When most people think of the law, they think of cops and robbers, the TV show Law & Order and maybe a dedicated district attorney putting criminals away in a 1 hour storyline. The good guys are always vindicated and the bad guys always go to jail.
Not me. I'm a lawyer, and a civil litigator at that. When I was in law school and people asked me what kind of law I wanted to go into I swore up and down I would *never* do criminal law on either side of the aisle. I said I didn't want that kind of responsibility.
In my first incarnation of an attorney, I was a civil litigator specializing in contract law. A partner at my first firm once told me that the great thing about it was "It's just money, and it's not ours." So I've managed to stay pretty far away from the criminal side of my profession and I liked it that way just fine.
Fast forward to 4 days ago when two thugs broke into my house. While I was in it.
I was upstairs working in my office, heard a door and went down to investigate, thinking T had come home early. I went down our second staircase and surprised two young white guys hauling a laundry basket down our main stair case. In the split second it took me to decide that they were not there to do my laundry for me, I slammed my hand down on the alarm system and sent the burglars fleeing out the back door they had smashed in.
The police came very quickly; I gave fabulously accurate descriptions in an attempt to shatter all those things we know about how unreliable eye witness testimony is; the K9 dog came and tracked them out to the highway; forensics came and got nothing, except for some very slimy prints that I think contained PB&J at about waist height.
And then I fell the fuck apart.
I couldn't track down T and had to send my dear friend Lauren over to his office to fetch him. We all camped at Lauren's that night, played with Lauren the next day, I went to work with T on Thursday and camped out in a vacant office, and then T stayed home with me on Friday. I haven't been alone in my house yet.
Our back door has been fixed, and fixed very well. That mofo is STRONG now. But still, with those random scruffy, thuggy KIDS out there, my home no longer feels safe and cozy. The privacy I used to adore in our backyard is now the reason "they" were able to break into my house, despite a well traveled street and a home full of elderly people staring out at it every day from across the street!
I was starting to wonder how long I could occupy the office in T's building before they start charging me rent. Then my detective called today. He asked me if I thought I could recognize the assholes who broke into my house again. (Of course, he didn't actually call them assholes.) I said yes, so he's putting together a photo line-up for me to look at in the next day or so.
I'm trying not to read too much into this, but I'm secretly hoping this means they caught them breaking into another house and would like to add on another charge and close my case.
To keep from getting terribly nervous, I've decided to treat it as a legal exercise. I learned all about legal line-ups during crim pro. Let's put it to the test. And let's see if I *can* remember what they look like. I gave a pretty accurate description at the time and, of course, I have those pictures in my mind that won't go away. But maybe, just maybe, if I see them again in two dimensional form, they'll stop being so three dimensional in my dreams. And then maybe I can delete my brand new post category, fear.
