He handcuffed me on the roadside—but moments later realized I was the judge who could end his career in an instant

Part Five: The Courthouse

I was forty-three minutes late to the Williams hearing.

My clerk, a young woman named Priya who was in her first year and had a quality of unflappable competence that I found enormously reassuring, had informed the courtroom of a delay without specifying the cause. Both parties’ counsel had waited with the professional patience of people who understood that judges were sometimes late and that the correct response to this was patience.