"Have you ever testified at a preliminary hearing, Doctor?"

"About a patient's condition? A diagnosis or finding?"

"No. I think I'd like you to stay with me while I try to ask Tina to tell me what happened. If she isn't able to make it clear to me, or to the judge, I'd like you to act as an interpreter."

"That's fine. Why don't we bring her in and let you get started." Herron called the nurses' station and asked one of the attendants to bring Tina to her office. "One thing you need to understand, Alex, is that Tina exhibits an unusual preoccupation with sex. She's what we call on the ward a chronic public masturbator. We have a companion assigned to be with her most of the day, so she doesn't interact sexually with the other patients."

My luck to draw this complication at a preliminary hearing. The best I could hope for would be to get a good judge who would appreciate the issues here. My witness would be an unintelligible thirty-year-old, with all the sexual interest and curiosity appropriate for a woman that age, but with the mental capacity of a child. The law presumed that she was incapable of consenting to whatever sexual act had occurred.

This must have been an "up" day for Tina, who did not yet have a clue that she was about to appear in a court proceeding in front of a judge, a defense attorney, and her assailant. She walked in holding the hand of her attendant, neatly dressed in a clean white sweatshirt and khaki slacks. She smiled at me when we were introduced, and said something that sounded like "pleased to meet you."

For more than an hour, I struggled to get a narrative from the young woman. Her companion sat by her side, stroking her arm gently when my most basic questions seemed to confuse Tina. If I failed to understand a response, Dr. Herron told me what the patient had said. Whenever I mentioned Chester's name, Tina became visibly agitated.

Somehow, despite all the precautions that had been taken at the hospital, a male patient named Jose had encountered Tina in the hallway after breakfast one morning and had invited her into his room. She liked Jose and accompanied him willingly. Dr. Herron interrupted softly to mention that Jose was a paranoid schizophrenic, with some confusion about his sexual orientation. Tina told us that Jose was always kind to her, and she had sex with him because she thought she was screaming. Her mouth widened and her tongue protruded as she tried to get it to move around the word "screaming" a second time. "Screaming? Why were you-?"

"No, no, Alex. Tina said she thought she was dreaming when she did it." The patient smiled as Dr. Herron corrected me. "Tina's aware that we don't approve of her . . . well-she usually tries to account for her activity by saying she didn't think it was really happening. That she just imagined it or dreamed about it, isn't that right, Tina?"

She nodded her head in agreement with Herron. It was obvious to me that I would not be able to conduct the hearing unless the judge allowed me to use the doctor as an interpreter. "What happened after that?"

Tina explained that Jose left her to go to the bathroom. That's when Chester came in and found her in the room. He asked if he could get into bed and make love to her. She was scared because she knew that he had a terrible temper, but she told him it was okay.

"Were you afraid of Chester?" No answer.

"Did he say anything to threaten you?" I was wondering if I could raise the level of the felony crime, if Chester had used any force.

Tina answered clearly when she said, "No."

"Jose came back to the room, Alex. When he saw Chester in bed with Tina, he went to get one of the nurses. That's the reason we know for sure that intercourse occurred. The nurse actually witnessed it."

"Fine. I can spare Tina having to testify at the hearing if I can use the nurse as a witness."

"I'm afraid she went back home to Montana for Christmas."

"What's Chester's ability to understand right from wrong?"

"He certainly knows the difference, and he knows that what he did with Tina was wrong. His psychiatrist can give you all that. His problem has to do with control of his temper and the explosive outbursts from which he suffers. Chester's twenty years old. He's been in and out of hospitals for most of his life, but was homeless at the time of his last arrest."

"What was the charge?"

"He beat up an old man who tried to stop him from getting on a bus without paying."

I continued to prepare Tina for the preliminary hearing, which had to be held before the end of the week in order to keep Chester in on bail. The hospital authorities wanted him removed from their facility, while our purpose would be to have him hospitalized in a prison psych ward during the pretrial period. I did not want to see him released, on the street, with no home to go to and no one to supervise the taking of his antipsychotic medication.

"Excuse me, Dr. Herron?" We all looked up as another nurse entered the room. "There's a call from a judge's clerk who's downstairs. He wants to know when this hearing is going to start."

It was after twelve. "I need another half hour, at least. Why don't we say one o'clock?"

"That's good for me, too, Alex. Tell them where we're setting up, and that we'll be ready at one. And let's be sure Tina has some lunch before you get going. She really slows down with all those meds unless she eats at regular intervals."

"There's a message for you, Ms. Cooper. Detective Chapman said he can meet you after the hearing, unless you call to tell him otherwise."

An hour later, I entered the arts-and-crafts center of the psych ward. Much like the walls of a kindergarten class, this room was lined with pictures, crayoned and painted by the patients, all of whom were adults. A makeshift judicial bench had been fashioned out of several of the tables, and the stark black of the judge's robes was in sharp contrast to the brightly colored, childlike illustrations that would be our background for this sad proceeding.

"Ms. Cooper? I was expecting Assistant District Attorney Dashfer to be here today."

"And I was expecting Judge Hayes, Your Honor." We each forced a smile.

The judge was probably as crestfallen as I appeared to be. I had mistakenly relied on the tentative schedule distributed earlier for the week's arraignment part, not figuring on holiday substitutions. Instead of Roger Hayes, one of the smartest and most sensitive jurists in our jurisdiction, I had been saddled with Bentley Vexter. I knew this would prove to be a more difficult experience for Tina, with a judge not long on patience or understanding.

My adversary was a young lawyer from the Legal Aid Society. He had met his client for the first time just minutes ago, when he arrived at the hospital. They conferred briefly while we waited for Sandie Herron to come to the room.

"Are the People ready to proceed?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Call your first witness." He held the criminal court complaint up to his nose and lifted his glasses to examine the typed accusation.

"I would like to make an application to the court before I do that."

The judge put the glasses back in place and met my statement with a frown. "We've wasted half a day out here while you got your witness ready for this. What is it now?"

I launched into a description of Tina's condition, both physical and mental, while she and Dr. Herron waited in the corridor. "The request I'm making is that the court allow the victim's physician to appear with her in the courtroom, to serve as a facilitator, should that become necessary during the taking of testimony."

"I'm going to have to object to that, Your Honor."

"Hold it a minute, Mr. Shirker. What, this woman doesn't speak the language? What kind of interpreter do you need? Nobody told my clerk we-"

"Not a foreign language interpreter, sir." I repeated the nature of Tina's difficulties and explained Dr. Herron's relationship with her.

"Objection."

"On what grounds, Counselor?" It was clear the judge had no idea whether he should grant my somewhat unusual request, so he was hoping the defense attorney would provide him with a legal basis to make Tina's task more arduous.

Mr. Shirker had nothing more than a gut feeling and a knee-jerk reaction. "Urn, uh-due process, Your Honor."

"He's right, Ms. Cooper. This is a very peculiar step you're asking me to take."

"The fact that it is unconventional doesn't mean that it doesn't have a valid purpose in a legal proceeding. Our courts are supposed to be accessible to everyone. The fact that this witness has a severe impairment should not deprive her of her day in-"

The judge held his arm straight out in front of him to stop me. Then he lowered it, pointing his finger at the official stenographer. "We're off-the-record here, understand?"

I stood up to object. Vexter was most pernicious when he could clean up the official language of his hearings. His finger pointed back at me, telling me not to dare to stop him. "Look, Alex. You got a retard here who doesn't mind a roll in the hay. She hops into bed with Jose, so who's to say Chester can't have a date, too?"

"I'd like all of this to be on the record, Judge. I'd like the opportunity to respond to it." I wanted an official transcript reflecting his ignorance in black-and-white print that an appellate court and a judiciary committee could examine. Vexter's views were as limited as his intelligence.

The stenographer's hands were poised over her machine. She was waiting for the judge to give her the signal to resume working, while glancing back at me with a shrug of her shoulders, knowing that she was helpless to do as I asked. Vexter was in charge of the courtroom.

Vexter put his glasses on the tip of his nose and motioned to me and my adversary with his forefinger. "Why don't you approach the bench?"