The Loverboy

by Miel Vermeulen

  The day of the trial came and she was collected immediately

  after breakfast. A bus similar to the one that had brought her

  there was parked just inside the gate and there were twenty

  other prisoners waiting to get on. She recognized one girl from

  the kitchen staff and moved closer to her hoping she would be

  chained to her rather than some complete stranger. Unfortunately

  it was not to be, the guards started chaining inmates together

  at random and she was shackled to a women in her mid thirties

  that was going to court for a hearing on a possession charge

  while in prison. Some guards had found a small amount of pot in

  her cell.

  Drugs were everywhere in the prison. It was almost easier

  to get them in the jail then outside of it but Kim had stayed

  away from drugs and didn"t want anything to do with them and had

  no interest in finding out how they got in there. She figured

  that some of the guards were involved as visitors were always

  searched. The woman was friendly enough and they chatted on the way to the court house and when they arrived they were led into

  the basement again where the holding cells were located. There

  they were finally separated from each other and put into the

  cells until their case was up.

  Hers had been the last case of the day and it wasn"t until

  four that she was called. She arrived in the courtroom and the

  district attorney started by reading the accusation. The judge

  looked at her intently over his reading glasses with no sign of

  emotion whatsoever. Then he asked for certain documents which

  the district attorney produced. Then he spoke to her lawyer and

  he produced some documents. He read everything intently while

  everyone just stood there. It was very strange. There were no

  witnesses, no objections over documents or any of the theatrics

  that she had seen so many times on Law and Order. It was in fact

  really boring.

  After about thirty minutes of watching the judge read

  documents he called the hearing to an end and excused himself.

  Her lawyer explained that the district attorney had submitted

  the case documents and he had submitted documents to get the

  statement excluded because it wasn"t complete. They would

  reconvene next week for further deliberation. She asked about

  the proceedings and he explained to her that in Mexico it was

  mostly through written documentation and applying the law based on that rather than on the theatrics of the attorneys. Next week

  the judge would decide on the motions made and then request more

  documentation.

  They said their goodbyes and she was led outside as the

  last to get on the bus. It was nice to be the last one since

  they didn"t shackle her up to anyone like they did the rest. She

  sat by herself trying to make sense of how the courts worked but

  never having seen it before she couldn"t make much sense of it.

  The week came and went and soon she found herself back in the

  bus again en route to the courthouse. This time she was shackled

  to a fat twenty some year old that looked way too big for what

  they served in the prison so she assumed the woman was new to

  the prison. She had not slept well the night before due to a

  concert of screaming kids that had seemed to wake each other up

  just as one was able to go to sleep. It had almost seemed like a

  well trained relay team.

  She didn"t mind it too much and actually just felt sympathy

  for the mothers trying to keep their kids quiet. Some mothers

  didn"t seem to care though and those she did not feel sympathy

  for. Just for the kids, they deserved better parents. No kid

  deserved to go to prison though but the kids didn"t know any

  better and seemed content. But her tiredness limited her

  conversation this time. She was in no mood for chit chat and just zoned out. The bus always followed the same route, through

  a short stretch of country side where there were some run down

  homes and then into the city. It was far from the Mexico she had

  seen in the resort where she and Jake had stayed. Soon she was

  in the holding cell again and this time her case was handled in

  the late morning.

  More documents were passed back and forth, mostly

  statements from officials at the airport. Her attorney told her

  the motion to exclude her statement had been denied as the

  incompleteness should have been discovered before signing.

  Arguments that it had been in Spanish did nothing. The hearing

  lasted for almost an hour when it was discontinued again because

  the next trial was scheduled to start and a new date was set for

  the following week again to give the judge time to consider all

  the paperwork.

  This went on for several weeks and each time it was

  discontinued and moved to next week. After about five more

  hearings the district attorney and Nicandro both claimed to have

  presented all their documents and the judge exclaimed he would

  go over them again and would come to a verdict next month. The

  month went by without incident and she found herself chained to

  yet someone else. She had thought that it was done at random but

  as time went on she figured out that the same people were never chained together twice and they avoided chaining people together

  from the same block. Sometimes they had to chain people from the

  same block together but then they were careful not to select

  people that knew each other better than a passing “hi”.

  Her case was at the end of the day again and after the

  hearing started the judge addressed her for the first time. He

  spoke with a stern voice and looked down at her over his

  glasses. After reading the charges again for good measure as if

  she might have forgotten what she was there for he started going

  on and on about the animosity he felt for Americans like her

  that abused his beloved country for the vile and disgusting act

  of drug trade. He had no sympathy for an American that was just

  looking to party and would abuse their legal system to provide

  the means for it. His tirade went on for at least twenty minutes

  and Kim felt herself getting smaller with each passing minute.

  When he was finally done he told her that he had no option but

  to sentence her to the maximum he could for her grave crimes.

  She would serve twenty five years with no opportunity for

  parole.

  Kim"s jaw dropped to the floor in shock as did her lawyer"s

  while the district attorney received congratulations from

  several of his colleagues. Shocked Nicandro quickly told her he

  would fight for an appeal and would come see her soon as she was hurried out. On the bus she just sat in silence thinking about

  her future or lack there of. She would not get out until she was

  forty three years old. Twenty five years, she thought. That was

  longer than she had been alive. When they arrived at the prison

  she went to her cell and fell into a ball on her bed. Rose found

  her there twenty minutes later and sat with her all night. It

  felt good having someone care but when would the misery end?

  Less than two y
ears ago she had been a Junior in high

  school. Since then she had been raped, turned to prostitution,

  lost her family and now been convicted to twenty five years in hell. What else could go wrong?

  Chapter 25:

  She woke up the next morning still nestled in Rose"s arms.

  Rose had sat with her all night and had fallen asleep sitting

  straight up with Kim in her lap. Kim still couldn"t believe that

  this was going to be her home for the next twenty five years.

  News spread quickly about the verdict and everyone was quick to

  admit it was a ridiculous verdict. They all said that the judge

  was playing politics and wanted to send a message to the

  Americans and make a hard stand against crime coming from

  America to further his political career.

  In the afternoon she received word from a guard that there

  was a visitor. She was excused from her kitchen duties and

  headed to the visitor center. Nicandro was waiting for her and

  when she came in he apologized profusely. He had not seen this

  coming and had never expected the maximum to be handed out to an

  eighteen year old on her first offense. They would appeal the

  verdict and he would get on it right away. He would fight hard

  for her. The verdict had awoken him and now he felt guilty not

  giving the case his full attention. It hadn"t been his fault as he was overloaded but he felt sorry for her and vowed to correct

  the situation. He would file the appeal first thing tomorrow

  morning but she had to be patient. Appeals took time and were

  often denied but he promised he would keep filing until they got

  one. Kim nodded and gladly grasped hold of the small sliver of

  hope Nicandro was offering her. She felt better about his

  commitment for her case now even though it could very well be

  too little too late.

  As time went on she started to see the verdict as another

  speed bump but would not accept it. She continued her studies

  and had contact with Nicandro almost every other week, even

  though most of the time he didn"t have much news and was just

  checking up on her. The appeal had been filed and usually it

  took at least four months to even hear back from it but he had

  been zealous and had bugged the court administrator on a weekly

  basis. He had been feeling guilty about how ridiculous the

  verdict had been considering the circumstances and had promised

  her he would do anything he could to fix it and he had kept his

  word. Kim didn"t expect any results but was appreciative for the

  friendship.

  She had a lot of friends inside now but it was always good

  to have some contact with the outside world and she looked

  forward to his visits. A year later and after three requests for an appeal had been denied he had stopped by to inform her that

  he had filed another appeal. He had nothing new to add to the

  appeal but still, it couldn"t hurt and just maybe the request

  would hit a judge"s desk on the right day when the judge was in

  a good mood. Actually he was hoping for the more likely scenario

  where the judge would get fed up with the requests and just

  grant one to shut him up. So far it had not been working but he

  was determined to keep it up to keep his promise. Kim informed

  him she had gotten her high school equivalency diploma and

  informed Nicandro that being done with this she now had some

  more time on her hand.

  It actually struck her as funny considering she was in jail

  for the next twenty three plus years. If there was anything she

  had enough of it was time. So she wanted to know more about how

  the law worked. If it ever came to an appeal she wanted to know

  what was going on. She didn"t want to be a bystander any more.

  Nicandro frowned at this but didn"t see any harm in it and told

  her he would bring a copy of her file for her the next time he

  came over.

  They said their goodbyes and over the next two weeks Kim

  spent more and more time in the library. She made an inventory

  on what the prison library had to offer as far as legal books

  and to her surprise they had a dated but rather complete set of law books about Mexican law. She was surprised that, considering

  where they were, the books looked rather unused which struck her

  as ironic. At the next visit Nicandro had a large file with him.

  The size had quadrupled in size from what she remembered at her

  trial. Nicandro explained that the majority of the paperwork

  covered the requests for appeal and the denials of said

  requests.

  She thanked him for the file and unfolded a couple of

  sheets of paper. On them were questions she had about the

  Mexican legal systems that she had run into while browsing

  through the complex legal volumes. He gave her a puzzled look

  and she asked if he could look over them and see if he could

  answer some and bring the answers next time he came over. He

  looked at the first few questions and they were very basic. He

  knew all of them off the top of his head but they had not been

  stupid questions. They had actually been questions he had either

  asked or had been afraid to ask during his first year of law

  school. He wanted to answer them right there but they only had a

  few minutes left on the visit and Kim didn"t seem to be in a

  hurry. Again she had plenty of time. When Nicardro left, a guard

  took about thirty minute to scan through the complete file to

  make sure there was nothing in it that was not allowed. Kim

  considered complaining about privacy but realized that she hadn"t had privacy for over a year and a half and didn"t expect

  to get any now.

  When she got back to her cell she looked through all the

  paperwork. It contained every document that had been used in the

  trial from the prosecutor and her lawyer as well as the

  sentencing and the appeals. She sorted everything and for the

  time being focused on the trial documents ignoring the appeals.

  She would look at those later. Every day she would spend at

  least a few hours in the library comparing her documents to

  examples in the legal books and journals. Every two weeks she

  had a new list with questions for Nicandro and he faithfully

  stopped by every other week and gave her the answers to the

  questions from the last visit.

  Some of the times she had already found the answers

  herself. To his surprise the questions were getting more and

  more complex. Where in the beginning he had been able to answer

  them all off the top of his head as time went on he was stumped

  by a large portion of the questions and had to look them up. The

  denial of the appeal came six months after filing. Nicandro

  thought he was starting to hit a nerve with the judge and he was

  making them wait longer on purpose. Two years had passed since

  Kim had been arrested. She was twenty now and there was no

  improvement on her case. Nicandro delivered the bad news in person but to his

  surprise Kim was not moved about the appeal being denied one way

  or another. She was only eager to give him her new list of

  questions and receive the answers to the list from tw
o weeks

  ago. Sheepishly Nicandro had to admit that he had not been able

  to answer two of the questions and was checking with some

  colleagues and would get back to her on those the next time. She

  had a remarkable mind for the law he decided. She could come up

  with questions that nobody in his office had been able to answer

  and she had never spent an hour in law school. She didn"t seem

  to mind but he still felt foolish.

  He promised her to file for another appeal immediately but

  she told him not to. Surprised he asked why. She looked at him

  and said that the appeals had been virtually the same. The judge

  would just look at it for five minutes then deny it as he had

  done with the others and put it on a waiting pile for a few

  months before having it returned. They were making it too easy

  to deny and they needed to put some reasons in why an appeal

  should be granted. The sentence had been harsher than expected

  but it had been with legal limits and therefore it hadn"t really

  provided a compelling enough reason for an appeal. She decided

  that to get an appeal they shouldn"t attack the length of the

  sentence but rather the validity of the sentence. He was dumbfounded when she explained it with the ease of a seasoned

  trial lawyer.

  She asked him to wait until they could come up with some

  grounds for an appeal and interested he agreed. Over time she

  started to spend more time in the library and it came to a point

  where other prisoners were seeking her help in legal matters.

  Most of the prisoners were represented by a public defender like

  her and most of those public defenders had workloads that did

  not allow them to do their cases justice. Her services were in

  such high demand that prisoners would pay her for it. She often

  helped out for free but most of the time people would do things

  for her. She barely worked in the kitchen anymore as most of the

  time someone would work her shift for some legal help.

  In total she had been able to save several hundred dollars

  from her kitchen work and from the gifts from people she helped.

  Nicandro came over again and she laid out the plan. The appeal

  would have three new parts to it.

  Part one: The statement would be challenged. He objected

  that they had done that at trial and it had been denied. She

  explained that they had challenged it for the wrong reason. They