By Lasisi Olagunju
He was just a municipal court judge in a US city. Some years ago, he was asked: “In your 38 years of sitting on the bench, is there a case you still think about today?” This judge looked up, and did not hesitate before answering yes, there was a case, and he told the story:
“I get upset even thinking about it. I felt crumbled at that moment. I’ve never forgotten that (case) up to this day and I was on the bench for 38 years… It was my first day on the bench. I asked my dad, I said ‘dad why don’t you come down and view me, I am sitting on the bench today for the first time.’ A woman came before me who had three kids. She owed, I think, $300 in parking tickets. And she said ‘I just can’t pay the money, I don’t have the money.’ And I said ‘maybe I can place you on a payment programme.’ She said ‘you can place me on a payment programme but I can’t pay anyway.’ So, I said, ‘okay, the fine is $300, see the clerk. If you don’t pay, the car is going to be booted.’
“The court is over and I said ‘Dad, how did I do?’ He said ‘Frank, that woman, you failed her.’ I said ‘dad, she was arrogant, she was rude.’ He said ‘she was scared. You should have talked to her, you should have understood her problem; you can’t treat people like that, Frank.’ And, I can tell you without fear of contradiction, it never happened again after that. Never.”
Judge Frank Caprio of Providence, United States, was that judge. Several headlines hailed him as “the nicest judge in the world” as he passed away at age 88 on Wednesday, last week (August 20, 2025). His official social media accounts which announced his passing said he “passed away peacefully” after “a long and courageous battle with pancreatic cancer.”
If you are an Internet-captured person as I am, your addiction must have included hours watching Judge Caprio’s hit TV show ‘Caught in Providence.’ The show documents the latter years of his career which ended when he retired in 2023. You watch him episode after episode, you see law and empathy meshing with compassion to deliver justice.
The Economic Times reported the case of a single mother who appeared before Caprio with her child for a speeding ticket. The judge asked the child to give the appropriate sentence for the mum. The child suggested “five days in jail.” The court heard the child and burst into great laughter. Judge Caprio dismissed the case.
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Gulf News published what it called the man’s “five most humane cases that moved the world.” The cases, in Gulf News’ voice and words, are summarised here: “A young motorist who was caught running a red light argued that the signal changed suddenly. Judge Caprio, upon learning the defendant was a high school student with dreams of college, decided to waive the violation on the condition the student must graduate from college. A father was charged with speeding 10mph over the limit. Judge Caprio called the defendant’s son to give a verdict on his father’s guilt. The boy admitted his father was guilty with no hesitation. Instead of punishing the father, the judge praised the boy’s honesty and dismissed the case. A man, Jose Barrientos, was ticketed for parking near a fire hydrant while his son picked him up from hospital after a brain surgery. After hearing the emotional context, Judge Caprio immediately dismissed the ticket and inquired about Jose’s health. A veteran pleaded guilty to parking illegally near a VA hospital. Judge Caprio acknowledged the parking challenges veterans face and commended the defendant for service. Recognising the fine as too harsh, he dismissed the ticket and all fees. A woman received a ticket for parking two minutes early before allowed hours. Judge Caprio found the violation absurd and playfully threatened jail but then dismissed the case, sparking laughter in court.”
The Irish Sun newspaper recalled one of his gracious moments on the Bench: “He received multiple Daytime Emmy Award nominations and left social media users in tears for the way he handled a speeding ticket involving a 96-year-old Victor Colella. Colella appeared in an episode of Caprio’s show and was in court, representing himself, after being fined for speeding in a school zone. Caprio immediately dismissed Colella’s case after the elderly man explained to him that he was not a fast driver, and was only driving to take his 63-year-old son, who is handicapped, to get his blood work because he had cancer. ‘You are a good man. You really are what America is all about. Here you are in your 90s and you’re still taking care of your family. That’s just a wonderful thing for you,’ Caprio told Colella in admiration.”
On Instagram, the man had 3.4 million followers. On that platform, he shared stories of spectacular compassion and of mercy around the world. It is there I saw one of his quotes: “Kindness is the verdict I hope we all deliver more often.”
Watch his videos. The man sits a very patient judge. Justice Kayode Eso, late respected jurist and man of erudition, in his ‘The Mystery Gunman’ (1996) submits that ‘patience’ is one of the great attributes required of a judge sitting nisi prius. He says: “Patience in this context should never be confused with slow thinking. A trial court judge has to be endowed with a lot of patience. He listens to sense and nonsense with equanimity. His mind analyses the evidence simultaneously with watching the demeanor of witnesses…When the right judge is not in the right court, justice is never done.” (page 170-171). The American judge had patience in great abundance and it was manifestly deployed in service of justice.
In life, Caprio was celebrated across the world; in death, he came alive as a global hero. BBC’s announcement of his death came with the headline “Nicest judge in the world Frank Caprio dies aged 88′; The Guardian says ‘Frank Caprio, US judge who found fame online for his compassion, dies aged 88.’ The Associated Press and the CNN say: ‘Frank Caprio, Rhode Island judge who drew a huge online audience with his compassion, dies at age 88.’ The New York Times says: ‘Frank Caprio, Kind Judge on Rhode Island TV, Dies at 88.’ An online commenter said: “This is how men leave their mark on history… The date of birth and death does not matter as much as what is in between!”
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Caprio’s trademark phrase is: “I don’t wear a badge under my robe. I wear a heart.” In him, we find that judicial systems thrive when they temper rules with the most humane of the spirit of man. Nigerian judges can learn that integrating empathy into adjudication nurtures public trust and humanises the legal system. They can learn more from Caprio. The American judge did not run a rat race to be richer than the world’s richest. He did not set out for it, but he got a trophy richer than the treasures of Mansa Musa and King Solomon put together. He died as “the world’s nicest judge.” It is not likely that history will ever forget his humanity.
His story is almost identical with that of a judge who lived ten centuries ago in China. Bao Zheng (999–1062) dispensed justice fairly and evenly. He condemned the lowly of the low who erred just as he sentenced the Emperor’s family members who sinned. Dutch scholar, Sinologist and emeritus professor at Havard, Wilt L. Idema, in 2009 wrote ‘Judge Bao and the Rule of Law’. In that piece, Idema sums up Bao’s story in these words: “Pure, orthodox and incorruptible, Judge Bao has been serving as the preeminent embodiment of justice in China for almost a thousand years, so much so his court cases have been adapted as stories, novels and plays over the centuries.”
In Nigeria, our lawyers are currently meeting in Enugu. They call their congregation ‘Annual General Conference.’ Whatever the theme of their meeting is, I feel they should tell themselves and inform one another that the darkest hour of the judiciary since 1960 is now. They should ask why it is not possible to have a Caprio or a Bao in Nigeria and why, in recent times, almost every (political) decision that comes out of our courts is caught in the web of deliberate ambiguity and vagueness. What kind of judiciary feels no horror that court judgments are so capriciously ambivalent such that victories in them are claimed by both plaintiffs and defendants?
I wonder how both lawyers and judges felt when they heard the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar, yesterday (Sunday) at the NBA conference, saying what everybody is saying: the integrity of the judicial system is being undermined by corruption, and justice is being sold to the highest bidder. He said: “Today, justice is increasingly becoming a purchasable commodity, and the poor are becoming victims of this kind of justice, while the rich commit all manner of crime and walk the streets scot-free.”
There is a trending excerpt from General Olusegun Obasanjo’s new book where he declares Nigeria’s judiciary as being “deeply compromised.” There is nothing new in what the former president wrote. Indeed, more than one lawyer have told me that they are afraid to go to court in this era because they are no longer sure that law and facts have a place in our courts; they are horrified that certainty and predictability of the law have taken a flight from our judiciary.
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Obasanjo, in his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, is quoted by a Nigerian news website, the Cable, as lamenting the “steady decline of the judiciary’s integrity” while ramming in this: “I went to a state in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings. The governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals.” Obasanjo concludes that part with a warning that “where justice is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope.”
I have serving and retired judges as friends. They are as embarrassed as hell with what we have as judiciary in 2025 Nigeria. They all believe that the house has fallen.
Our lawyers are meeting in Enugu as a body, the NBA. I have heard some members of that association dismissing the conference as a mere jamboree. They may be wrong. And they will be wrong if the conference comes out with a definite cure for the ailments of our courts. If judges are the problem, they were lawyers before they became judges. The Yoruba say a bad head did not become bad in just one day; they say rot is always gradual and incremental. Now, because the courts are rotten, no one is safe; no business has rest of mind; and no position or property is secure. The courts have become as capricious as magicians; they conjure decisions to the shock of facts and the law.
Robert H. Jackson was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1953 when he published his ‘The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary’. In it, Jackson urges “that the lawyer, as a leader of public opinion, can do no greater service to our institutions than to see that the people are repeatedly warned and kept everlastingly aware that they must be their own guardians of liberty and that they cannot thrust that whole task on a handful of judges.”
Some Nigerians reading that quote will hiss. They will say our judges and lawyers are Siamese twins in behaviour and misbehavour. Lord Denning says as much in his ‘Road to Justice’: “It is the lawyers who have made the law what it is.” If we agree that lawyers are as guilty as the judges in the eclipse of the sun of justice in Nigeria, can we, therefore, re-examine the training process of lawyers and the recruitment process of judges? If we agree with Sean Kierkegaard that “life can only be understood backwards” then we must be ready to learn from those who had been here and who made life better than they met it. If there are persons among Nigerian judges and lawyers who still read, I suggest they consult Justice Kayode Eso on pages 169 to 171 of his book cited earlier here. He has some nuggets there on how we got it wrong and what should inform appointment of judges in Nigeria.
The United States had Frank Caprio, the nicest judge in the whole world. China had Bao Zheng, pure, orthodox and incorruptible. We also had a golden, glorious past before the affliction of today. If we will get it right again, we have to bleach dirt out of the Bar and drain the swamp of the Bench.
