"Everybody has a right to counsel. It says so in the Constitution of the United States. If you are unable to pay for an attorney, the court will appoint one for you. You do have to meet the standard for financial need, though," I cautioned. "You can't just poor-mouth because you don't like what attorneys charge these days."
A couple of my former colleagues seated on the side bench inside the bar snorted and some of the audience smiled.
"If you think you want an attorney appointed," I continued, "now is the time to say so."
Eight people came forward and a bailiff showed them where to go to fill out the forms.
"Those of you who choose not to use an attorney will be asked to sign a release when you come up to plead your case.
That brought whispers and uneasy stirring and I raised my voice one level. "There will be no talking in the audience during court or you'll be asked to leave."
I uncapped my pen, carefully straightened the papers in front of me, and met the dark brown eyes of the young ADA seated at the table down below.
"Call your calendar, Ms. DeGraffenried."
She inclined her head in formal acknowledgement. "Thank you, Your Honor. And may I say it's a distinct privilege to be here your first day on the bench."
I'll bet.
Cyl DeGraffenried was still an enigma to me. Very pretty, very bright. We heard that she'd graduated in the upper five percent of her law class at Duke, which made some of us wonder why she had immediately chosen to come do donkey work for Douglas Woodall, our current district attorney. She should have been clerking for one of the justices if she wanted a political career, or joined some eyes-on-the-prize law firm in Raleigh or Charlotte if she wanted to stay in North Carolina and make a million dollars before she was forty.
She was clearly ambitious; I just couldn't define what that ambition was.
It certainly wasn't for the title of Miss Congeniality. In her few months with the DA's office, she'd proven an implacable prosecutor with very little give in what's usually a give-and-take situation. Her rigid adherence to the letter of the law and the way she called for maximum penalties not only had a lot of us defense attorneys grumbling, some of the judges had even spoken a few private words with Douglas Woodall, too. You honestly don't need to make an example out of every shoplifter or Saturday night rowdy. Freshmen ADAs often err on the side of harshness when they first begin, but Cyl DeGraffenried just wouldn't let up.
A loner, too, even though she appeared at all the expedient meetings, both the political gatherings and the professional. When some of us invited her to join us for drinks afterwards, she would come and smile and talk with every semblance of cordiality. Sometimes I wondered if I was the only one who noticed that she managed never to divulge any personal information and that she always left to drive back to her apartment on the other side of Raleigh alone even though she was, as I indicated before, absolutely gorgeous: long fingernails painted a soft pink, a cloud of dark brown hair, a perfectly oval face with cheekbones to kill for, a size six figure draped in softly feminine dresses or suits of tailored silk, a collection of high heels that would turn Imelda pea green.
"I'll bet you a dollar she's a closet Republican," Minnie, my sister-in-law and a yellow-dog Democrat, said darkly when I discussed Cyl with her once. "I'll bet that's why she lives out of the district—so nobody'll know how she's registered."
Minnie's usually a political realist, but she has a hard time understanding why any black person would, of her own volition, deliberately choose to join the same party as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond or David Duke. For Minnie, a black Republican was hot ice and wondrous strange snow indeed.
My guess was that if Cyl DeGraffenried were actually registered anywhere, it would be as an Independent. * * *
She read through the calendar briskly. Many of the cases had already been disposed of because Doug Woodall always dismisses a few after the calendar's printed. Before I even entered the courtroom, a dozen or more minor traffic violators had decided to plead guilty and were lined up to pay their automatic fines and leave. Others would be held over because of personal conflicts with work or child-care schedules or because their lawyers had previous commitments in other courts. Seven pages of names could dwindle to three or four in no time.
But now all the preliminaries were done and Cyl half turned in her chair to call, "Jaime Ramiro Chavez?"
A Mexican migrant came forward and took the place Cyl indicated behind the opposite table. His hair was neatly combed and he wore faded but basically clean jeans and T-shirt. He was charged with driving without a valid driver's license and failure to wear a seat belt. There to stand with him and speak in his behalf was a local farmer who said that Chavez possessed a Florida license but it'd been lost and he was, in fact, on his way to take the North Carolina exam when Trooper Ollie Harrold pulled him over.
Cyl asked for a hundred-dollar fine and costs, but I was feeling sentimental.
Jaime Ramiro Chavez.
My very first judgment.
I wanted to reach out and pat his wiry brown arm and assure him that he had not fallen into the hands of an unjust system. Instead I had to make do with memorizing his features. For some reason it felt crucial to me that I not let this moment and this man pass out of my memory, and I wound up concentrating so hard on the swoop of his brows and the cut of his chin that his deepset eyes shifted uneasily from me to the farmer who employed him.
Both waited stolidly.
I said to the farmer, "Are you prepared to see to it that he does go take the driving test?"
The older man nodded. "I can take him over Thursday evening."
"Very well," I said. "I'm going to suspend judgment. All charges against Mr. Chavez will be dismissed if he can bring me a valid driver's license before Friday at noon."
Relief crept over the defendant's face. Evidently he could understand more English than he wanted to admit.
"Gracias," he said with simple dignity.
"Call your next case," I told Cyl DeGraffenried.
She always takes a patrolman's schedule into consideration and the next ten or twelve were more traffic cases from Trooper Harrold: speeding, driving while impaired, improper passing, driving while the license was revoked. Depending on circumstances, I fined, accepted prayers for judgment, sent to drivers' refresher courses, or gave suspended jail terms.
One of the young black males was an army lieutenant who had been driving a government vehicle. "I just got back from Germany, Your Honor," he explained.
"You thought Highway Forty-Eight was an autobahn?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow.
He smiled sheepishly.
"Pay the court costs and try to stay inside this state's posted limits," I said, smiling back.
Reid's client pleaded guilty to failure to yield to an emergency vehicle and to speeding fifty-two in a thirty five zone, something I take a lot more seriously than doing eighty on an open interstate. Despite his attempt at boyish charm, I gave him a hundred-dollar fine and a thirty-day suspended sentence.
A cynical young man who was on probation for four counts of obtaining property by writing worthless checks asked me to activate his two-year sentence.
All morning Phyllis had been guiding me through the routine judgment forms. Now she handed up form AOC-CR-315—Judgment and Commitment upon Revocation of Probation—and I checked the appropriate boxes and signed on the back under "Order of Commitment."
It went against my grain, but there was nothing I could do about it. He thought it'd be easier to do a month of real time than to have a probation officer looking over his shoulder for three years. He was probably right.