Here Come da Judge

For anybody just joining this story, I was sitting in the commons area of the Boulder County Jail staring at the wall. For a more detailed explanation, you can read my What Happened??? post. I’m going to continue my story from there…

As I mentioned, I was sitting in this chair staring at the wall for some unknown amount of time just waiting for something to happen. I actually had no idea what was going to – or even supposed to – be happening … all I could do was wait. It’s not like I had any other choice. It gave me some time to contemplate a bit about my current situation…

I began contemplating what could possibly have happened the night before that would end up getting me put on ice. Was I stupid enough to have driven somewhere? That seemed to me rather unlikely as my whole plan with drinking at my hotel bar was designed to make this possibility unnecessary. But did I? Where would I have been going and why? No … this seemed extremely unlikely to me…

Perhaps I got into a fight with Todd? I suppose that would be possible – I’m well aware that Todd has a rather bad habit of getting quite rambunctious when he’s been drinking. How much did he drink? I have no idea… I know that I basically blacked out the entire night; but perhaps Todd wasn’t as bad as me. Perhaps he was…? Did Todd and I get into a fight and have somebody call the cops on us? I don’t know; however this scenario also seemed very unlikely…

Did I hurt somebody? No, not me … I’m most definitely not a fighter.

It was then that I started noticing more and more pains related to my own body. The intoxication that I was still under upon waking was now quickly wearing off and being replaced by a quite mean hangover. My head hurt … my eyes hurt … my upper arms hurt (especially the left one) … my back felt like it was rather severely bruised and my right hand felt all puffed up and was severely tender to the touch. I started to notice that I was most definitely not in good shape at that moment…

During my absolutely futile attempt at trying to remember anything from the night before, I observed meals being served to the rest of the inmates. Basically, the door was opened and one of the guards had rolled up a large metal container filled with orange plastic trays. All the inmates lined up and where given one tray and a small milk carton (like the ones we used to get in grade school) each. After everyone received their meals, my last name was called out by the guard at the door. One of the meals was for me. I opted to pass…

Shortly after this I was approached by a guard and told to go ahead and deposit my stuff in cell #14. You see, around this commons area were two levels of cells with stairs on both ends. A portion of the lower level seemed to be separated from the rest by yet another area behind large glass panes. I never found out why this was; however I’m assuming it had to do with different levels of confinement. This was all new to me, so assumptions are all I had to go on… Cell #14 was up the stairs to my left. I grabbed my “stuff” and headed up to the cell.

I was a bit surprised when I saw that somebody else was already assigned to this cell. There were already items strewn about the cell – towels, clothing, books – your typical jail cell stuff I guess… I basically tossed my pile of “stuff” on the lower bunk and lied down – the hangover was kicking in big time now.

It was shortly after this when somebody below announced “lockdown.” This was rather quickly followed by all of the inmates returning to their cells and the loud thump of the magnetic locks fastening. The interesting thing was that my cell – cell #14 – didn’t get locked. How I found this out was when I actually got up from the bed, walked the very short walk to the door, opened it up and walked out to lean on the metal railing of the upper level walkway. This was apparently a stupid thing to do as it caused one of the inmates that looked to be cleaning the commons area to yell at me to get back in my cell. He mentioned something about me being out there causing a 23 hour mandatory lockdown for all. I apologized and quickly went back into my cell … I had absolutely no business being where I was – I also had absolutely no idea what the rules were nor how to go about finding out. All I wanted to do was get out of there and I had no information as to how I could make this happen. Never before had I experienced such a loss of control – there was nothing I could do…

Now I’m not exactly sure when or how I discovered this (perhaps one of the guards came up to speak with me…) however somewhere around that time I became aware that I was scheduled to be in court in something like a half hour. This, to me, seemed like good news. Maybe I would be able to discover what was going on? I decided to lie down and wait for court … what’s a half hour after what I had already been forced to go through…?

Sure enough, a little while later I heard a guard calling out various names below. When I heard mine called, I headed down and out into the hallway with the others. We were then marched single-file down a couple of halls to this waiting room that we were instructed to enter. I grabbed a seat in the corner and basically sat with my head in my hands – the hangover was intense. The guy sitting to my right then inquired as to whether this was my first time and I answered that it was. He asked what I was in for and I told him that I had no idea – I was sitting at a bar last night and I woke up in a jail cell this morning. I think many of the guys in that room got a kick out of this…

You see, most of these guys were multiple offenders. They all seemed at ease with the process – like they had done this many times before. It appeared that many of them even knew each other. Here I was, a complete outsider – pretty much scared shitless – with a huge hangover trying to cope with the fact that I found myself incarcerated earlier that day and had absolutely no idea why. I basically sat there and listened to the others shoot the shit trying not to look like I felt. You talk about your “fish out of water”…

We were then asked to come out in the hallway, one at a time, where chains were fastened around our wastes and our hands got cuffed to the chains in the front. After immobilizing us in this fashion, we were led into this small room with two benches and a large glass wall that looked out into a courtroom. We took our seats on the benches and the DA (I think it was the DA…) then came in to talk to some of us – he was going to explain the plea bargains, I guess. The first name he called was mine…

He mentioned that I was being held on some sort of obstruction of justice and the penalty for which was something like 6 months in prison. Prison, mind you!!! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and asked, just for clarification purposes, whether I would be doing “time”… Now this whole conversation is very muddled in my memory – I suppose the shock value of it all along with my ever-agonizing hangover might explain why – however I seem to remember this guy basically confirming that I would be going to jail. He then mentioned something about probation (as I said, this conversation’s memory is a bit of a blur to me) and I excused myself for being so ignorant to the processes involved there and requested further clarification as to what was going on.

His response to this request was that he had others he needed to address and couldn’t spend any more time on me. He started talking to the next on his agenda and there was nothing I could do about it. I sat there quietly, listening to him discuss plea deals with others, waiting for whatever was to happen next. As had become common to me then, I had no idea what it would be…

Some period of time went by (How long? I have no clue… Time passing started to become meaningless to me…) before we were all asked to rise. The judge then entered the courtroom and sat down at the bench. It was then that I noticed the clock on the wall in the courtroom. It was 2:00pm. That was the first time throughout the entire day where I actually knew what time it was. It seemed to me like I had been there for quite some time; however, it was 2:00pm. How much longer am I going to need to be dealing with this place…?

Unfortunately, I need to stop now. I’ll write more later; however I think I’m going to get back to enjoying my freedom now that I actually have it. Oh yes, I do get out of there in time. Be sure to come back to get the rest of the story…

bis später,

Coriolis