Strike three ch. 03

When I reached Eric's office, he was already waiting for me in the lobby and quickly ushered me into a meeting room, pushed me down into a chair, and stared at me intensely while he spoke.

"Ok, Chris. If I'm going to help you, I need you to be completely honest with me," Eric began. "You say the fine is the first on your record. Are your sure that this is true?"

Eric was still looking at me with a penetrating stare, using all his lawyer experience to determine if I was lying or not. But even if I still had that uneasy feeling, that thought way back in my head, I still couldn't remember anything that would put me on the strike three mark under the "Tier III Male Offender Accountability Act."

As calm and convincing as I could, I looked back at Eric and said, "Yes, I'm absolutely sure, the fine is my first strike. There must be a mistake. I wouldn't be lying to you about this."

Eric just sat there for a few seconds without breaking eye contact. When he finally spoke, it was with a mild sympathy in his voice. "I guess that is what you truly believe, Chris. But if think hard about this. Is there nothing in your past, something you have worked to forget, that can be of importance?"

And then it hit me like a hammer blow. That uneasy feeling, that flicker of a memory way back in my mind, was indeed a ghost from the past. I wasn't technically lying. Up until I received the ticket the week before, I had a clean record -- in my adult life, that was.

As the memories of my wild teenage years slowly came back to me, I felt a sweat breaking out on my back and my throat tightened. Eric saw my reaction, got up and pored me a glass of water from the jug on the conference table.

"I see you remember now," he began. "I have skimmed your casefile, but you should talk me through this in your own words."

So, with a shaking voice, jumping back and forth in the story, I started to tell Eric about my rebellious teenage years. How I went from a popular kid with a lot of friends to an insecure and constantly angry loner when I started high school. How I for years was in a nearly a constant fight with my parents. How a lot of my problems probably came from the insecurity in my own sexuality, and how I eventually drifted towards this loos gang of other outcasts and loners. A gang of teenage boys that always found themselves in some sort of trouble.

Still, I was a bit of coward, so I was never front and center when the gang were out looking for trouble and avoided a lot of encounters with the police by just quietly sneaking out of sight. But a couple of times the luck wasn't on my side.

The first time I got arrested I was sixteen, and it was just a minor thing -- trying to bye beer with a fake id. The older brother of one of the guys in the gang had a contact that could fix fake driving licenses, and since I looked the oldest, I got the honor of fixing the alcohol. Unfortunately, the store where we tried to buy the beer already had some problems with the authorities for selling alcohol to minors, and in stead of just throwing me out when they saw the badly made fake driving license, they called the police.

I was lucky, after all, and got away with a warning when I ratted out the older brother who had got us the fake ID, and I managed to smooth over my snitching with the gang by convincing them that the police more than less had tortured me into giving up his name.

My second arrest was more serious and happened about a year later. I was caught red handed smoking weed when the police raided the abandoned house we had broken into to party. I was charged for both possession and using weed, but in the end the lawyer my parents got managed to get the possession charges dismissed on some technical details since they couldn't prove the weed was mine.

I got away with just a few months of community service, mandatory drug tests, and I had to attend a drug awareness program. In the end this turned out to be the wake-up call both my parent and I need to get my life back on track. We moved to another part of town, which forced me to change school and have a clean break from the bad people I had been hanging wit. But most importantly, my teenage brain started to get its wiring right, and I realized myself that the direction my life was heading, wasn't what I wanted for my life.

I came to terms with being gay and came out to my parents and two younger brothers, who all took it without any fuzz one way or another. I started to focus on my schoolwork and managed to finish high school with decent enough grades to get me into college where I got myself a computer science degree and hadn't locked back on these dark years of my life since.

Under the previous criminal code my two encounters with the police, which happened while I was a minor, had been off my criminal record for years. But with the new and toughened "Tier III Male Offender Accountability Act" they had, of course, been reinstated. So, for all my arrogance and contempt against other males who couldn't keep track of their own record, I had walked straight into the trap myself. My crimes were almost thirty years apart, but it was no excuse. I had, recklessly as it was, reached "Strike three."

I felt completely empty after finishing my story. Besides my closest family, no one knew about my dark past, and Eric was the first person I ever told this story. Eric was still looking at me from across the conference table, but with sympathy this time.

"I am so sorry about this Chriss, it's just not fair," he said. "I guess you know it yourself, and I can't lie. It's not looking good. Since you accepted the fine, you are on strike three. And with the drug conviction, however how small and far back in time it is, it can quite possibly hand you a harsh sentence."

"But that doesn't mean we can't try to fight it," he continued, trying to sound cheerful with only medium success.

Then he went on to talk about how some legal scholars was questioning how the intent of the "Tier III Male Offender Accountability Act" had been interpreted, and how they argued that the law, as they saw it, left room for reasoning, and that there wasn't necessarily a strict "Strike three" bar. Given the unusual circumstances in my case -- the long timespan between the crimes, the pettiness of my wrongdoings, the way I had proven myself as a law-abiding citizen for the large part of my life, it was worth trying this argument in my case, Eric said. And if, that didn't work, the same argument could be used for giving me nothing more than a minimum six-month sentence.

The rest of the week went in a blur. I called in sick to work, saying I had got a bad flue. If I wasn't working with Eric on preparing my defense, I spent the day staring into the big dark hole that my possible sentence would be. I knew, and Eric admitted, that the legal argument about the "Strike three" law's intent was farfetched. All the precedence since the law enacted, said that "strike three was strike three" no matter what or how small the crimes was.

But it was the only hope I had, and I tried to cling to it as best as I could. I knew that even a short six-month sentence would be a fatal blow to my life. If I was convicted, I could wave goodbye to my dream of becoming the CEO of the company, and it would probably endanger my current management position also. So, in just one day I had gone from being on the top of the world, to facing the greatest humiliation in my life, ruining everything I had worked so hard for.

After a long week of sleepless nights and constant pondering over how my possible new life would look like, the day of my court hearing finally arrived yesterday. My hearing wasn't scheduled until after lunch, but I couldn't spend another minute just wandering around in my apartment, so I made myself ready, pushing away the thought that it could be the last time in a while I got to dress, and headed off to the courthouse.

Even if I drove painfully slow to the courthouse, just to make sure I didn't make the matter even worse, I got there way to early, which meant I spent the entire morning watching all the unfortunate men who got their sentence before me. When I man got a "Strike three" sentence, the initial processing of the man, which happened in the courtroom right after his sentencing, was filmed and put out on a government website, both for preventing effect and to add to the convict's humiliation. I had to admit I had spent many lonely nights getting off on watching the unfortunate men's humiliation, so I was painfully aware of what awaited me if all come to the worst.

Upon receiving his sentenced, the new convict would immediately be asked to step out on the courtroom floor and strip naked. Even if they all were in shock at this time, the majority managed hold on to their dignity and do this themselves. But many men needed help to show of their bodies to the world. A few slipped into a sort of trance, sometimes crying like a little boy, and had to be undressed by the officers, but the ones that was most fun to watch were the ones who desperately tried to avoid the inevitable. Trying to resist your stripping was just stupid, everyone who tried were easily overpowered, had their hands and feet zip tied, and their clothes cut of from their bodies.

When the new convict where stripped naked, freely or by force, his clothes were put into a large shredder who would cut the clothes into pieces. A symbolic proof of his new status, legally forbidden to were clothing. Then they were put into a temporary chastity cage, in the form of a metal like jock strap. This was also just symbolic, only to be worn for a short while until their final processing.

What had really fascinated me as I watched and beat off to the videos of the new "Strike three" convicts were how different the humiliation of suddenly finding you naked in a public courtroom had affected their dicks. A few were indifferent, but the majority either had their dicks shrink to little nubs, or the humiliation gave them massive erections.

The most fun to watch where the ones who involuntarily blow their load as they were put into the chastity cage. Watching their desperate look as they realized what was about to happen, always brought me over the edge myself.

The first naked guy to emerge from one of the courtrooms were a college aged kid. He was a bit chubby, but cute with curly brown hair and smooth hairless body. Behind the temporary chastity belt, I could spot a dick that matched the rest of his body, short and stubby, pushing against the metal. He had obviously been crying, and the friend who accompanied him tried to comfort him, saying it was only six months and everything would soon be forgotten. But the poor boy didn't look convinced.

Then the doors burst open from another courtroom, and guy was dragged out kicking and screaming. He looked to bee in his early thirties, had firm and well-defined body, probably from manual labor outside. He had a tanned upper body, with a milky with butt and legs. A tan line he would have the years to work on, from what I could tell from his angry and pregnant girl who ran behind him. She was yelling at him for ruining their life and threatened to have him sell his ass every day for the next five years, if that was what it took to put food on their table. Any other day I would happily have contributed to the family finances, but now I just wondered what I would have to do if I got convicted.

For the rest of the morning, I sat in the hallway at the courthouse, looking transfixed at the naked and chaste "Strike three" convicts emerging from the courtrooms. From the young boys barely eighteen, the college boys in their early, the young family fathers, the middle-aged men, too even a couple of old men humping on their bare feet behind a stroller. It was thirst traps and gym sharks with their perfect bodies, it was dad pounds and lose bellies covering their chaste cocks, but every guy had the same empty desperate look in their eyes as they took their first naked steps in public, feeling the cold chastity belt on their once proud members.

Eventually, Eric came and dragged me away from the parade of naked convicts. I could tell straight away that something was bothering him. He tried to wave it away, saying it was nothing I needed to worry about, but when I pushed him, he eventually gave in. The judge assigned to my case, Eric told me, was Samuel Adams, and I had to agree with Eric -- this was not great news.

Samuel Adams had been a judge for decades, were in his late sixties and had a striking resemblance with that of a bulldog, were known for handing out tough punishments and his contempt for the belief in reforming criminals, and he had wholeheartedly embraced the "Tier III Male Offender Accountability Act." Something he really showed in a case last year.

A young man with a spotless criminal record had been on his way to the car dealer to hand in his old car when he was stopped in a routine control -- a control that would drastically change his life. His car had a broken taillight, it turned out he had several unpaid and overdue parking tickets, and when the police searched the car, they found an old, dried up, half smoked joint, probably dating back to the man's college days.

In a quick court hearing two days later, in front of the very own Judge Samuel Adams, the young man hit jack pot -- going for a clean record to "Strike three" in just one court appearance. Any argument that the three cases should be seen as one was dismissed by Adams, and even if the three crimes only gave fines, and a short, suspended sentence in the case of the joint, Adams didn't hold back when it came to the "Strike three" punishment -- ten years was his verdict.

I had been really fascinated by the case at the time and had watched the videos from the court several times. The poor guy just collapsed and broke up in tears when he heard the sentence, his whole life in ruins, and he had to be held up and stripped naked by the officers. Of course, I had no sympathy with the young guy. As always, I argued he brought it up on himself, but I was really turned on by the thought walking around thinking your whole life is on a safe and steady course, and then suddenly everything is turned upside down. If I only knew at that time.

Another issue with Judge Adams, Eric told me, was his contempt for "white-collar privilege" as he put it. Adams was from a working-class family, and the first one in the family to get himself a university degree, and since he became a judge, he had used every opportunity he could to hand out harsh sentences at rich and privileged people who tried to use their money and status to get themselves out of trouble.

So, I ticked several of Adams boxes, but Eric also tried to convince me that despite Adams reputation, he was also known for listening to reasoning, and there were still hope he would accept our argument around the intent of the "Strike three" law and have my case dismissed. I couldn't say my agreed, though.

After waiting at the courthouse for hours, my hearing was finally called to start. Since it was just sentence hearing, I had already accepted the fine for reckless driving, it was a rather quick affair. The prosecute, a woman my age, just spoke for a couple of minutes. She acknowledged the special circumstances in my case, the long time between my crimes, the pettiness of them, and how I had been a model citizen between my last arrest as a teenager up until my traffic violation. Because of that she only asked for a six-month sentence, despite my previous conviction for a drug related crime.

Eric spoke a longer. When he went into the arguments against the strict interpretation of the "Tier III Male Offender Accountability Act", I could hear some murmurs in sparse audience in the courtroom, and the prosecutor theatrically shock her head in disagreement. I looked at Judge Adams for any reactions to Eric's arguments from him, but he did not give away anything. He just quietly took notes as Eric spoke.

When Eric finished his argument, Adams sat in silence and read through his notes for a few minutes before he finally spoke, and to everyone's surprise adjourned the case until the next morning to consider and confer around Eric's arguments. Normally in a simple case like mine, the judge normally took a short break, no more than an hour, to reach a verdict. So, this was a positive turn of events, and Eric was really happy.

I was a bit thorned, though. Of course, I was happy that Adams hadn't dismissed Eric's arguments right there and then, but even if it meant I could keep my clothes for one mor night it also meant one more night in uncertainty. Eric tried to drag me with him to have a drink, and get my thoughts of the case, but I still felt for just hiding from the world. I drove home, had dinner, poured myself a large whisky, and drifted into a restless and dreamless sleep.

This morning, I repeated the procedure from yesterday, I showered, go dressed trying not to think that this could be the last time I did that in a while, and drove slowly to the courthouse. But today my case was the first one on the schedule, so I didn't have to wait as long as yesterday.

Judge Adams began his speech by saying he had carefully considered all the arguments presented to him yesterday and had also conferred with colleagues when reaching a verdict in the case. He then acknowledged, as the prosecutor did yesterday, the special nature of the case. But then he said the faithful words -- "No one is above the law". And I knew I was screwed.