Did I mention I hate arraignment day? It basically requires me to be Perry Mason with ESP, and even if I do a stellar job and manage to get personal recognizance bail for a defendant who otherwise would be locked up pending trial, chances are pretty good that I will not be the attorney litigating his case. The juicy ones that I’dwantto take to trial will either be plucked out of my grasp by someone with more seniority at the office or transfer to a private (read:paid) lawyer.
That is surely going to be the trajectory for the next defendant.
“Next: the State versus Joseph Dawes Hawkins the Third,” the clerk reads.
Joseph Dawes Hawkins is still so young that he has acne. He looks absolutely terrified, which is what a night in a jail will do to you when your experience with criminal behavior is limited to binge-watchingThe Wire. “Mr. Hawkins,” the judge asks, “will you please identify yourself for the record?”
“Um. Joe Hawkins,” the boy replies. His voice cracks.
“Where do you live?”
“One thirty-nine Grand Street, Westville.”
The clerk reads the charge: drug trafficking.
I’m going to guess, based on the kid’s expensive haircut and his wide-eyed response to the legal system, he was pushing something like Oxy, not meth or heroin. The judge enters an automatic plea of not guilty. “Joe, you’ve been charged with drug trafficking. Do you understand what that charge means?” The boy nods. “Do you have counsel present today?”
He glances over his shoulder at the gallery, goes a little paler, and then says, “No.”
“Would you like to speak to the public defender?”
“Yeah, Your Honor,” he says, and that’s my cue.
Privacy is limited to the so-called cone of silence at the defense table. “I’m Kennedy McQuarrie,” I say. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. I’m a senior at Hopkins.”
The private school. Of course he is. “How long have you lived in Connecticut?”
“Since I was two?”
“Is that a question or an answer?” I ask.
“Answer,” he says, and he swallows. His Adam’s apple is the size of a monkey’s fist knot, which makes me think of sailing, which makes me think of Violet swearing.
“Are you working?”
He hesitates. “You mean besides selling the Oxy?”
“I didn’t hear that,” I reply immediately.
“Oh, I said—”
“I didn’t hear that.”
He glances up, nods. “Got it. No. No, I don’t work.”
“Who do you live with?”
“My parents.”
I am ticking off a checklist in my mind, peppering him with a barrage of questions. “Do your parents have the means to hire an attorney?” I ask finally.
He glances at my suit, which is from Target, and which has a stain on it from the milk that Violet upended in her cereal bowl this morning. “Yeah.”
“Shut up and let me do the talking,” I coach, and I turn to the bench. “Your Honor,” I say, “young Joseph here is only just eighteen and this is his first offense. He’s a senior in high school who lives with his mom and dad—a nursery school teacher and a bank president. His parents own their own home. We ask for Joseph to be released on his own recognizance.”
The judge turns to my counterpart in this dance, the prosecutor who stands at the mirror image of the defense table. Her name is Odette Lawton, and she is about as jolly as the death penalty. Where most prosecutors and public defenders recognize that we are flip sides of the same shitty-state-pay-grade coin and can leave the animosity in the courtroom and socialize outside it, Odette keeps to herself. “What is the State looking for, Counselor?”
