Your honour, it was an honour: My courtroom victory

This story is part of the July 19 edition of Good Weekend.See all 16 stories.

Outside the courtroom, I kneel on the floor, wracked with tension. Anxiety puts me close to the ground, nearing foetal position, while on the other side of a door, a policeman views bodycam footage of the incident, my fate swinging on the variable scales of justice.

Earlier, I’d sat among other defendants as a magistrate heard an array of misdemeanours, each one met with a corresponding punishment. A young Indian student, studying AI by day and delivering pizzas at night, nabbed driving while his licence was suspended after an earlier speeding breach. A woman caught drink-driving (she blew .113). A man with family in tow, facing the music after riding his black BMW motorbike at 90km/h in a 60km/h zone: three-month loss of licence and $500 fine.

Here, on a Monday morning, is the ­everyday drama of the courts, all of us finding ourselves on the wrong side of the law, for one reason or another, and processed now as a job lot. Some dress up for the occasion. A mum sits with a daughter who bats flamboyant false eyelashes; three young men, perhaps foot­ballers, wearing blue suits that pull too tight across the shoulders, sip water as lawyers with product in their hair lean into them, looking as though they’re hatching a conspiracy. Most of us accused come as we are.

A bloke seated beside me says he’s been here before; lost his licence a while back, but is now trying to repeal an old intervention order: “I was a dick 10 years ago. But I’m not a dick now.”

Around a campfire in the mountains, my eldest boy once asked: “Dad, have you ever been to prison?” Children are intuitive. My boys know I’m wary of authority, ask questions, am unafraid to make a stand against what I think is unjust. And fair cop; often enough I do look a bit jailbirdy.

I tell him a truth: I have been locked up inside a prison van, at a protest in the city. It’s still unclear if I was accused of “obstructing the police” or “obstructing the peace” (both hogwash). I joined a schoolteacher dressed as a bumblebee, among other detainees. My only crime was to be wearing a bright orange roadworker’s shirt. All of us were released later in parkland, like relocating possums.

And I’ve had plenty of days in court. One case heard in Sydney was dismissed after my opening line: “The day after the AFL Grand Final last year, I caught a plane to Delhi.” Sydney had won the game; lawyers on the door out surmised the judge was a Swans supporter. It was the pettiest of traffic infringements.

One school holiday I took my two boys and a friend’s son to the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court – as evidence, of sorts. While my restless assistants crawled under the seats, a court clerk approached, asked my name, expedited the case. The matter was a parking fine, ­incurred outside my boys’ primary school while delivering a six-metre length of slotted PVC pipe for a mint “drip garden” I was building beneath the drinking taps. Penalty waived.

I’ve written a letter to a council contesting a fine, outlining the differences between a ­barrier kerb and a semi-mountable kerb, and never heard back. And I’ve jogged the breadth of a CBD, bursting through the court doors as my case was about to be heard, out of breath before one of our best-known magistrates. We had a chat, and your honour, it was an honour. I was let off.

Three cans from the back of my ute had fallen onto the freeway, allegedly. That morning I was carrying 3639 other cans, 736 PET bottles and 17 liquid paperboard boxes, all trussed in large plastic bags. Children at various schools had collected them – along with glass bottles – and I’d helped with the sorting and counting, encouraging them to find ways to understand numbers. We’d had fun, and each week I’d documented the activity for their newsletters. Our goal was to raise $5000 for an Afghan refugee family, 10 cents at a time, through a container deposit scheme. The highway patrolman was wholly uninterested in our enterprise.

Before the court, I suggest an error in the police account: my payload was indeed “tied down properly”, but in tightening a winch strap, I may have pinched a hole in a bag. Bodycam footage was observed; the source of the alleged three loose cans is inconclusive. Shown the footage, my first thought: “Geez, I looked trim last winter.” Then I see myself scouring the roadside, picking up more cans, straight after the senior ­constable pulled me over to write out a $288 ticket. I collected litter as he watched, gun on hip.

Wording on the preliminary brief – a statement of alleged facts – is amended, and back in the court, the judge seems to warm to my plight. A conversation is started, there is to-and-fro, and she suggests I plead guilty and the court could use its power of discretion.

In a suburban courtroom on a Monday morning, I am the only defendant to be let off the hook. I’ve had my say and, turning to leave, all are smiling, including the magistrate. Here is kindness, an understanding, and I tell her I could hug her, but that would be inappropriate. Yes, it would, she says.

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