CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT

Chapter Three: When Things First Started Going Sideways

By late September 2011, so much of my job was tedious and predictable. I know that may be hard to believe, but—as a cog in the vast Hennepin County criminal justice system—I spent a lot of time in my head incensed about all the things that were not within my control. Like judge assignments. In that time frame, the leadership of the bench had divided all the judges who were to handle criminal matters into three teams. My office followed suit and divided us violent crimes prosecutors into three teams. My team was dubbed the “serious traffic” team, to match the name of the six or so judges that were our counterparts.

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