Tuesday, June 15, 2004
As I drove to the courthouse yesterday evening, following my headlights to somewhere I didn’t want to go, it occurred to me I’d forgotten to talk with you. It’s a shameful oversight, this I know, but truth be told Muse was irrevocably lost. I had other things on my mind, and for some reason driving to the courthouse early seemed like a good idea, if only to prep myself for the real court date.
That court date was today and, I’m sorry to say, the first of a few. The courthouse took all those glorified images from The Practice, A Few Good Men, and Amistad and dashed them against the wall. My experience was more akin to a tasteless goulash combining the worst parts of the airport, the DMV, and a godless church.
The airport came to mind as soon as I stepped through the entrance and beheld X-ray scanners, metal detectors, and the whole shebang. After determining that I was sufficiently unarmed, the guards let me through and so began a glorious 90 minutes of “justice.” I won’t bore you with unnecessary detail, gentle reader, but it bears saying that I did a lot of waiting, the interminably boring kind you might practice at the DMV. It’s the kind of waiting that blunts anxiety and makes you doublethink your choices.
The waiting is made worse when you spend your time sitting on a hard, unforgiving pew circa Jonathan Edwards and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” except this was no church. A single glance across the room (along with some eavesdropping) was enough to tell a half-dozen stories, all of them dismal: DUI’s, failure to attend social service classes, impending deportation, stories with the same grinding ending.
On two occasions my assailant, whose name turned out to be Mario, sat no more than a few inches from me, once in the pew in front of me and once behind. I heard him mutter a few quasi-religious complaints and invoke the good Lord a few times, probably to himself, but maybe he did recognize me.
Anyway, it looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, since the defendant–a decidedly silly title for the aggressor–can enter a discovery period. According to the state’s attorney, this is a time for him and his lawyer to mull over new information. It’s also an excellent time for Mario to go on the lam.
“You know, witnesses usually say, ‘Heck, I lost a wallet, a purse, and I’ve replaced it since then.’ Maybe this isn’t worth the trouble,” said the attorney.
Am I going to drop the case simply out of inconvenience? Of course not. I don’t know what this constitutional “discovery time” will hold for Mario, but this fuckstick is clean out of 1-ups. Get ready for Round 2.