Since the first day he donned the black robe, Judge Gold has been one of the system’s outstanding jurists. One of the few—maybe the only—whom both defense lawyers and prosecutors are equally glad to appear before. Defendants take comfort in his jaundiced view of police power that only comes with having experienced discrimination firsthand, and prosecutors like that he doesn’t fall for the games defendants try to play, including endless adjournments and novel legal theories to reduce responsibility. Fair, decent, thoughtful, and smart are the usual words used to describe him.

Gay never comes up. Not anymore, at least. Strike that. It hasn’t come up for years. But once the media hears his name rolled out of the wheel to preside over my case, I have little doubt that in some media circles he’ll be rebranded as “Gay Judge Gold.”

“My advice is that we stick with him,” LeMarcus continues. “But I do have some reservations. I have enough respect for Judge Gold to know that he doesn’t engage in identity jurisprudence. At least not on a conscious level. But if some of that does seep in, he’s going to bend over backward to seem strict so people don’t think he’s favoring you because of the perception that you share a sexual orientation. I say that without any disrespect, but as a black man, I think I get some latitude here. Judge Gold’s years on the bench have made the fact he was the first openly gay judge at most a footnote. And he likes it that way.”

I’d surmised this much on my own. I’d also concluded that there was very little I could do about picking my own judge. Even if LeMarcus objected to Judge Gold on the grounds he knew Lauren personally, every judge in New York County fit that bill. Maybe the chief judge of the court would assign someone from one of the outer boroughs, but that was even a bigger wild card. Besides, if we objected and Judge Gold decided to stay on despite our concerns, my fate would be in the hands of a judge who knew I didn’t want him.

“I’ve never lost in front of him,” I say.

“But you’ve never lost, period,” LeMarcus says, this time with a real smile. “I’m zero and two with him, but neither was a triable case.”

Triable case is a defense-lawyer term. Most of the people who seek defense services are not only guilty, but are swimming in overwhelming evidence for conviction. A guy who sold drugs to an undercover cop, or someone that has laid out the particulars of a crime on wiretaps. For that reason, defense lawyers don’t put much stock in their overall win-loss record. Rather, the subset of how they do in triable cases is all that matters.