"How did you like it?"
"I ... I ..." She shook her head.
The attendant smiled at her gently. "Don't ever be a third-timer." He released her arm and hurried away down the street.
Julie puzzled over his parting remark as she went out into the foul smelling night and walked away from the courthouse. Suddenly, the street before her dimmed as the lights on the huge marquee blinked out. She turned and looked back at the entrance of the court, now dark and deserted. And then she understood.
She remembered the moon-faced man's observation about the scarcity of third-timers. She understood how the "undesirables" lost their ID cards and why so many could not speak English. She understood the apparent cruelty of the sentences meted out to them, too.
The answer was on the marquee. As she looked back at it, only the raised letters on the canopy were visible, shining luminously in the darkness: "judge not, that ye be not judged". And she recalled the quotation on the program: "For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged."