THE COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS

In the late 1960s, I served as an Assistant US Attorney in the District of Columbia. It was a wild affair. I began in the Court of General Sessions which handled all manner of crimes, some as innocuous as bad checks and street assaults, others as serious as burglaries and even homicides where the evidence was too shaky to charge as felonies. Inside the building, in the elevators, and even in the courtrooms, the government witnesses were often mixed with the accused and their families in a way that left prosecutors guessing which was which. There was virtually no time to prepare for the cases ahead of time. They simply walked in the door, and a police officer handed you the arrest report. You would often be reading it while the judge impounded a jury or, in a bench trial, told you to present your first witnesses.
Needless to say, some of the resulting cases were "a surprise a minute," and we would often swap stories at the end of the day. My last two years were spent in the "Big Court," which dealt with felonies in full. I was fortunate to land in the Major Crimes Unit, run by a prosecutor who was a legend throughout the office for his courage and his willingness to go to the top of a criminal chain. His name was Harold Sullivan, and I have dedicated this book to his memory.