I knew the witnesses would lie on the stand -- and boy, did they. To account for the liberal bending of the truth, worse than anything they'd reported to the police officers, they sprinkled in a few extra truths now that their precious "victim" could no longer be held accountable for her actions. Then they ratcheted up the "horrible monster" aspects of everything.

The so-called "victim" was incredibly uncertain and hesitant about virtually every detail of her story. Naturally, when compared to my complete and detailed recounting (with drawings, even), she was believed in literally every aspect.

Every witness who got on the stand had a conversation that went pretty much like this verbatim:

"Why did you choose to testify today?"
"Because I wanted to see justice done."
"Did you tell the police offers that the complainant struck the defendant?"
"No."

The prosecutor grilled me for about an hour straight on the stand, Perry-Mason-style, trying to trick or confuse a contradiction out of me. He never got one, by the way, but then again he never needed one. He did manage to delay the trail to such an extent that closing arguments and the verdict were moved to Wednesday, immediately costing me about $2500 extra in legal fees. Then, with a smug smirk, she shoved some additional requirements onto my lawyer -- oh, he wanted to prepare a brief? He'd better have it in her hands by 10 am the next morning. No, he can't fax it. It has to be hand-delivered. (There's another $1500 in fees for me, by the way.) Oh, and sentencing is at 2:30.

She shouldn't have bothered pretending. She'd already made up her mind at that point. The closing arguments were merely perfunctory, something to fill the air while she prepared a nice rant to make herself look good to the common taxpayer. It started with her telling me that every single word I'd said was a lie, and veered into five or seven minutes of her praising the witnesses as the greatest heroes of the 21st century (lie to cops and on the witness stand, kids at home, and you too can be a hero!) before she declared me guilty with implications that she'd have me executed then and there were it in her power.

Incidentally: The "victim" testified that she had only tried to grab my coat to stop me. Every single other witness, five in total, testified that she had struck me repeatedly. Guess who the judge believed?

Sentencing was set for Monday the 20th. The prosecutor passed word to my lawyer that the sentence he'd request was a year of probation and anger management courses.

Come Monday the 20th and I'm back in court, ready for this particular phase. My attorney has already provided her with a lengthy statement explaining the things that anyone who knows me knows -- that I'm a college graduate in a good and productive job, worked in a hospital and with the mentally retarded, have donated blood and even hair, etc. Included with this were all the letters of reference several people had written me.

For those of you who took the time and effort to write those letters, I owe you an apology; she didn't read them, and said as much.

I also owe a bigger apology to my mother and dragosteel, who came down with the intention of giving character testimony and were denied the chance to. I should probably add that my lawyer wasn't certain if this was quite literally illegal, but was absolutely certain that it was the height of discourtesy, insult, and poor judicial practice. When badgered by my lawyer to at least read the damn letters, she left the courtroom, then came back about an hour later and (after handling some other case) cheerfully informed the court that she had spent the break reviewing the transcript of the trial so she could etch the enormity of my crime in her mind. (Paraphrased almost verbatim.)

You can see where this is going.

Five minutes of, again, praising the people who lied to the cops and on the witness stand as heroes.

Seven minutes of ranting about how I was a true monster, heartless to the point of sociopathy, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, an attempted murderer anxious and eager for the chance to try to kill again... it went on like this.

The prosecution asked for 1 year of probation and anger management. She assigned a year of probation, $750 in fines, two days of jail time, 150(!) hours of community service, a letter of apology, and counseling up the ying-yang.

At which point I was promptly hauled away, cuffed, and thrown into holding.

Being tossed into a holding cell by the court had two major advantages over my last imprisonment: first, I was able to have my things given to dragosteel rather than trust the questionable mercy of the collection system, and second, my shoes had no shoelaces for them to take. Now, they were uncomfortable and worn-out dress shoes, of course, but any victory, I guess?

It's ludicrously crippling to have your wallet, keys, watch, even belt taken away from you. Every ability you have to function in society is taken with them, and you can't ever really be certain you'll see any of it again. My hopes were better than most, but last time this happened I ended up stranded in DC, after all.

Uncomfortable knowledge for the reader, but very much on my mind: The soda that was my only intake that day began to catch up with me at about this time.

11:30 or so.

The holding cell was as tiny as you can expect; six people took up pretty much all the available space in there. Aside from occasional interruptions from lawyers coming back to talk to their clients, waiting in a cell like that is simply an exercise in mind-numbing tedium. There is nothing to do, nothing to look at, not a clock to know the time or any hint of mental stimulation aside from your fellow prisoners, such little as they provide. For the most part it was misery... but after a quick determination that the court was trying to verify his residence to release him, one of the other people there began delivering a heartfelt speech on how he truly hoped they'd let him go -- how a year ago he'd been homeless and lost, but things were really starting to "roll" for him now. He'd gotten a job, a place to live. He'd reconciled with his daughter. Now he'd been arrested because he'd lost some paperwork, had it stolen out of his stuff actually, so he forgot his court date and had a warrant issued because of that. "Why would I wanna skip it?" he asked. "Things are rolling for me now. I wouldn't skip it and ruin all that." If they took him in, if they cost him everything he'd gotten so far, he'd have no choice but to become a villain, to take what he needed however he had to.

Another prisoner, a self-stated career criminal (but only drug charges), spoke up then. "Do what you have to do, but when the time is worst, that's when you've got to be strong."

"I'm weak."

"Man is weak. It's what you do that counts."

If I could write anything half as good as these completely extemporaneous speeches, I'd be famous. I swear.

That was the only interesting spot though. We held, and held, and held some more till about 2 or so -- I'm guessing, I had no way of knowing except it was past 1:30 -- when they finally took us from the holding cell and moved us downstairs... to another holding cell.

This one was smaller than 6x12, with 20 people in it -- and a standard-issue jerk-guard who laughingly vowed he was going to "pack us in like sardines". Mission accomplished, noble defender of the people's trust. I staked out a small corner, leaned against the bars, and tried to fine a fine balance between not thinking, which was boring as hell, and thinking, which was depressing as hell. That balance never came, though in fairness the increasing discomfort of my bladder did occupy more than its normal share of my thoughts.

Two hours or so passed. They lined us up, slapped us in leg irons, and -- moved us forward to a different cell. Then did that again.

Then, manacles and leg irons both, and it was off the jail in a van blaring rap music, as if my day hadn't already been bad enough.