My guy is charged with a number of violent crimes all of them carrying long long prison terms like LWOP (criminal lawyers I’ve noticed like referring to this as “EL-WOP”) –  ”life without parole” – which is the creme de la creme when you are looking to do crimes that might get you imprisoned for a long time.

Can’t do any better than this which is a lot more impressive than simple “LIFE” which starts at 15 to life and then proceeds up to infinity to LIFE. Pussy sentence. I could do that standing on my head.

The only thing trumping LWOP is DEATH. Can’t do any better than that. But still… So when I tell my young client that his little binge made him eligible for LWOP on a few of the counts he starts crying.

Forgetting about what he actually did and whether or not he actually did it  - just on the level of it hitting him what the consequences of what his accused escapade was likely to be – I kind of felt a moment – I wanted to comfort him – but I couldn’t think of anything to say – “it’s not so bad” – “we can beat this” – “i feel your pain”. Couldn’t come up with anything. So I didn’t say anything. Just sat and watched him until he had suffficiently recovered to carry on the conversation.

And then he says to me – and I still can’t believe it but i wrote it down as he said it so that i would know even to myself that I’m not making up this shit. “The cops took my NINTENDO. Can you get it back for me?”