Suburban Goddess

As I was sitting in the courtroom waiting for the judge to arrive, I started to think that the judicial system is intentionally set up to make a defendant uncomfortable. I’m crammed into a room with about 100 people, but there’s only seating for fifty. The constable keeps barking at people crowding near the door to move away.

“Standing outside the door won’t do you any good. Come in and move away from the door. I said, MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR. It’s a fire hazard.” But overcrowding the courtroom isn’t?

After a while, you begin to sneak peeks at your fellow lawbreakers and wonder what they did. That one over there, he ran a stop sign. And the old lady with the Coke-bottle glasses ran a red light. The Hispanic lady in the corner was driving without a license. A couple of teenagers, well, who know what they did. A nerdy businessman was anxiously typing on his Blackberry, mumbling about “deferred adjudification.” I silently wondered what they thought when they stole glances at me.

“Crazy speeding housewife, ” I answer to the man looking at me. He looked away quickly. Crazy, indeed.

My previous experience in the judicial system was a nightmare; Louisiana traffic court is HORRIBLE. So far, Texas wasn’t looking much better. The clerk had a sour expression on her pudgy face, and the constable continued to bark orders at people like we stupid. I silently wondered if he’d ever gone 53 in a 35. What made him so much better than us? Why did he have to be so MEAN? So when the judge finally arrived 20 minutes late, I expected the worst. I was pleasantly surprised.

The judge walked in with a smile and an apology. She was an older woman, thin, with dark brown hair. She reminded me of Lily Tomlin as she peered through her glasses at the docket. As she ran down the names, I was transported back to elementary school.

“Adams?”

“Here.”

“Anark?”

“Present”

“Anatole?”

“Here, your Honor.”

As the list progressed, I had my first regret ever about changing my last name. If I had stayed in the “B’s,” I’d be outta here a whole lot faster. But no, I’m a MACLAUGHLIN now, so I’d just have to wait my turn.

When the judge finished the docket, she actually addressed everyone in the room with clear, concise instructions on how to plea, including how to ask for “deferred disposition.” Now, in Louisiana, “Deferred Disposition” is known as a number that, for the life of me, I can never remember. LA’s archaic Napoleonic Code is damn near impossible to decipher without an attorney. Luckily for me, my cousin was an attorney, so I was able to spit out the right number before the gavel hit the desk, and POOF!… my speeding ticket disappeared in 90 days. But here in Texas, they actually HELP you, and tell you what to say, and exactly when to say it. And the judge didn’t make you stand in front of the courtroom and read your charges like a murderer; she invited us up to the bench one-by-one to talk about the charges and how we would proceed. With a signature and a stamp, a quick swipe of the credit card & a receipt, the whole ordeal was over. It was quick, friendly, and painless.

“Keep you foot out of the gas next time, Ms. MacLaughlin,” the judge said with a wink.

I smiled and answered with a sincere, “Yes, ma’am, your Honor.”

At least for ninety days.

This entry was posted on September 28, 2006 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.