That was all it took. Barnes threw him against the hood of a cruiser, slapped the cuffs on him, and wrote up a generic arrest report that practically guaranteed a conviction in a city overwhelmed by crime.
Marcus grew up raised by a single mother who worked double shifts as an ER nurse until cancer took her when he was fifteen. After that, his father—a man whose career demanded he live in Washington D.C.—became a voice on the phone. They spoke every night at 9:00 PM on the dot, but Marcus had learned to navigate the world alone. He didn’t want to bother his busy father with a "misunderstanding" he thought the police would quickly clear up.
But it wasn't a misunderstanding. It was a trap.
Now, inside the suffocating air of the Superior Court, the state was finishing its absolute mockery of a trial.
Prosecutor Sarah Jenkins stood at the podium, clicking a remote. A grainy, pixelated security photo from the pharmacy flashed on the screen. The figure was completely obscured by shadow.
"Three blocks from the crime scene, officers found the defendant matching the description exactly," Jenkins said, her voice dripping with manufactured confidence. "He had no verifiable alibi. He was fleeing the scene. The state rests."
Marcus’s public defender, a tired-looking man named David Miller who had been handed the file just two days ago, shuffled his papers. He was sweating. He knew the case was weak, but he also knew Judge Vance’s reputation. Vance had a notorious, statistically proven history of railroading minorities, slapping them with maximum sentences while letting white kids from the suburbs walk away with probation for the exact same crimes.
Miller stood up to cross-examine the detective. "Detective Barnes, did you check the area for any other individuals wearing dark clothing that night?"
"Objection," Jenkins snapped.
"Sustained," Judge Vance said instantly.
"Detective, the footage shows no facial features. Did you find any physical evidence linking my client to the crime?"