

In Danville, though, and in versions of Danville in every state, many courtrooms remain as open and accessible -- and unprotected -- as ever. Kentucky is not the richest of states, and Boyle County, where Danville is located and where the unemployment rate is 6.6 percent, is not the richest of counties.

It is instead a place with a courthouse built in 1862 that has county offices as well as court facilities inside, and multiple unguarded entrances. In that entrance? That's the sheriff, LeeRoy Hardin, who said, "Well if they'd give me a plate of money, we could solve the problem, but that ain't gonna happen."

In that entrance? That's the county executive, Tony Wilder, who said that he's reluctant to turn the courthouse into "a fortress" because the voters of Boyle County prefer "that small-town atmosphere when they come to the courthouse" -- even though one of those voters once mailed him his picture, cut from the newspaper, with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Six months after Petrie was targeted, there are still no magnetometers at the entrances, no scanners, no security cameras and no equivalent of the U.S. Marshals, only a sign inside the main entrance that says, "The possession of concealed weapons, even with proper permit, prohibited on this property."

"Literally, you could walk into this courthouse with a MAC-10 under your coat, and no one would know it until you pulled it out," said Circuit Court Judge Darren Peckler, whose courtroom and chambers are on the second floor.

Like Petrie, Peckler has a panic button within reach. "But the sheriff's office is only open till 4," he said, "so if you panic, panic before 4 o'clock."