"I don't mean any disrespect by this. I know you've been a judge longer than I've been practicing law." Grassley had started his career with the Legal Aid Society a few years before I became an assistant district attorney. "But sixty-one-year-old men simply do not, can not- well, they're not your typical rapists."

"May I be heard, Your Honor?"

"Let me finish, Alex." Grassley was a head shorter than I. He liked to keep me in my seat once jurors were in the courtroom, as though he feared they would be swayed by my arguments because of my greater height. "I know what she's going to say, Judge. There's no such thing as a typical rapist. I've heard her spiel before."

"May I-?"

"Okay, so older guys are still capable of molesting children or beating their wives," Grassley said, as though those were insignificant criminal acts. "I'm not saying such things are impossible. But Mr. Warren is charged with climbing up three stories on a fire escape, squeezing through a small window, struggling with a healthy young woman to rape and sodomize her. Suppose for a minute he even did those things- when was this? Thirty-five years ago. Thirty-five years ago. He's not capable of doing them now. He's not possibly a danger to anyone. There's a legal doctrine Alexandra Cooper has no respect for. You need to help her with it."

"And what is that, Mr. Grassley?" Judge Lamont took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Rachmones, Judge."

"Rock what?"

Alton Lamont was an African-American, a former defense attorney who had been elected to the Supreme Court-New York State's highest trial court-more than twenty years earlier. He cupped one hand to his ear and shook his head.

"Compassion. It's the Yiddish word for compassion."

The heavy door creaked behind me and I turned to look over my shoulder. A young man dressed in a T-shirt and jeans walked down the short aisle of the small courtroom and sat in one of the empty rows of benches.