His spirit was failing him. His will was shutting down.
And it made no difference at all … to anyone. The system around him was a perverse joke, full of corrupt charlatans. His case had been rock solid. The violations were apparent in black and white. There was no question. But the judge was in the bag for the institution, as the failure of the ersatz human being who’d abused authority had been in the bag, for the one who had openly and provably revised history to suit her revenge, and had biasedly misapplied policy with brazen intent.
He could easily show that the judge had ruled arbitrarily and prejudicially, without even having read his brief, a moral failing of the highest order. He’d done it the entire time, accept for the one motion in which a third party lawyer for the state became involved, meaning he was under outside scrutiny. Corrupt scumbag. He had no business being on a bench, but most of the people in that system didn’t have the morals or intelligence to be there. The system was littered with them — corrupt, incompetent, smug. The defense had even openly lied in court. And the system was a racket that only dispensed justice for those who could afford it. He simply could not afford to appeal, and he was not selling his house and car for it, not when it was at the mercy of charlatans more interested in their personal biases than justice.
So, she would again escape the truth, though he no longer had any intention of having her punished for it anyway. There was no point, and she never would have accepted her guilt anyway, though he had accepted his. She would punish herself with her own choices more than he could ever hope the system would. He’d only hoped that she would have had the conscience to admit things on her own, to feel some kind of guilt. She didn’t, even though she’d given him two more opportunities to have her charged further and he did not pursue them. That should have told her something, said something to her, but she was cold and deaf in her vengeance. He’d also asked that the charges against her be dismissed, as, once again, she would punish herself with her shallow decisions and utter failure to learn that people were not what their outer masks portrayed. But the system didn’t care about her anymore than it did about him. It was all about the personal biases and posturing of the failed people with the power. They didn’t care if she had charges floating around her for five years, which could have been acted upon at any time if she crossed anymore lines. And that is why his refusal to go after her when he could have should have spoken to her, should have melted her heart somewhat, told her that he was atoning and she was safe from him doing anything, even if she had tried to contact him, that he was not what she had made up. But she was oblivious, lost in her self-righteousness and quest for endless pity.
There was just no reason for any of it, no justification for things that were so simple to be made so hard for no other reason than people’s egos and the system’s greed. So, though he wanted them all stockaded in public for their open corruption, hiding behind public sentiment from a time that no longer existed, pure anachronism, his spirit gave up, and he was empty. The irony of it all having happened merely because he’d loved the wrong person was too heavy to bear. But karma would come for them all.