“I was here from when you said, and I’m the one looking sweet, not like I just stepped out the crapper. Late night with the ladies, bo?”

“Let’s call it a late night and leave it at that.” I gave him a quick inspection. “Nice hair.”

“Combed it out just for the judge. And I wore what you told me to.”

“You look fine. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“You were born, we know that for sure, the rest we’ll figure on the run. Remember what I said, how to play it?”

“Course I do.”

“Good. Now go on in there and sit where I told you. I have someone I have to meet first.”

Commonwealth v. Derek Moats. It wasn’t much of a case, one of a long series of short trials arising from a simple roundup at a crowded drug corner in North Philly. After a number of undercover buys, the uniforms had swarmed in from all sides, forming a ring and herding a group of suspects into the center. The undercover cops then identified the young men who had been doing the selling. It was an effective way to clean out a corner, but a scattershot form of justice. Derek was caught in the hoop and pointed out by one of the undercovers, but he claimed he wasn’t doing the selling.

“So what were you doing there?” I had asked him.

“Hanging,” was his answer.

“Hanging?”

“There’s girls on that corner you would not believe,” he had said, “and every one of them just waiting for a little bit of Derek.”

The little-bit-of-Derek argument wasn’t much of a closing, but it was about all I had, unless I could discredit the identification. Because of the ID, I had opted for a bench trial. Juries are always taken in by clear identifications – he’s the one, yes, him – but judges know that the simple identification is often the most unreliable part of a criminal case. That was the knowledge I was banking on.

Half an hour later, I was sitting at the counsel table, leaning back with a quiet little smirk on my face as A.D.A. Johnstone, a fierce young prosecutor, came to the crucial part of her direct examination.