Cal where they began hearing felony cases from 4:00 in the afternoon to midnight. Since the overload was driven mainly by the war on drugs—and since the regular roster of judges was fed up with drug cases—these courts would hear drug cases exclusively. Over the next 18 months, the night shift ate through 14,000 cases and simply slipped further and further behind. In 1991 any pretense that this was a temporary solution was set aside when Fitzpatrick added three more courtrooms.^[3]

To a lot of people, the unsettling thing about the change of shift at 4:00 p.m. is the sudden change in racial complexion. During the day, traffic in and out of the building more or less reflects the city's multi-ethnic nature. But when night falls the white faces seem to melt into the shadows and the corridors fill with blacks and Hispanics. There is an occasional white face among the accused, but it's always some luckless minor trader copping a plea. There will be no kingpins tried in night drug court.  Black or white, if you can afford a La Salle Street lawyer you will not be subjected to this cut-rate jurisprudence. This is strictly for those caught-in-the-act low-end traffickers who, by the sheer weight of their numbers, are threatening to grind the American criminal justice system to a halt.

The defense for these arrestees will be mounted by somebody like Tim Lohraff, a young idealist paid by the state to represent the indigent. Lohraff grew up on the far side of the Lake at Buchanan, Michigan, and when he went off to college he had every intention of becoming a teacher.  He was studying English literature at the University of Michigan when a summer job as a researcher exposed him to the romance of defending the defenseless. So he got a law degree from Illinois and he's been working for the Cook County public defender's office ever since.^[4]

Lohraff, a white man of German and Irish extraction, is one of those people concerned about the perception of justice in night drug court. “I've been here a year,” he says. “I've probably handled a thousand drug cases. I've had maybe fifteen or twenty