It is the constant noise that puts me on edge. I’ve never heard anyone speak in a normal tone.
Though I haven’t been gone from criminal practice that long, I recognize none of the jailers on this shift. Jailers don’t exactly get to be a defense lawyer’s best friends, but there is no sense in alienating them unnecessarily. I know some lawyers who spend hours waiting for their clients. I doubt if it is by accident.
“You’ll have to talk to him on that bench,” a pudgy black guy who comes to my armpit tells me, pointing with his chin to a gray wooden structure in front of us. He must be one of the civilian jailers. Why hire a rookie, spend all the money and time to train him, and stick him down in the jail to dispense medications and serve food? It only took us a couple of millennia to figure out the economics of it. “We’re out of space again.”
The new jail is under construction, but it isn’t the sort of job there’ll be a lot of overtime on to get completed. Not a real sympathetic constituency, as a friend at the PD’s Office used to say. I don’t argue, even though a federal case could probably be made of it. If this guy’s a doctor, I should have him out on bond this afternoon. I sit down on the bench and wait, feeling absurdly pleased. I have forgotten how much I missed criminal law.
In two minutes Dr. Andrew Chapman appears before me in a bright orange jumpsuit, and I almost keel over in amazement he is black. I didn’t have a clue from his voice, a wonderful, deep baritone. One thing is for sure: Chapman is not from the eastern part of the state, the Delta, where I grew up.