“Calm down Mr. Jackson.”
“…What…That’s not my name…” Steven spat, stunned.
“Oh, right. I’m sorry about that, Mr. Walters, I was looking at something.” Lutz said, doing damage control behind his mistake of identity. But there was nothing on the paper in his hands besides a date. “Anyway, your next court date is on, January the sixth, so I’ll see you then.” Lutz rose from his seat and started for the door inside his booth.
Cuffed at the waist and feeling weighed down by the chains, Steven managed to stand and grabbed Lutz’s attention before he could leave.
“So I’m stuck here for seventeen days?”
Lutz shot him a look of indifference, then said; “Well, yeah–unless you have fifty thousand dollars to dish out–well ten percent of that–then yeah, you’re stuck until these court proceedings are complete. And given the obvious fact that I’m representing you as a court appointed attorney, I take it you don’t have that kind of money laying around…”
He didn’t have five hundred dollars, let alone five thousand. After paying on his student loans and other bills, including the expensive purchase he made with the little savings he did have, he was all wiped out.
“Man if you’re my attorney you have to get me out of here.”
Lutz shrugged his shoulders. “What do you think I’m trying to do…”.
The lawyer left without waiting for a response. A discouraged Steven sat back down, his chin dropped to his chest. He hadn’t done a thing wrong, but did what he thought was right, and now he was being punished for it.
He remembered a story he watched on dateline in a friends dorm room once. It was about a guy who’d been accused of a crime and given a life Sentence. While in prison a guy he remembered from the line up he had been in had gone around the prison bragging of committing the crime the guy serving the life sentence was doing time for. It had taken twelve years for the man who’d been wrongfully accused to be absolved of the charges…twelve years. Steven couldn’t fathom the possibility.
Terry Little
DOC #A562207
I can’t imagine the series of emotions one goes through being wrongly convicted. My heart certainty goes out to anyone walking in those shoes. God bless bless the day they get to take them off.