unfinished

I can't stand it a minute longer.  I'm so angry I want to cry.  I'm storming out of the courtroom, where I've just wasted an hour of time sitting there doing nothing, precious time better spent researching a legal issue or analyzing a case or writing a motion or talking to a client or interviewing witnesses.  Just an hour today wasted, as I've started to realize that NOT appearing on time has made me a better lawyer.  The wind is cold and I can't get a handle on my scarf that's whipping around in the air around me.  Fuck this.  Fuck this. FUCK THIS.  I'm not meant for this.  I'm not built to just sit there and watch people in black robes and suits say stupid, stupid things over and over and over again.  I hate it, I can't stand it, I don't have the patience for it.

 

Back in the office, I return to my chair, the chair that sees more of me than does my boyfriend or my bed.  On the screen, right where I left it, that motion I've been painstakingly writing, one slow sentence at a time, researching as I write.  I cut, I paste, I cite, I move the paragraph, I'm clicking, I'm typing.  Every once in a while a flash of his small quiet face comes to mind.  Juvenile charged as an adult.  So quiet.  Can't get him to talk.  What ever happened to him that made him so quiet?  So tiny.  I click, I type, I type, I highlight.  I remember back when I saw him, when he first sat down across from me in the activity room.  The activity room filled with silence, with false institutional cheer on the cement walls.  He, in the jumpsuit, not expecting me.  He was expecting the other one, the middle-aged paunchy grizzly soft male attorney he had before.  Instead he got me, an edgy, young, eternally scowling female.

 

When considering sentencing, the court is required to first consider rehabilitative options

and as I typed the sentence I wondered how that was going to be true.  He had never been in trouble before.  I couldn't quite figure out what was to rehabilitate.  It was a bad decision, made quickly.