The case now brewing in a Baltimore court centers on an alleged injustice: inhumane conditions at the city jail that exposed inmates to potentially deadly conditions. And although judges usually don't act as whistle-blowers, that's exactly what Charlotte M. Cooksey did.

It's also indicative of the activism she has shown throughout her career as Baltimore's longest-sitting District Court judge, a player in the city's judicial system who often has taken it upon herself to make bold and sometimes unpopular decisions.

In late July, Cooksey entered the windowless Women's Detention Center on East Eager Street that housed 576 women awaiting trial. She was outraged to see women sweltering in their cells, and labeled the conditions "sickening" and demanded reports on the health of everyone confined inside.

She had heard stories from public defenders, who argued at bail hearings that their clients were suffering at the Baltimore women's jail. So Cooksey, who presided over the hearings, decided to visit the jail and see for herself.

"The only experience I can compare it to which most people share is getting in a car that's been parked for several hours in the sun without being able to open a window," says Cooksey, 55. "It was such a dramatic, urgent matter, it required, in my judgment, immediate steps."

The heat of summer has given way to the crisp cool of fall, but the case pending before Cooksey is active in the courts. Litigators are seeking a middle ground as they negotiate a document that deals with medical and mental health care practices for Baltimore women detainees awaiting trial.

The steps she took were unorthodox, because a city judge would seem not to have jurisdiction to make sweeping changes to a state-run jail. But Cooksey's demand for health reports touched off a wave of changes in the jail - and perhaps in the state system overseeing prisoner health care.

"The advice was asked and given," Cooksey said. "The recipient didn't agree."

Early influences

The jail cells at the Women's Detention Center are a long way from the homes along Prytania Street in New Orleans where Cooksey was raised and attended a private girls school. But for a woman who has undertaken one social cause after another - starting with her work as a lawyer for Legal Aid and the cases she worked on as one of Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" VISTA attorneys - the change of venue is of little importance.

Cooksey has been a crusader of sorts in her career, which isn't surprising, considering that her early life in New Orleans was influenced by a family friend of note - the late Judge John Minor Wisdom. Wisdom, whose family vacationed with Cooksey's family when she was a girl, had played a profound role in some of the South's most important desegregation rulings.

Wisdom was not one to back down from fighting perceived injustice. He ordered the doors of the University of Mississippi - "Ole Miss"- opened to black student James Meredith in 1962, a decision that caused such public furor that the National Guard had to be called in.

Rattlesnakes were thrown into Wisdom's yard, and two of his pet dogs were poisoned in failed efforts to intimidate him. But he never wavered from his stance that segregation "was just plain wrong," as he put it.

Cooksey said she finds Wisdom's resolve unforgettable.

"I had a lot of exposure to him as a courageous judge and a key figure in desegregation cases in the South," she recalls. "He was very much an inspiration."

Cooksey's judicial zeal was especially evident in recent months as the women's jail issue played out. The American Civil Liberties Union joined the fray after jail temperatures soared as high as 110 degrees, 10 degrees hotter than the temperature outdoors.

A month later, by Aug. 31, the Women's Detention Center was under a federal court order from Judge J. Frederick Motz to install air conditioning for up to 210 women, and to offer medical screenings for detainees with certain health problems.

At the same time, a Justice Department civil rights division report criticized unhealthy conditions for men and women in Baltimore's jails and linked them to several deaths in 2000, making Cooksey's actions all the more timely.

Critics, supporters

Cooksey has been criticized by some state officials who think her aim is to provide unrealistic health care conditions for detainees and prisoners. But most in the civil-rights arena say her actions helped address some basic social wrongs at the jail.

"It is obvious that she took her obligation quite seriously and rightly sees her duties as enforcing the Constitution," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU national prison project. "I can't think of any case like it. The Cooksey proceedings played a critical role in bringing detention center conditions to public attention."

Those in judicial circles say the action Cooksey took is unusual and far-reaching for a local District Court judge. Reforming prison conditions is traditionally more the purview of the federal courts, said Baltimore County District Judge Robert J. Steinberg, who appeared before her many times as a lawyer and characterizes her conduct on the bench as "compassionate, no-nonsense, level and businesslike."

Skeptics counter that Cooksey is pointing Maryland jail and prison authorities toward health coverage the public has no interest in supporting.

"Is it the court's intent for the Baltimore City Detention Center to become the de facto public health hospital for the city of Baltimore?" said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., chief spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. "Understand it will come at a huge cost."

'Underserved' group

Cooksey makes no apologies for taking on the issue of heat in the women's jail. She said she sees it as a core medical care issue in the state correctional sector.

"The excessive heat just highlighted some of the difficulties in medical service delivery," she said. "The population of women behind bars is dramatically increasing, and they are clearly underserved in the correctional system."

Cooksey acknowledges that the correctional system is under stress - but said she doesn't think it is overburdened to the extent that depriving inmates of civil liberties should be necessary.

"Unfortunately, the prison system has become the repository of many physically and mentally ill people," she said. "However, when individuals are confined, they have basic rights to adequate care."

In legal circles, Cooksey is known for such straight talk. She also is known to have a social conscience that is sympathetic to those who cannot afford legal services - such as abused children, the poor, the incarcerated, the mentally ill and retarded.

Those moral predispositions were shaped by her younger days as a lawyer for Legal Aid, the Justice Department and VISTA, the 1960s domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps. She came to Baltimore to work for VISTA as a member of the idealistic baby boomer generation that thought it could change the world.

She also was a juvenile master here for four years before her appointment to the Baltimore District Court bench in 1983, at age 35.

Cooksey is one of the first wave of female judges in Baltimore and the nation. She said women's issues always have been important to her.

"There were two women in my law school class, and they didn't teach women's issues," Cooksey said, recalling her student years at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. "My interest in women's issues and incarcerated women has grown through the years."

In the Southern police district courtroom, she rules on cases involving nonviolent chronic offenders - the sort of people unlikely to make bail and therefore end up in jail. There she is on easy speaking terms with prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves and police officers alike, having become a community presence as the only and the last judge in Baltimore to hold court the old-fashioned way, out of a police district building.

'She took the time'

On a recent weekday morning, Cooksey heard domestic violence cases, often dispensing a few words of advice amid the restraining orders.

When a Pimlico resident, Mary Wharton, said city police brushed off her complaints, Cooksey responded, "Well, we're going to take care of that."

Wharton, 55, said afterward, "She took the time. Some [judges] brush you off and don't have a lot of talk for you."

A fellow Baltimore City District Judge, Kathleen M. Sweeney, says, "Charlotte takes care of the forgotten people and tries to educate the rest of the bench. She has taken upon herself to deal with cases from the mentally ill population. ... She is tenacious, not shy about taking on hard problems."

In her office, Cooksey tells a tale on herself, an urban myth on the South Baltimore streets that circulates as a way of explaining her soft and hard edges.

"Not just defendants but people in the [social service] agencies know, don't mess with Judge Cooksey," she said. "And there's a myth that I had a daughter who became a drug addict, and then she was murdered, and that's why my hair turned white. ... Word has traveled."

For the record, she is unmarried, has no children and lives in Canton. Amid diplomas in her austere office, a sense of fun shines through: On her computer screen in bold capital letters are the words JUDGE DIVA, followed by two exclamation points.