The Case Against Amir Adabi

The white noise of a crowd filled the spacious room. The air smells of wood polish and sweat. Jeff looks down at his watch, they’ve been there waiting for 2 hours. He sighs, eagerly awaiting the jury to make their verdict. His head hurts. “I need a drink.”, he thinks to himself. The days have long gone by when Jeff cared about not drinking in the middle of the work week.

He looks back and sees his client’s wife sitting there. She carries a fragile expression, trying her best to stay collected. She’s been staring at the same spot on the floor the entire time, so deep in her own shock that she’s forgotten to move. Jeff tries to remember her name. “Shela? Marjan?” he thinks to himself.

Jeff hears a sniffle to his right. His client Amir weeps, tears slip off his glasses and drop on the floor. He’s a small and scrawny man, middle aged, with grey hairs streaking through his black beard. His exposed bald spot reflects off the lights above. Similar to his wife, Amir doesn’t move.

“I just don’t understand what’s taking so long, they got the guy, they literally got footage of him dropping off a suspicious package minutes before the bomb went off.” says a man a couple of rows back. “I just hope that little arab shit rots in hell,” says someone next to him. “6 people died.” Jeff’s gut wrenches, he looks at the man sitting next to him and doesn’t see a killer, but he’s been wrong before. For a moment, Jeff empathizes with Amir. Feelings of frustration and sadness flash through his mind, but they quickly fade.

“This should have gone differently.” Jeff thinks to himself, trying to steer any responsibility from himself for this. “If he pleaded guilty, he probably would have just gotten life in prison. But his wife insisted on fighting this.” He remembers their conversation, but mostly her finger pointing directly at his face only inches away. “You cannot let this happen! My husband did nothing wrong!” Her voice began to crack, “Don’t you dare let them take my Amir away.” Those words echoed into Jeff’s mind.

“I did what I could,” thought Jeff. “Now we just got to see if the jury believes Amir’s birthday cake for his wife's alibi.” The clicking of a pen is heard off to the left, the prosecuting attorney sits in similar idle boredom as him talking to his assistant. Jeff stares in contempt. James Masterson, an upshot lawyer trying to impress his dad by ripping through the open and shut cases. He’s been a condemner of innocent people since 2025. He wears a striped black suit, and a blue and white tie, his dark brown hair combed back and held by hair spray. Jeff has never liked him, usually lawyers have an understood respect for each other inside and outside of the courtroom, but not them.

James doesn’t even acknowledge Jeff, never has. “Guess he’s got no respect for public defenders.” Jeff thinks to himself. James' strategy during the case was just to hammer the facts, and let people fill in the motive themselves. Muslim man walks into a building with a suspicious package, the building blows up, clearly it was his fault. But what really got the people’s attention was Amir’s social media account. What Amir failed to tell Jeff was 15 years ago, he liked and followed several radical Muslim pages on twitter. It was enough to make some of the jury gasp. Jeff is snapped out of his thinking by the sound of a door opening.

Finally, the jury comes out and sits in their seats. The white noise of the crowd dies into silence and a long pause follows. One member of the jury stands up. “After due consideration of the evidence provided in the case against Amir Abadi, we find the defendant guilty of all charges.” The room fills again with noise. James and his assistant smack each other on the back for another case won, while Amir’s wife screams and collapses onto the floor.