One Saturday night in May 1993, on 36th Street in the heart of Hampden, two young guys – one with a ponytail, the other with a “Dumb & Dumber” pageboy – got into a fistfight after a wedding reception. I don’t recall what sparked the brawl but it spilled into the street and ended with police arresting the guy with the pageboy.
On his day in court, when the defendant stood for sentencing, his lawyer, Steven Wyman, asked the judge to consider in mitigation something “refreshing” about the case.
“Refreshing?” District Court Judge Carol Smith asked.
“No guns,” Wyman, a future judge himself, said. “A real fistfight like when we were kids.”
And nobody died.