The trooper who’d pulled him, Ollie Harrold, testified that he was assisting in a license-check roadblock when he saw Mr. Samuelson’s Ford drive into a tobacco field about a hundred yards away. “The driver jumped out and ran through the field and disappeared. After maybe ten minutes, the person in the passenger seat got out and went around to the driver’s seat. It was almost stuck in the sand, but he kept rocking it till he got it backed out of the field and onto the road, and that’s when I went down and asked him for his license.”

Harrold also testified that he’d administered the Breathalyzer test and Mr. Samuelson had blown a point-oh-eight. Not so long ago, that would have been well under the legal limit. Not anymore, though. And under the required sentencing a Level One DWI meant a mandatory minimum of thirty days’ jail time.

“Your Honor?” said Harrold, who knew what sentence the old man was facing. “I know Mr. Samuelson, and I know he’s telling the truth about not intending to drive.”

A case like this one is precisely why I hate mandatory sentencing. Nothing left to the discretion of the judge except to decree guilt or innocence. My hands were tied.

The intent of mandatory sentencing is noble. It’s supposed to ensure that everybody will be treated roughly equally under the law. Black, white, brown, red, or yellow. Rich or poor. A Daughter of the American Revolution or a just-off-the-plane Nigerian immigrant. Christian, Jew, Muslim, or atheist. Almost no wiggle room for bigoted judges (think there aren’t any left?) to come down hard on some groups and easy on people just like themselves. As with most noble intentions, however, the law of unintended consequences always comes into play and here I was with Mr. Samuelson, who hadn’t meant to drive. If his superior hadn’t been out there on that roadblock that day, the patrolman would probably have found a way to get Mr. Samuelson and his car back home without anything official going down in the books.

Once he’d written the ticket, though, all the legalities were set inexorably into motion.

I could see the pleading in Harrold’s eyes for me not to do what the law required, and I leaned back in my chair to think of my options. I wasn’t helped by the throbbing that had begun on my right foot.

Even though they’re pretty and had cost more than I usually pay, the low-heeled navy shoes I’d chosen for the funeral were reminding me why I seldom wore them, funeral or no funeral. I’ve never had corns but I do have a rather prominent bony knob at the base of my big toe and some shoes rub me raw there if I wear them more than a couple of hours. I slipped my foot out to ease the pain and concentrated on Mr. Samuelson’s dilemma. Mine, too. Nothing would be served by sending an eighty-three-year-old man to jail for thirty days. He hadn’t deliberately gone out to break the law. If his nephew hadn’t left him with his ox in a ditch, so to speak—