courtroom drama

Steven has been waiting for a hearing for the last 6months at least.
Today it happened
There was a change in the sentancing law over 6months ago which means that the recommended sentance for steven's crime was reduced to 10-15 yrs (his sentance currently stands as 22yrs)
We have a had a couple of false starts over the last month, due to inaccurate or incomplete paperwork from the prison.
Today however we got the real thing.
One courtroom (whitewashed room with a couple of desks, a working computer and two non-functional typewriters)
One steven
Two other prisoner
One defence lawyer (who I like to call pafilopolis)
One prosecuting lawyer
One judge
One representative from the honourary consul's office - a young lawyer called eduado
One clerk
and me (in my cleanest shirt)
Pafilopolos was first to speak. Very nervous, stumbling over broken sentances (rally not like it is on telly). Has couple of books with him to quote (maybe reminding him what the new laws are..?) He gradually gets up a head of steam and asks tha judge to reduce the sentance to 10 yrs.
Next the prosecuter lawyer, seemed even less competant, wants steven to stay for 15 yrs, not quite sure why.
Then pafilopolos has another go, and actually sounding much more convincing.
The judge, having put up with all this says she'll have 20 minutes to think about it.
Half an hour later we get a message to say she'll call us all back at some point in the next 5 working days