Bitchified ho

By Longsworth Altoona III
Special to Howlin’ Leroy Eenk

The state prison guards watched the courtroom gallery with cold eyes and gray faces, like they saw a ghost.

The inmate shuffled into court, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed and ankles shackled, and sat in the defendant’s chair. It was comfortable, and he relaxed and leaned back. The prison guards stood close to him, tense, and the sheriff deputies stood behind them.

He had big, blue rimmed, prison issue eyeglasses, a thick and mishaped afro and a long beard, ratty and straight like he sat in his cell pulling it. His belly lapped over the chains around his waist.

The prisoner was to be charged with custodial assault for attacking a guard at his home, the prison, where he had five more years to serve on several counts of first-degree rape of a child. The court he found himself in wasn’t the court that convicted him, a big city court. This court was smaller, a rural county, virtually all white.

It was Friday afternoon and the gallery was filled with criminals, loved ones, and lawyers. Friday afternoons are a time for the routine business of a superior court, a time to reset trials, check in with the judge, take piss tests, make a plea, change a plea, all the mundane actions and motions.

The judge opened his mouth to start the hearing, but he couldn’t get a word in.

The prisoner took in a breath, straining his restraints, like bellows filling with air. When he let out this great breath, accompanying it was a booming, “Fuck all this!”

The judge tried to talk, but the prisoner wouldn’t have it.

“Fuck you, motherfucker! Out of time! Out of time! Fuck all this shit!”

The prisoner’s public defender slouched in the chair next to him, eyes straight ahead, holding his right hand up to his temple. He hates these cases, just a waste of tax payer money. What can you do to somebody who has nothing left to lose?

The prisoner’s statements continued for a full minute, sixty seconds of menacing profanity. A suddenly attentive gallery snickered.

“I just want you to understand your rights,” the judge said.

“Fuck all that! And fuck you, cracker!”

The attorneys in the front row shifted in their seats and grinned a each other. They figured the prisoner went too far.

“Oops, that’s it,” one lawyer muttered under his breath. The guards looked ready to spring and yank the prisoner out of the comfortable chair.

The judge addressed the prison by mister.

“Fuck you, cracker, fuck all this! You’re nothing but a bitchified ho!” the prisoner hollered.

The judge turned to the public defender. “I understand there may be a mental health defense?”

The public defender opened his mouth, but the prisoner jumped up on his seat.

“Who sent a psychiatrist to talk to me?” He turned to the public defender, inches away. “Was it you? I’m talking to you, motherfucker!”

The public defender sighed and started to explain, but figured it was obvious.

“I don’t appreciate you talking to a psychiatrist about me!” he hollered at the judge, then turned back to his lawyer.

“And I don’t appreciate you sending a psychiatrist to talk to me! You hear me?”

The judge addressed the prison by mister, but that’s as far as he got.

“Fuck you, motherfucker! Out of time! Out of time!”

The prisoner was yelling "out of time," his lawyer said later, because the prisoner believes his right to a speedy trial were being violated.

“Are you prepared to enter a plea today?” the judge asked the public defender.

He shrugged. “I haven’t been able to consult with my client because of my race.” The lawyer tried to continue to talk, but his client interrupted.

“Yeah, that’s right. Fuck all this, crackers!”

The judged asked the prisoner, in all seriousness, if he wanted to proceed.

“Fuck you!” the prisoner responded.

“OK,” judge said to the guards and they took the man away. The courtroom fell silent, hoping to catch any last minute oaths, but the prisoner walked away without incident and disappeared behind a steel door.

“Welcome to my world,” the public defender said, then added that the psychiatrist at the state hospital decided the prisoner was fit to stand trail and participate in his own defense.

The director of the public defender office, a disheveled balding ex-punk rocker, hustled up to the front row. “Did I just hear a ‘bitchified ho’ get bandied about?”

The gallery erupted into laughter and conversation.

The judge raised his voice and everyone shut up.

“There is only to be one voice at a time in this courtroom,” he said.