Author's Note:

        In writing this account, I realize I've had to depart from the wheel of total accuracy. I've allowed a certain amount of emotion to color my story. But there is a larger truth involved here - larger than any word-for-word quotes from the prosecutor - and I was forced to allow that truth to be presented. For that I make no apology. I did not have court transcripts on which to base my dialogue, but only the emotional confessions of one man who, after all, is the brunt of this calamitous joke in the first place.

        All over the United States, judges and prosecutors are rebelling against the inhumanity of the "hundred-to-one law" and tired of the pyramid style witness testimony it fosters. It is an immoral system that promotes lies. Excesses of prosecution are endemic to this system. They're not just allowed, they're encouraged and paid for, and they're supposed to be there. No one can blame one prosecutor or one judge for his or her zeal in putting people away. After all, prosecutors are paid to prosecute, judges to judge, and unless the underlying foundation is changed, they will go on doing their jobs to the best of their ability and our young people will go on living in quicksand in a nation that does not want them.

        How dare we! How dare we penalize our children for our greed and our mismanaged society. How dare we think that our kids are sacrificeable. Shame on us; shame on our house. We will be excoriated by our progeny. We will be roasted by our chroniclers. We will be vilified by our history and rightly so. In our spiraling commitment to fear, our seeds are already planted. A haunting reign of madmen is upon us. If you don't think so, just spend a week in the county jail. I dare you!