The Arraignment

Nikhil had clerked for six weeks, but he had never watched a defendant arraigned from this close — brought before the judge, the charges read aloud, and asked plainly how he intended to plead.

The prosecutor built her case on a single affidavit, a sworn written statement from a witness who insisted she had seen the whole thing. On paper it looked airtight. Nikhil copied its key lines into the file, impressed by how much weight a signed oath could carry.

The defense lawyer, older and unhurried, tried to quash it — to have the statement thrown out entirely, arguing the witness had been coached and the oath improperly taken. If he succeeded, the prosecution's spine would simply vanish.

The judge did not rule at once. Instead she asked a question that caught Nikhil off guard: what was the defendant's history? The word the senior clerk beside him whispered was recidivism — the man had been convicted twice before and released twice, and here he stood a third time, as if the revolving door had a seat with his name on it.

There was even a civil thread tangled in: a lien the man's creditors had placed on his only property, a small shop, so that whatever he still owned was already spoken for before the criminal matter closed.

The arraignment ended without drama — a plea entered, a date set, the man led out. But Nikhil sat with his notes a long time afterward. He had come expecting a verdict. What he had watched instead was only the door creaking open: the slow, procedural beginning of something that would take months to end.