Legal updates
As I write this, my partner in (now, actual) crime is serving a little stint of time in jail, for reasons you will be familiar with if you read my previous entry.
That last post, about our brief detention in South Dakota, was just the beginning, of course. Since then, he and I have had to go back there twice - once for an arraignment, once to plea - and he returned, a third time, a little over a week ago now, for sentencing.
I came out of it with a misdemeanor that will go on my record, and a $428 fine. It took all of my willpower not to tell the judge, when he pronounced my fine, that his brave state troopers had already collected almost that exact amount from our wallets when they arrested us, but I stayed silent and paid them a second fine.
It was was decided that my traveling companion would take the more serious rap for both of us. "They're gonna want some time from one of you," our lawyer said, and, as we were to learn, there just weren't many ways around the "that's just the way we do things around here" mentality of S.D.
Of course we tried to get it all thrown out on 4th Amendment grounds. As Californian-New Yorker urbanites we had a certain sense of "probable cause" that, most certainly, was informed by our race. So we tried, but, there's no other way to say it: the cop lied.
Like all civilians, I was not invited to attend my grand jury hearing - from what I understand, you only get to do that if you're Darren Wilson. But by law, the state was required to furnish an audio CD of the proceedings, so we listened to them in our lawyer's office. Excruciating. I guess I feel naive saying it was an eye opener to hear it. It's not like we haven't all seen and heard examples of the less-than-honest cop. But to really experience first-hand, in our little case, an officer just lying his ass off in court - I don't know, I couldn't help but be surprised, in spite of myself. I guess because of the insignificance of our case - he wasn't lying to save his own ass after a suspicious shooting or something, he was simply lying, as a matter of course.
Our lawyer had warned us ahead of time: "They're probably gonna say you said x, y, z." And lo and behold, that's what he said - boilerplate, talking point memo, almost word for word. "This is just what they say, because it can't be refuted."
-------
So I've written before about how there are places you choose, and places that choose you. Deadwood, South Dakota is a place that I most definitely did not choose, but has now become an indelible part of my life.
From the second I first rolled into town off the interstate, handcuffed in the backseat of a police car, Deadwood was just one big evil omen to me, and everything felt like a harbinger. When we had to return for our first court date, I experienced the entire plane flight as a metaphor, that thing of when you're looking out the window as you ascend, and the whole world below looks beautifully vast and majestic, and then in less than one second the clouds overtake you and that's it.
You're not going back to that peaceful god-view, that was it, if you weren't looking, too bad. And by the time you land, it will just be dark.
I didn't want to be overtaken by clouds. Honestly, I didn't know how to deal with the seriousness of these felony charges against us - emotionally, mentally. The only way that came naturally to me to not descend into a perpetual state of anxiety was to pretend it was a bad dream, unconnected to our waking lives.
Obviously I was going to hate Deadwood. But it is hard for me to see, even without these circumstances, how I would have liked it.
In its very conception it was an illegal town, morally, historically, deliberately wrong. The fact that it was stolen just a couple years after a treaty was signed promising it the the Lakota makes its origin myth even more sinister to me than the Pilgrim & Colony one.
But I probably would have hated this town based on its casino culture alone. To me, a casino town should be a subversive place, or, if not subversive, at the very least lenient. A place where vice can flourish. I'm sure I got this idea from reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson in my youth, and it was confirmed by a string of debaucherous adventures in Reno in my early twenties. (Anyone who's been knows that Las Vegas is no longer the fear & loathing HST wrote of, and that Reno has taken over its mantle of depravity).
In Deadwood, on the other hand, it's creepily quiet, safe, buttoned up. Casino Jack's has The 700 Club on one TV, The O'Reilly Factor on another, and the rest is a wall of sports.
After chatting up the locals, it becomes evident that everyone around has a criminal record. The residents in the area are like fish in a barrel for law enforcement. It's like a strange social experiment that the scientists never allowed to end. A truly, truly horrible place.
The truth is though, the Black Hills are beautiful. On both return visits, we went hiking in Spearfish Canyon, and I had to admit, begrudgingly, that it was nice. I called this activity "hate-hiking" (like "hate-fucking", but instead of taking a pleasurable thing and doing it with someone you despise, you do something you love somewhere you despise).
We borrowed fancy suits for court from the legal procedural show I still sometimes work on and laughed at the sight of eachother in "CBS Primetime Drama Drag."
We had a cute little letter-writing campaign for my partner in crime, testaments to his character for the judge to read prior to sentencing. Reading them all, I got my hopes up. They were great letters - we are blessed with an intelligent and expressive group of friends and family. I joked that if I were the judge I would just break down and weep, and ask why a man like this had come before his court in the first place.
But, yeah, I guess I knew I was just joking.
I want to get onward with talking about the vacant house we bought in Baltimore, and how we're rehabbing it ourselves; I want to get onward with everything. But the fact is, my man is doing time right now, and I'm in a relatively new and strange city, and this is what's happening.
That last post, about our brief detention in South Dakota, was just the beginning, of course. Since then, he and I have had to go back there twice - once for an arraignment, once to plea - and he returned, a third time, a little over a week ago now, for sentencing.
I came out of it with a misdemeanor that will go on my record, and a $428 fine. It took all of my willpower not to tell the judge, when he pronounced my fine, that his brave state troopers had already collected almost that exact amount from our wallets when they arrested us, but I stayed silent and paid them a second fine.
It was was decided that my traveling companion would take the more serious rap for both of us. "They're gonna want some time from one of you," our lawyer said, and, as we were to learn, there just weren't many ways around the "that's just the way we do things around here" mentality of S.D.
Of course we tried to get it all thrown out on 4th Amendment grounds. As Californian-New Yorker urbanites we had a certain sense of "probable cause" that, most certainly, was informed by our race. So we tried, but, there's no other way to say it: the cop lied.
Like all civilians, I was not invited to attend my grand jury hearing - from what I understand, you only get to do that if you're Darren Wilson. But by law, the state was required to furnish an audio CD of the proceedings, so we listened to them in our lawyer's office. Excruciating. I guess I feel naive saying it was an eye opener to hear it. It's not like we haven't all seen and heard examples of the less-than-honest cop. But to really experience first-hand, in our little case, an officer just lying his ass off in court - I don't know, I couldn't help but be surprised, in spite of myself. I guess because of the insignificance of our case - he wasn't lying to save his own ass after a suspicious shooting or something, he was simply lying, as a matter of course.
Our lawyer had warned us ahead of time: "They're probably gonna say you said x, y, z." And lo and behold, that's what he said - boilerplate, talking point memo, almost word for word. "This is just what they say, because it can't be refuted."
-------
So I've written before about how there are places you choose, and places that choose you. Deadwood, South Dakota is a place that I most definitely did not choose, but has now become an indelible part of my life.
From the second I first rolled into town off the interstate, handcuffed in the backseat of a police car, Deadwood was just one big evil omen to me, and everything felt like a harbinger. When we had to return for our first court date, I experienced the entire plane flight as a metaphor, that thing of when you're looking out the window as you ascend, and the whole world below looks beautifully vast and majestic, and then in less than one second the clouds overtake you and that's it.
You're not going back to that peaceful god-view, that was it, if you weren't looking, too bad. And by the time you land, it will just be dark.
I didn't want to be overtaken by clouds. Honestly, I didn't know how to deal with the seriousness of these felony charges against us - emotionally, mentally. The only way that came naturally to me to not descend into a perpetual state of anxiety was to pretend it was a bad dream, unconnected to our waking lives.
Obviously I was going to hate Deadwood. But it is hard for me to see, even without these circumstances, how I would have liked it.
In its very conception it was an illegal town, morally, historically, deliberately wrong. The fact that it was stolen just a couple years after a treaty was signed promising it the the Lakota makes its origin myth even more sinister to me than the Pilgrim & Colony one.
But I probably would have hated this town based on its casino culture alone. To me, a casino town should be a subversive place, or, if not subversive, at the very least lenient. A place where vice can flourish. I'm sure I got this idea from reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson in my youth, and it was confirmed by a string of debaucherous adventures in Reno in my early twenties. (Anyone who's been knows that Las Vegas is no longer the fear & loathing HST wrote of, and that Reno has taken over its mantle of depravity).
In Deadwood, on the other hand, it's creepily quiet, safe, buttoned up. Casino Jack's has The 700 Club on one TV, The O'Reilly Factor on another, and the rest is a wall of sports.
After chatting up the locals, it becomes evident that everyone around has a criminal record. The residents in the area are like fish in a barrel for law enforcement. It's like a strange social experiment that the scientists never allowed to end. A truly, truly horrible place.
The truth is though, the Black Hills are beautiful. On both return visits, we went hiking in Spearfish Canyon, and I had to admit, begrudgingly, that it was nice. I called this activity "hate-hiking" (like "hate-fucking", but instead of taking a pleasurable thing and doing it with someone you despise, you do something you love somewhere you despise).
We borrowed fancy suits for court from the legal procedural show I still sometimes work on and laughed at the sight of eachother in "CBS Primetime Drama Drag."
We had a cute little letter-writing campaign for my partner in crime, testaments to his character for the judge to read prior to sentencing. Reading them all, I got my hopes up. They were great letters - we are blessed with an intelligent and expressive group of friends and family. I joked that if I were the judge I would just break down and weep, and ask why a man like this had come before his court in the first place.
But, yeah, I guess I knew I was just joking.
I want to get onward with talking about the vacant house we bought in Baltimore, and how we're rehabbing it ourselves; I want to get onward with everything. But the fact is, my man is doing time right now, and I'm in a relatively new and strange city, and this is what's happening.