Day as a Witness

3^rd June 2014

Dear Cassi,

       

I have spent my first day as a witness to my own injuries and what a day it has turned to be both trying and dragging. It started with a call to meet a District Attorney at her office to discuss evidence and as it became clear reports and photographs had not been rendered to the detective among these were the image of the cuts on my face and the wreckage of the office floor.

       

My work considered that a matter to be on duty time and so said on Monday I would have ‘tomorrow’ off. It was when I had made my coffee and settled into working for the night that Sherri, the per diem guard, arrived and asked what I was doing on shift. This surprised me and I learned that I had been given the night off. I work for two hours before taking the shift off and going home to find that sleep was impossible.

       

I left my home two hours before my appointment with the court taking in account of LA traffic and arrived in the right place an hour early. At a small table I found a sheriff’s deputy, or at very least a man meant to look as such, who said he had been told of my arrival and asked me to sit and wait for the woman in question.

       

My time sitting on that stone bench was spent reading interjected by the calls of paper law folk greeting on another. They looked and sounded to be so happy to see one another that this almost came to me to be a result of tension as if any moment one of these folks could burst into fire if wrongly handled. This may be a result of them being public defenders and so apposing each other in one case or another.

The District Attorney herself arrived almost right on time to the second. She was a tan woman of Asian descent with broad hips and a healthy build.  Had the situation not been so solemn or the air not so thick I would have been happy to make the acquaintance of so fine a woman.

We sat down with the police officer who made the initial report, talked over evidence, made ready for me to take the stand. I attended the court and was sworn in then we went over every photograph.  I was cross examined for 15 minutes before the court adjourned for the day and I was called to come back the next day at 10:30AM.

I hate doing this, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal