The courtroom was blanketed in a heavy, expectant silence that felt as though the very walls were waiting for a familiar tragedy to play out once again. Everyone present seemed to anticipate the same routine sight of a woman walking in defeated, already crushed by the weight of a world that had decided her fate long before she took her seat.
By nine-thirty, the gallery was packed with the silent observers of public ruin while a clerk with a weary expression moved files between disorganized stacks. Two law students in the back whispered over a legal pad, their faces bright with the hollow excitement of those who had never actually felt the sting of a real consequence.
A woman in a stiff blazer sat with her arms tightly folded, scanning the room with the sharp, judgmental eyes of someone who treated the suffering of others as a personal pastime. Near the front row, two reporters waited with practiced indifference, their phones flipped over and pens tucked away as they prepared to document a scandal the city would devour with its morning toast.