I miss your tea

I think about my former clients all the time. What is really fun about being a public defender in a rural county is you get to know people, not just the frequent fliers but also the places they go, the people they associate with, and the other things happening in their lives besides their court cases. It makes me feel like a townie in the best sense. 

A few weeks before I left, I paid bond on a case where I felt the bond determination was especially unfair. This was a kid who had never been to jail before, and a case with a high likelihood of dismissal, and so even though the clerk scoffed at my naïveté, I didn't lose sleep over it. After he was released from holding, he came to my office and sat at ALR's desk and cried and cried, and I worried about what would become of him. 

After I left the public defender's office, I checked in on the case once or twice, along with at least a dozen more, but eventually I forgot their names. Whenever I learned of a not-guilty in that county through the listserve, I would text my replacement congratulations, cheering for the outcomes he had been able to secure for my clients which I had not. I never learned what became of my sad sap, but I hoped he was safe.  

Well, today I got his bond payment back in the mail! His case number was printed on the check, but the case was not in the court portal. I spent a few minutes searching for the case but eventually gave up, presuming from the fact that the bond was even returned signaled that this was was dismissed and sealed like I expected it would be. But in the time spent perusing the names of defendants who came after I left, I found myself so saddened by how many names I recognized. This kid may have dodged a bullet, but many of my other frequent fliers had not. 

On our evening walk last night we saw a fist fight break out. There was a gaggle of adolescent boys, maybe 14 years old, huddled out front of the McDonalds. One of them ran a few paces away, turned back and squared up, and no word of a lie, the rest of them pig-piled on him. They were pulling his hair, yanking on his clothes, punching his chest and head. I watched helplessly, torn between wanting to intervene and not wanting to be responsible for escalation. 

Because we had been out walking, we knew there were two cops just 300 feet down the road, and as a car laid on its horn at the kids, I willed these dum-dums to break it out before they caught the attention of the police. I realized that was probably a perverted reaction--I should have wanted some kind of intervention for the poor kid getting wailed on, but I was worried about his assailants, too. 

I don't know why I root for the wrongdoers. Why it's easier for me to have compassion on the struggling criminals than the meritorious innocents. In my rural county it was a revolving door of people hurting people, one week a domestic violence victim, the next week a pants thief. All people unable to get out of their own way because of myriad factors, but most likely because of poverty, and most fundamentally because of sin. 

We are all sinners. We keep passing through the revolving door, of hurting others and being hurt. And strangely, that's not necessarily bad news, because it means we have (for now) escaped the ultimate accounting for our sin. Our God is slow to anger and withholding judgement to just give us a fighting chance at hope, redemption, righteousness, that we might be healed despite the brokenness we sustain. 

My clients, they suffer. Life has broken them even more than the criminal justice system might. I cheer when they avoid judgement for their actions not because I condone their wrongdoing but because I feel in their frustration and desperation that the natural consequences of brokenness in this world are already taking them to task. We sinners are getting what we deserve and also not getting what we deserve every day. And it's perverted to think that our communal suffering is a form of grace in motion, but also I want us all to know grace. 

(P.S. That bond payments are returned to payors via mail months after a case has been resolved does a terrible disservice to those who have no disposable income to be bailing out. I used to think bail bondsman were a scam, but now I get that it's better to be parted from your money forever for less than to shell out beaucoup bucks but have that money enslaved to the bureaucracy.)