Nothin’ from nothin’

This past month (October) I had to make a trip down to Kingman, Arizona – Kingman is about halfway between St. George and Phoenix – I went to testify in court in a restitution hearing against a couple that had been caught stealing copper wire from one of our power lines down in Littlefield, Arizona. Copper wire theft has been rampant in poverty stricken developing countries ever since they got power lines, and now that the US economy resembles that of a third-world nation we’re starting to experience a rash of wire theft too. The trip itself went without any problems – I stayed awake while driving and the car functioned just fine – so no complaints there. The three hours that I spent sitting in the courtroom and observing the proceedings there, however, were pretty impressive. The judge ran through a dozen hearings in that amount of time – he was really speedy – but then he does this eight hours a day, five days a week – so he’s obviously seen it all before and got all his lines all down pat. There was this whole parade of losers pass by, one after the other, some in baggy orange jammies and manacles and chains and others still in their street clothes, who were variously sent on to prison, shipped off to the INS, sent back to jail to await further hearings, and/or reprimanded as reprobates. The characters of this brief spectacle ranged in age from 18 up to 50-something – apparently some people have never learned and others never will. One rough looking lady in chains, after she had already had her turn with the judge, returned to her seat at the convicts-in-chains bench, turned away from the judge (and toward us) and spent the next hour or so quietly crying; my heart went out to her – who knows how much of her transgressions were of her own doing and how much was inflicted on her – undoubtedly some of both. When they finally got around to our case, an hour and a half late because the court-appointed defense attorney was busy somewhere else, presumably with a paying client, the county attorney promptly cut a deal with the defense attorney without so much as a “by your leave.” The judge obviously noted my look of concern and asked if the victim was agreeable to the terms of the restitution – when I stated that the amount discussed by the attorneys (neither of which were mine) was something less than 10% of the value of the wire stolen the judge stated flat out that it didn’t really matter what the amount was because convicted criminals almost never pay their court-ordered restitution, so zero percent of 10% is just as much as zero percent of 100%, and it’s a lot less work to get pushed through the court. Now this wasn’t particularly news to me, I’d predicted as much before leaving home, but I was dismayed that he had said it right in front of the thieves – that’s really bad parenting. Anyway, after a brief consultation with my boss, we agreed to the 0% of 10% figure, and drove back home – a little wiser and a little sadder.

The attached photo above is from our four-wheeling trip around Caine Beds back on my birthday in September.