BIAS
Finding a forgotten classmate
or shaking hands with old friends
summoned to court, we knew
the cops and their foibles –
sometimes even the accused.
Judge Freddie McKenzie once asked
if finding Tommy Estrada guilty
might be embarrassing, or would
knowing the arresting deputy
favor the People’s case. Her gavel
quelled the laughter of those days.
It’s still difficult to impanel twelve
impartial people when college kids
can’t miss a class, or Hispanics
can’t speak English – mothers
with sick babies, young buck rednecks
squirming to escape homogenization.
I understand how anger works –
how my father worked me with it,
how it can rip the heart apart
from caring – a relentless river
that can’t be stopped, it still worms
with leaks that shame me, yet
I judge this man gone berserk,
charged with three felonies
only the ambitious and the vengeful
might not settle with a misdemeanor plea –
plus damages, instead of the potential
of twenty-five years in prison.
Weighing it all for three days, I drive
one hundred and eighty miles in silence
to judge this young man not unlike me.