The Lincoln Lawyer

stronger and smarter, then I’ll be back,” he said to me.
    He told me to go ahead and make a deal. He had five thousand dollars delivered to me in a money order-I didn’t ask where it came from-and I went back to the prosecutor, got both pending cases folded into one, and McGinley agreed to plead guilty. The only thing he ever asked me to try to get for him was an assignment to a prison close by so his mother and his three young children wouldn’t have to be driven too far or too long to visit him.
    When court was called into session, Judge Daniel Flynn came through the door of his chambers in an emerald green robe, which brought false smiles from many of the lawyers and court workers in the room. He was known to wear the green on two occasions each year-St. Patrick’s Day and the Friday before the Notre Dame Fighting Irish took on the Southern Cal Trojans on the football field. He was also known among the lawyers who worked the Compton courthouse as “Danny Boy,” as in, “Danny Boy sure is an insensitive Irish prick, isn’t he?”
    The clerk called the case and I stepped up and announced. McGinley was brought in through a side door and stood next to me in an orange jumpsuit with his wrists locked to a waist chain. He had no one out in the gallery to watch him go down. He was alone except for me.
    “Top o’ the morning to you, Mr. McGinley,” Flynn said in an Irish brogue. “You know what today is?”
    I lowered my eyes to the floor. McGinley mumbled his response.
    “The day I get my sentence.”
    “That, too. But I am talking about St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. McGinley. A day to revel in Irish heritage.”
    McGinley turned slightly and looked at me. He was street smart but not life smart. He didn’t understand what was happening, whether this was part of the sentencing or just some form of white man disrespect. I wanted to tell him that the judge was being insensitive and probably racist. Instead I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Just be cool. He’s an asshole.”
    “Do you know the origin of your name, Mr. McGinley?” the judge asked.
    “No, sir.”
    “Do you care?”
    “Not really, sir. It’s a name from a slaveholder, I ’spect. Why would I care who that motherfucka be?”
    “Excuse me, Your Honor,” I said quickly.
    I leaned over to McGinley again.
    “Darius, cool it,” I whispered. “And watch your language.”
    “He’s dissing me,” he said back, a little louder than a whisper.
    “And he hasn’t sentenced you yet. You want to blow the deal?”
    McGinley stepped back from me and looked up at the judge.
    “Sorry about my language, Y’Honor. I come from the street.”
    “I can tell that,” Flynn said. “Well, it is a shame you feel that way about your history. But if you don’t care about your name, then I don’t either. Let’s get on with the sentencing and get you off to prison, shall we?”
    He said the last part cheerfully, as if he were taking great delight in sending McGinley off to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.
    The sentencing went by quickly after that. There was nothing in the presentencing investigation report besides what everybody already knew. Darius McGinley had had only one profession since age eleven, drug dealer. He’d had only one true family, a gang. He’d never gotten a driver’s license, though he drove a BMW. He’d never gotten married, though he’d fathered three babies. It was the same old story and same old cycle trotted out a dozen times a day in courtrooms across the county. McGinley lived in a society that intersected mainstream America only in the courtrooms. He was just fodder for the machine. The machine needed to eat and McGinley was on the plate. Flynn sentenced him to the agreed-upon three to five years in prison and read all of the standard legal language that came with a plea agreement. For laughs-though only his own courtroom staff complied-he read the boilerplate using his brogue again. And then it was over.
    I know McGinley dealt death and destruction in the form of rock cocaine and probably committed untold violence and other offenses he was never charged with, but I still felt bad for him. I felt like he was another one who’d never had a shot at anything but thug life in the first place. He’d never known his father and had dropped out of school in the sixth grade to learn the rock trade. He could accurately count money in a rock house but he had never had a checking account. He had never been to a county