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Yesterday I got to see our criminal justice system at work.
Or not work.
There is a lot of waiting around involved.
On the upside, I got to hear a police sergeant tell funny true stories.
He's a real cop. He says you're not a real cop until you've been suspended, sued, and divorced. He has also been hung in effigy. I had seen the effigy, but didn't know it was he.
Anyway, I had to tesify at a trial for the drugs I found. This one was for the recipient.
They forgot to bring him from the jail. So that meant waiting another two hours until the sheriffs brought him down from the county.
Pre-trial testimony prep is not like you see on Law and Order. I did not meet with the ADA in a nice office. I stood in a hallway and she gave me a printed sheet of the questions she was going to ask me, with answers filled in, pretty much based on my initial witness statement to the police.
I ended up not having to actually testify. Probably just as well. We were heading in towards lunchtime and the judge wanted to wrap things up. Prisoner pled to some lesser offence to avoid a two year minimum manditory sentence for contraband.
I go to a preliminary on the one who smuggled in the drugs next week. At least that one's at the District Justice's office that's down the street from my house. I get to sleep in. For this one I had to be up before 7am, and at the courthouse by 8:30, was stuck there until past noon, never got any sleep ... I can't nap. So by the end of my shift my butt was dragging something awful. And it was busy.
But all the time at the court was OT, so that's something.
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