The System: Deals, Deadlines, Few Trials

At 8 o'clock in the morning the single-file line grows to 52 people waiting to shuffle past the sheriff's security checkpoint and into the monolithic stone courthouse. More arrive by the minute. Except for an infant too young to know the paralytic effect of dread on one's spirits and the occasional beep-beep of the metal detector, the aging lobby is hushed. Conversations pass in murmurs or, often, through tense glances or the squeeze of hands.

It is a Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk.

There is nothing particularly special about this Monday. Not for the larger megalopolis anyway. It is special only for those who have an appointment with The System. For them, today could mean the difference between going home or going to prison, between hope or no hope at all.

Ramiro Cisneros arrived at the courthouse half an hour ago. In a windowless, institutional office with just two framed photographs to suggest permanency, he thumbs once more through the day's manila files.

Cisneros embodies one of the oldest tenets of American society: You can be so poor that you have no place to live, so poor that you must wear cast-off clothes and beg for food. But you cannot be so poor that you have to fend for yourself in the face of the law.

Cisneros is a public defender, a 37-year-old native of the Philippines, a graduate of UCLA and Southwestern Law School, a man with his heart in the clouds of idealism and his thoughts down in the daily rough-and-tumble.

When people reach bottom, when they're broke and in trouble, when they've got rap sheets for resumes, Cisneros, or someone like him in the public defender's office, might be the only person in the world who will go to bat for them.

This week, Cisneros has agreed to be our guide to daily life in the courthouse.

The clock reaches 8:30, he gathers a stack of file folders under his arm and nods. "OK, let's go."

*

Sixth floor, Department S: A compact man with a wrestler's build and a burr haircut, Cisneros lets himself in through a side door.

The prosecution owns the north half of the double-long wood conference table, more or less in the center of the courtroom; Cisneros and other defense attorneys occupy the south.

During the half hour until court convenes at 9, Cisneros reads a fresh probation report on one of his clients. Not much there to help his case.