The irony has to be killing everyone in Courtroom 15, but just as children are taught not to point at a two-headed man on the subway, nobody is making too much about this odd pairing.
So, there they sit as if this happens every day.
Imperial Wizard David Hull blubbers and dabs his eyes as a prosecutor describes his attempts to buy hand grenades to bomb abortion clinics, and recounts his boasts that he turned his gray Mazda into a "suicide car" that would detonate at the flick of a switch.
Beside him is his public defender, Khadija Diggs, juris doctor, African American and Howard University homecoming queen of 1986.
Diggs has just blindsided prosecutors by persuading District Court magistrate Ervin Swearingen to let her client out on $40,000 bail. Hull won't even have to put up the money himself. If he flees, then he owes the government $40,000.
Does the Imperial Wizard have any misgivings about this curious pairing?
"No. Why would I? She's a great lawyer, sir," Hull blinks. He seems genuinely astonished by the question. Possibly he has forgotten that he wears sheets and roasts crosses when he's not spending his government disability check.
David Wayne Hull, loyal Klansman, pal with the Aryan Nations, and all-around civic menace, has grown some strange new respect for a woman he would ordinarily consider fit only to ask him if he'd like a biggie fries to go with that.
As prosecutors scurry off to file an appeal before the National Weather Service issues a hell-on-earth advisory for residents of Hull's neighborhood, Diggs floats down the hall, smiles shyly and politely informs reporters that her office has a no-comment policy on everything but the weather.
"Thank you for everything," Hull's 71-year-old father, Dwight, tells Diggs. Along with a neighbor, the Rev. Bruce Bandel, Hull has offered to keep an eye on his son and let authorities know if he detonates anything.
Alas, things do not move as swiftly as Hull's gratitude. Two days later, he and Diggs are side-by-side in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster. The government has appealed Swearingen's bail order.
Hull is in the same hooded sweatshirt, his eyes leaking copiously and his chin quivering. This time Diggs is up against new evidence that includes information about yet another informant, one who was to become the Klan's Exalted Cyclops, but opted out, not because he had too many eyes, but because Hull required such blind obedience that the man would have had to, upon orders, kill the Wizard's enemies. Then there is the harassment conviction in Maryland nobody knew about. And the two protection-from-abuse orders brought by the former Mrs. Imperial Wizard.
Then comes the testimony about fliers seized from the Hull residence. Among them, a sketch of a black man hanging from a tree.
After 90 minutes of trashing, Hull hears U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster announce him unfit for bail. He will sit in jail until trial.
Hull at one point enters into discussion with reporters that some of the testimony is simply wrong. He did not arrange the shooting of a former Klansman because he was angry at him. The Klansman had a companion shoot him so he could get the same sort of Social Security disability benefits that Hull currently receives.
Diggs, the African-American lawyer, turns to the Imperial Wizard and tells him to shut up. The Wizard complies.
Leaving the courtroom for a second day, I cannot resist the urge to ask Diggs if a sort of bonding between client and lawyer is not necessary to make a defense work.
She smiles broadly.
"I'm just not going to discuss anything that touches on any aspect of this case," she says.
David Hull is hustled out one end of the long hallway at the courthouse and Khadija Diggs walks the other way. He has to be sorry to see her go. The woman, a member of a race Hull seemed to think should hang from trees, is the only one willing to keep his secrets.
Dennis Roddy can be reached at droddy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1965.
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