Arriving at the jail, we waited.

I don't mean that we waited inside the jail. For no real reason we waited in the van outside the jail. For something like 20 minutes -- a short wait compared to most, but a very odd one. I had the chance to look around while we sat there idling, and was cynically bemused. The jail is about as stereotypical as you could ask for, save that it was made out of brown bricks instead of cold grey concrete and metal. The coils of razor wire atop the fence were impossible to take seriously; they looked like a movie caricature of a jail. I guess those must have some basis in reality.

Finally they moved us inside... into another room. Where we waited. Any surprises there? The only difference was that they were calling people up to the window to check in, as it were, in no particular order, so I managed to hang back long enough to use the toilet. That was about six hours' worth of pressure to relieve, so while I didn't exactly feel wonderful afterwards, it did improve life considerably in relative terms.

Checked in. Fingerprinted. Filled out a form about myself. Then into another room, to wait.

I'm losing track of time here rapidly, so I can't really give estimates on when we started moving. It took a fair amount of time, since everyone had to go through the fill-out-form process, even the people well-established in the prison community. (I'm pretty sure I spotted the guy who hoped to be released, the one that gave the speech earlier. Looks like he's losing all the good stuff he's worked for after all.) Once that was all done, they moved us into another room.

Frankly, I could've stood to stay longer in THAT room, because what came next was the shame-humiliation-degradation tango: when your name is called, strip naked so they can put your clothing in a box, then expose every (and I mean quite literally every) inch of your body so they can make sure you're carrying no contraband. (This was pointless; one of the prisoners had a wad of some-illicit-substance crammed between his fingers, where it went undetected the entire time.) Then get your bag of hygiene supplies and off to the shower.

If you're able to read this entry, I suppose it would be relatively pointless to recount my self-esteem issues. Suffice to say, for those of you who haven't met me in person, I'm not a pretty sight, and frankly I found this whole experience pretty damn awful. I'm not particularly comfortable with the fact that, when it comes to people seeing me naked, the ratio of people I'd want to versus people I wouldn't want to is probably higher than 99% of people and isn't ever likely to go lower. Still, I had no choice but to blank my mind and go through with it. You might think the shower would be refreshing, but it wasn't. Even clean and no longer in dress clothes a little too small for me and broken shoes, I felt absolutely no better. The combination of t-shirt, boxers, and jumpsuit managed to simultaneously convince me I was wearing literally nothing and roast me alive. Hell, I even managed to get the most faded and beat-up jumpsuit offered. (A snap actually came straight off it a little later in the evening.)

Back into the cells. One by one we went into the X-ray chamber to get a chest X-ray. Tuberculosis screen or ingestion check, I'm not sure which, but I strongly suspect the latter. As I was leaving, the technician said offhand, "Have a nice day, despite being here." It was sincere enough that I nearly burst into tears; it was certainly the nicest thing that anyone had said to me all day. I got my photo next, which I swear to god made me look like I had just murdered my way through half-a-dozen small towns and was slightly annoyed that my killing spree had been temporarily halted. I've never claimed to be photogenic, but man, never look at a mug shot the same way again.

And then we waited.

This was a long wait; I'm fairly certain it was a little after 8 that they finally hauled us upstairs. Room assignments, I naively thought, but on the third floor they simple stuffed us into another room. Not solely for the purpose of waiting, for a change: they started passing out food. Trays, they called them, but they were really styrofoam lunch containers, the three partition kind. I accepted mine with every reservation appropriate, which was immediately justified. The term "ominous weight" immediately came to mind. I opened the tray with trepidation to discover a quote-unquote Mexican meal -- tolerable food-gunk that might charitably called chili, rice, and refried beans that barely qualified for once-fried status, along with tortillas and lettuce. Unsurprisingly the tortillas were inadequate to wrap up all the food, so I ended up just wolfing it down with the spork. First meal I'd had since 6 pm Sunday. I needed the energy bad.

The brownie dessert was alarmingly delicious. That still baffles me.

And then we waited. Eventually the guards gathered us up and hauled us down the hallway to something I should have realized we'd undergo, but simply hadn't thought of: Medical intake. Everyone got a card: HIV test, history and physical, vitals, labs, mental health... everyone had to go through each of these. Here the system at last broke down to a trembling, whimpering wreck: with all these people to process (thirteen or so of us), each station in this system had only one person working it, and slowly I might add. I spent about two hours just sitting, getting into each station in turn. HIV testing (I declined out of annoyance, plus it's pretty damn hard to be safer than I am). Vitals (bizarrely, I've lost weight, and my blood pressure was even sane for me) -- along with a PPD test (for tuberculin sensitivity) to my infinite disgust. For those of you not familiar with this, they basically inject a bunch of crap directly beneath your skin on your arm. I've been through these more than any sane person should, what with working in health care for a while. Given my severe lack of health problems, the talk with the actual doctor took no time at all.

The mental health assessment was kind of amusing, actually. Waiting for it, I'd bemusedly pictured a conversation that went like this:

"Are you depressed or suicidal?"
"Do you want the simple and accurate-enough answer, or the truthful and complex answer?"
"Wha-?"
"Of course I'm depressed. I was just convicted for a crime I didn't commit and imprisoned for it. And I defy you to find anyone in this situation who doesn't have thoughts of just shoving a plastic bag over their head till they suffocate. But I'm also still rational, and capable of recognizing that these are purely emotional responses to pain and a desire to make that pain stop, and as such I have no intention of acting on them."

But recognizing that I'd probably get slapped on suicide watch and drugged up, I wisely elected not to go this route. It proved easier to not be cynical and bigmouthed about it all than I thought: the MH intake person was a perfectly nice guy who had an Elmer Fudd speech impediment. I don't mean to make fun or be harsh, but it was pretty hard to be too pissed off listening to that.

The lab nurse was backed up beyond belief, and so I sat and waited, and sat and waited, until at last I became aware of the guard at the desk calling my name. I figured I'd been assigned a room, or some bureaucratic nonsense had occurred that I now had to deal with. In fact the latter was true in a way I had not anticipated:

"Get your stuff together so you can be released."
I figured I'd misheard, or that it was just a mistake. "No, I'm supposed to be here till Wedns-"
"He's being released?!" another guard asked.
"Yeah. Hold on." The first guard put in a phone call as I just stood there, blinking. "Yeah."
"Damn," the second guard said. "I wish I knew who you know."
"Who would even MAKE that decision?" I asked.
The guard shrugged as she gestured for me to come along. "Someone very high up."

(I still have no idea what caused this, nor did my lawyer. Our only speculation is that the jail was full to capacity, and that an administrator had looked at my 2-day sentence, deemed it moronic, and decided I was the best candidate to go rather than clog up a bed for two pointless days.)

Amusingly, the prison has no sane procedure for releasing people. The guard escorted me down and pointed me in the general direction of the photo area from hours ago, then took off. A bit baffled, I wandered into the middle of another intake group to get the guard's attention -- and he was every bit as baffled as I when he finally did. They dug my clothes box out of holding and let me get dressed again, then brought me back out to the holding cell I'd first been put it when in jail.

The guard in the station overlooking this place was not amused. He asked if I wanted a subway card or a token, I allowed as to how I had no idea, and he shoved them both through the little slot along with some papers for me to sign and a printed paper that basically says "This man was an inmate so please accept this as temporary legal ID till he gets his life back together". I asked if I could make a phone call, to which he responded, "No," with a scowl that indicated he and the judge who'd sentenced me could probably marry solely on the basis of their common opinion of me. He shoved a post-it pad at me and had me write down the number, then called it himself. (That, of course, was to tigerphoenix who I begged to meet me at the Vienna metro station. At the time, I had no idea if he'd actually spoken to her or just gotten the machine and left a message. I spent most of the trip home worrying like mad.)

"Who'd you assault?" he demanded as he came back. I sighed, and gave him the name. "Why'd you hit her?"
"I didn't," I said, well aware that it was entirely futile. "I bumped into her by accident."
"And they sent you to jail for an accidental bump?" he sneered. "Don't hit women."

I was perfectly happy to go back to the cell and wait for the officer to escort me out. Oddly, I was made to exit through the vehicle entrance, after a comical "identify-yourself-to-pass" challenge that I struggled to answer because I had no idea what an obscure number on a printout I had tucked away somewhere was. Still, they finally let me go, and I walked to the Metro station to take the train literally the entire way across DC and into Virginia.

A jalapeno-filled pretzel and going to bed at home never felt so good.

Tuesday I got my stuff back from dragosteel, and then just vegetated so effectively my brain refuses to acknowledge the day existed.

Now I'm just waiting -- waiting for the probation office to process me, so I can begin my year of checkins and scrutiny and my upcoming five months of 6-workday-weeks; waiting for my paycheck this Friday to process so I can turn around and spend it entirely on fines and fees and compensation for the woman who assaulted me; waiting for the attorney's fees so I can spend the next year or so broke as hell while paying them, and my parents for the money they loaned me. Waiting to begin a long period in which life will suck, and the recovery will be uncertain and very long in coming.

In conclusion: a woman I accidentally bumped on the Metro assaulted me and got off completely scot-free for doing so. Three people lied on the witness stand and were hailed as heroes. A judge acted unprofessionally and unfairly. An innocent man was sent to jail and had his life destroyed for the foreseeable future.

And because a couple of people have asked:

No, I can't appeal the verdict. I can't prove the witnesses lied, and so long as I can't do that, their testimony outweighs mine. Despite the blatant, gross contradictions, uncertainties, and outright detectable falsehoods in their testimony, the only criterion on which I am judged is if I intended to do the act, and so long as I can't disprove their words, their testimony outweighs mine.

No, I can't appeal the sentence. No matter how grossly unprofessionally the judge acted and how unreasonable the sentence was in light of the fact that I'm a first-time offender with no history, and contribute positively to the community in ways the vast majority of people don't (I donate HAIR to CHILDREN for chrissakes), no matter that even the prosecution though the sentence extreme, the fact is that it's within the sentencing guidelines of the crime, and that's literally all that matters.