not guilty

If you do not plead, a plea of not guilty will be entered for you.

My heart beats through five not guilties. Six, seven, nine, eleven. Seventeen not guilties. The prosecutor's lips curl.

Two not guilties. Seven for conviction. "I'm a 'not guilty,'" she said.

The not guilties walked out and went to work if they had jobs; the guilties were hauled away to spend maybe thirty days on the county farm growing cabbage.