Vague Clarity

Continuing the story from Here Come da Judge…

It’s 2:00pm on a Thursday. I’m sitting (immobilized with a chain around my waist and handcuffs) on a bench behind a large glass window looking out into a courtroom. I just had a brief discussion with some guy that I am assuming to be a district attorney and have the impression that I could very well end up doing “time” for some sort of “obstruction of justice” that I have absolutely no recollection for at all. The judge has just entered and taken his position at the bench…

The judge begins calling cases, one after the other. Little time is spent on each case. There is a substantial amount of people waiting for their case to be called (it’s not just the inmates sitting with me in my little glassed-off section – there’s another, much larger area containing civilians from the outside waiting for their cases to be called as well) and it appears like the court is trying to get through each as quickly as it can. These aren’t actual trials … I’m going to once again make an assumption here and say that I believe the process I was witnessing was arraignment. Each conversation always ended in some “pre-trial” date being scheduled and (in the case of our group – the inmates) bail amounts made known.

About an hour or so into this, the judge called out my name. I stood and made my presence known.

The judge mentions something about me being at “the ARC” last night where I was arrested for impeding or hindering an agent in completing a governmental duty by physical interference. My first question, of course, is inquiring as to exactly what “the ARC” is. Turns out it’s the “Addicts Rehabilitation Center” – the drunk tank. I, of course, remember nothing about being anywhere of the sort. The last memory I have of the night before was sitting on a stool in my hotel’s bar. So, somehow I ended up in the Boulder drunk tank … unfortunately, even now as I write this, I have no idea how this happened…

He continues explaining my situation and mentions that, as part of my bond restrictions, I am not allowed to leave the state and, since the crime is alcohol-related, I need to get in contact with some sort of alcohol recovery agency and sign up for substance abuse monitoring (which I took to mean somewhat frequent breath-testing being completed on a regular basis for a while). The problem with this latest information, obviously, is that I live in California. As a matter of fact, I had a flight scheduled back to LAX leaving on Saturday – in two days. I mention this information to the judge who merely responds that I need to get written permission to leave the state at some courthouse in Boulder and somehow arrange for the substance abuse monitoring to get transferred to California else I would be violating my bond and a warrant would be issued for my arrest.

He then inquired as to whether I would be hiring a lawyer, set my “pre-trial” court date for early October and asked if I could pay the one hundred dollar bail. I said that I would be hiring a lawyer, explained once again that I lived in California so I might have difficulty making it to a “pre-trial” hearing in October and made it very clear that I could easily cover the bail amount after having my possessions (my wallet) returned. He then said that my lawyer – since I would be hiring one – would be able to represent me at the pre-trial and that was that … he moved on to the next case.

You read that correctly, my bail was set at $100. When he mentioned this, quite a few of the inmates sitting with me couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. Most of the bails that were being discussed prior to my case were in the multiple thousands of dollars range. The lowest before mine was still $500. This made me start thinking that something funny was going on. Don’t get me wrong, although I was now technically informed as to why I was in jail, this exceptionally low bail just brought up more questions… Mainly why was I actually jailed, held without explanation for many hours against my will, immobilized by chains and handcuffs, led to believe that I would be serving time by, once again, who I believed was the district attorney just to find out that my vaguely worded crime had a whole C-note required for me to be released? It seemed to me that somebody somewhere was abusing their authority rather blatantly.

Unfortunately, thanks to the alcohol consumed the night before, I had absolutely no recollection of anything that happened. I had no way to argue anything as I remembered nothing – you can’t argue what you aren’t even aware of… Whatever the case, my plan was to pay my bail, get the hell out of there and contact a lawyer. I was hoping that the lawyer would be able to help me get the needed permission to fly back home as a number one priority … perhaps he would be able to help me find out whether my assumption on the authority abuse was true sometime later; however at that time the one thing I needed to do was be able to return to California. Assuming, of course, I could get out of jail…

You see, that’s the weird part about all this. I had my “day in court” for my arraignment. I informed the judge that I could easily pay the bail and needed to get released quickly in order to be able to contact a lawyer with enough time to get the bond restriction issues solved prior to my flight leaving in almost exactly two days time. I was thinking my next stop would be to get my possessions returned. I could pay the bail, get a ride back to the hotel (Oh yeah, the hotel – I was supposed to have been checking out today!! What about my stuff?! What about the hotel I’m supposed to be checking-in to this evening?!) and start looking for a lawyer. For then all I could do was sit and wait…

There were only a couple cases dealt with after mine before an officer instructed all of the inmates (including yours truly) to quietly head back out into the hallway. We were then lined up against a wall and the handcuffs and chains were removed. I remember the conversation I had with the guy standing next to me. He basically informed me that my case sounded to him like something I would soon be looking back at and laughing about. He apparently had a similar situation himself a few years back. The part that scared me was that he said I shouldn’t be expecting to be leaving anytime soon. It wasn’t until 11:00pm that he was able to leave.

No … I already told the judge that I could pay the bail and was expecting to do so. All they needed to do was return my personal possessions and I could leave. It was only somewhere around 3:00 – I’ll have plenty of time to get the hotel situations taken care of and get a lawyer started on my case this evening. Boy was I mistaken…

After the chains and handcuffs were removed from all the inmates, we were lead back down the series of hallways back to the holding cells. The guard standing by the door then went down the line asking for names and cell numbers. I was at the end of the line. When she got to me, I gave my name and cell number – #14. I then asked when I would be able to pay my bail. The guy that I was talking to earlier clarified my query and told the guard that I wanted to pay my bail with the credit cards in my wallet – which, of course, was in their possession… The response I got was that she (the guard) would “look into it”…

The door was opened, we were informed that it was still lockdown and instructed to head straight to our cells. I climbed the stairs, headed in to cell #14 and lied down on the lower bunk. Apparently we were having dinner sometime around 4:30…

Unfortunately this is where I need to be leaving you today. I’ll try to get the next chapter up sometime soon. For now, I need to get some work done…

bis später,

Coriolis