005 – Bail

I find out Yvonne is held on one hundred thousand dollars bail.  It might as well have been one hundred million.  She might as well have been held without bail.  I ultimately have the amount of bail imposed reviewed at every level of the system, magistrate, trial judge, appellate judge.  One hundred K it is; murder not being treated lightly by the courts in any season.

I visit the county jail early on Tuesday, the new jail, the Holiday Inn of jails.  Not like the old jail, the catacombs of jails.  Call it what you will, they both smell of piss and ammonia.

First I sign in as a lawyer at the front desk.  Then I lock all my belongings except a pen and some legal papers in a metal gym locker.  Then I am passed through the trap.  My hand is stamped, so even if I want to switch clothes with the convict and stay in his place he still can’t just switch from his orange county jail uniform to my gray striped lawyers uniform and walk out to freedom.  Need that infrared stamp thank you.

Now locked inside with only my pen I await the elevator.  There are video cameras and monitors mounted in the corners of every wall and hallway.  There are video cameras in the elevator.  On the sixth floor there are still more cameras and more ammonia.  At the end of the gleaming institutional hallway is a guard station where I present myself.  I am ushered into the attorney visiting room from one side of the hallway.  She is ushered in from the other side, the prisoners’ dormitory side.  The doors are locked.  There is a bell to ring if we want to be let out.

She looks sallow.  Tired.  Frightened.  Caged.  “Thanks for coming to see me,” she says.  “Its okay,” I reply, “its my job.”  The government it turns out has absolutely no evidence against Yvonne other than her confession.  Oh, and there’s a dead man.  And he was her pimp.  Yvonne’s confession is damning but open to diverse interpretation and analysis.  She was arrested by Detective Wormly, the famous Black, street smart, bearded Wormly.  The Wormly with the big gold cross hanging down his chest and no sympathy.  The long suffering, cynical, tired, but incorruptible Wormly who tracked her down and didn’t even ask for a sexual favor.

“I just want to be out of here so badly.  I want to see my daughter.  I want to go home.  I don’t sleep good here.  I hate it.” 

I feel her pain and imagine my own.  I remember the frightened little boy sent to camp against his will crying in terror and helpless humiliation, ” I want to go home.”

I am staring into her eyes.  She meets my gaze.  We both hesitate to look away.  I wonder how many levels of conversation and unexpressed thought we manage on automatic pilot at once.  There is our focus on the likely trial, on strategy and hope.  There is talk of her unfreedom with remembrances of pain present and pain past.  The longing to be somewhere other than where you are.  Slavery.  I imagine her past.  I imagine her physical and mentally pleasure and pain.  I remember my past.  I realize I am no longer looking in her eyes but staring at my hands.  I wonder if she is thinking about her past.  About me.  The realization that we are caged behind a series of real metal doors and secure locks comes to me again.  That I will at a time more or less within my control walk out the doors, out of the building, into the sweet free air, while she will remain behind, perhaps forever, trapped with the scent of ammonia.  I am aware she is a woman, a sexual being.  I wonder about her sexually.  About her sexual past.  In my mind I see her naked.  I see her breasts, her nipples, her bush of pubic hair.  I imagine her shaved.  These thoughts follow one another; commingle with one another.  Only seconds of silence pass.  I worry about disease, about AIDS, and cancer.  Wonder if she wonders about me.