Doing time

My weeks are now divided into a unique calendar of cycles and days, the tempo of the clinical trial that determines when I take experimental drugs (every day), when I have blood tests (every week, for now at least), and when I have assorted other tests (eye exams, skin biopsies, EKGs).  Today is Cycle 1, Day 25.  On Cycle 3, Day 1 -- August 29, if the schedule holds -- I'll have a CT scan to see if any of this has done any good.

That's eight weeks between scans, 56 days.  My oncologist advises patients to live their lives in such two-month intervals. Personally I'm a little more ambitious -- and a little more focused on seven or so months of baseball, followed by that dark, cold season until the next Opening Day. Regardless of the interval, his point is to make the most of now, if not quite Live for Today, then perhaps Live for the Next Two Cycles, Then We'll See, or alternately, Just Hang On until Pitchers and Catchers Report.

However, such short-term thinking can be dangerous when you're 16. Tuesday I met, sort of, a young man whose failure to think long-term -- or at least, his failure to consider the proliferation of security cameras in the commercial area near our home -- earned him a 98-day interval in juvenile detention. Last spring, Emma was walking home from school after an afternoon meeting with her math teacher when a kid walked up to her and demanded her mobile phone. She said no, two more kids surrounded her, one flashed a knife and demanded her phone again. They robbed her of her phone and wallet while making the kind of threats that bring out all the crazy worst instincts in a father (although she handled it all with calm assurance and resolute courage.)

To the credit of Washington police, they quickly arrested the kid with the knife -- the young man, actually, at 16 -- and put together enough evidence to charge him with adult felonies in Emma's case as well as two other robberies that afternoon. While he was certainly menacing to his victims, he seems to have been new to all of this. He soon confessed and agreed to plead guilty in Emma's case if the other charges were dropped.

I discussed all this with the Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to the case as he was considering what sentence to recommend to the judge. The charge had a maximum sentence of five years in prison, he said. I told him that no one would want to send this kid to prison for five years, but that this crime merited at least some jail time. He agreed.

Sentencing was set for Tuesday, one of a dozen various cases on the D.C. Superior Court docket that morning.  When I arrived, the prosecutor pulled me aside to say that he had reached an agreement with the defense lawyer on a sentence to recommend to the judge. He noted that the defendant had now served 98 days in juvenile detention and earned high marks, apparently for his academic work, leadership in defusing conflicts, and remorse for his crimes. Considering that, and his age, they agreed to recommend probation -- closely supervised, the prosecutor stressed. They also agreed to allow the kid to eventually expunge the conviction from his record if he stayed out of trouble so that the felony conviction would not follow him the rest of his life -- if he stayed out of trouble, the prosecutor stressed again.

I did not know how to respond. I could understand how all this sounded reasonable, while on the other hand, it could easily amount to a slap on the wrist for a violent felon in training. But I was in no position to be objective -- my dad instincts to demand Medieval justice overwhelmed any dispassionate evaluation. Emma, at least, was handling the whole thing calmly. At the prosecutor’s recommendation, she had written a clear-eyed and eloquent letter to the court describing the impact of the crime. I stuck around to read it to the judge.

The judge entered the courtroom, everyone stood, and the morning of justice began with much shuffling of paper and discussions of scheduling.  The judge was a grandmotherly type, if there were a stern grandmotherly type who sends people to prison. The clerk called each case and the defendants passed through for quick procedures such as arraignments – the formal reading of charges, most involving guns. The defendants were all in their 20s, all but two of a dozen were men, and half of those were coming from prison. Those entered the courtroom shackled at the wrist and wearing orange jumpsuits that mostly covered their tattoos.

When the clerk called our case, a U.S. Marshall walked in with a boy who looked about 12, discordantly shackled and wearing institutional gray. Standing at the defense table, he seemed to disappear beside his lawyer. My first impulse was to give him a hug and then maybe have a catch on the courthouse lawn. And then I remembered the circumstances and angry Dad returned.

The prosecutor called me up, I thanked the judge, and I read Emma’s statement, which noted the anxiety she continues to feel about the robbery but emphasized the loss of trust that such crimes cause the whole community.  When I turned to sit down, the judge asked me to wait and then asked the kid if he had anything to say in response. He looked back to me and said, very politely, something along the lines of “I'm sorry I scared your daughter.”  His defense lawyer then started to read a letter of apology from him, but the judge stopped her and said he should read it, so he did. It was a nice letter and he read it well. It seemed to be responding to Emma's statement, which the defense had apparently seen in advance, apologizing for the harm he had done to the community.

The judge then grilled him for 10 minutes about what he'd done and how he would destroy the rest of his life if he failed to live up to the requirements of his probation.  He was not particularly responsive, but he at least acknowledged her warnings, and she agreed to probation for two years.  If he does manage to stay out of trouble, his punishment will end up being those two years of someone looking over his shoulder, and those 98 days in detention. (And he may face a few consequences at home as well – he had a half-dozen relatives at the hearing looking severely concerned and displeased; I exchanged a quick and pleasant “good morning” with them on my way out of the court.)

On the medical calendar, his 98 days are a little less than two cycles, a significant chunk of time in my world. And if I remember right, that feels like a lot of time for a 16-year-old as well. Whether that time – and whatever guidance he gets at home, school and church – is enough to convince an impulsive kid to think ahead of the years to come and stay away from daily temptation, I have no idea, and at this point I’m not interested in consulting the statistics. A little uncertainty leaves open the door for a little hope, not to mention faith and trust – for him and his family, for me and my family, and for all of our friends and neighbors who just want to walk home in peace.