One of the things I liked about the law is the humor. Lawyers (who are largely shameless) love jokes making fun of the law, legal process and themselves. Here's an off-color oldie-but-goodie ...
1ST GRADE TEACHER: Okay, class, it's time for you to take turns going to the front of the room and telling the class what your parents do in their jobs. Suzie, you're up first.
SUZIE: My Dad is a fireman. He puts out fires in people's homes, and saves lives.
1ST GRADE TEACHER: Eddie, you're next.
EDDIE: My Mom is an airline stewardess. She takes care of passengers on a plane while the pilot flies it.
1ST GRADE TEACHER: Okay, Johnnie, you're next.
LITTLE JOHNNIE: My Dad says that he is a piano player in a whorehouse!
1ST GRADE TEACHER: Wha-a-a-a-a-at???!!! Johnnie, shame on you for saying that!!! Tell your father that I want to see him tomorrow before class!!!
The next day, little Johnnie's Dad brings Johnnie to school.
LITTLE JOHNNIE: This is my Dad, teacher.
1ST GRADE TEACHER (taking father aside): Sir, your little son Johnnie described you as a "piano player in a whorehouse" to the entire class yesterday.
JOHNNIE'S FATHER (chuckles): Oops! I didn't realize he overheard that. I'm a trial lawyer in the county court house. My wife asked me to describe my work in as few words as possible, as she was getting little Johnnie ready for his presentation, and that was a funny way I thought of to describe my work which I whispered in her ear.
Sometimes, very funky and funny things happen in court.
In one case, I was challenging a Will, which a daughter had had a lawyer draw up for her mentally incompetent multi-millionaire father, in which she had her father disown her brother and sister. Then, she essentially kidnapped her father to a shack in the middle of the Florida Everglades, and there, surrounded by alligators, Dad starved to death!!!
See http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/33500/Man-Surrounded-By-Alligators-33994.jpg
I could tell that I was winning the judge over on the main allegation that the father was too mentally incompetent to comprehend what he was doing when he signed the Will. The mood in the courtroom was becoming antagonist toward the bad-girl daughter. All were becoming convinced that that daughter starved Dad to death to get his money. I was very intent on preserving that mood.
So, I put the other daughter on the stand, to flesh out the sordid details of Dad's death, and also to reinforce just how mentally "gone" Dad had been.
One of the things Dad used to do is sit in the dark in his house, sometimes for days at a time, squeezing tennis balls. He loved squeezing tennis balls.
This is what the testimony on that latter point sounded like ...
MR. DAWSON: So, Ms. B, is there anything which you can tell the court about your father which might help to shed light on your father's ability to understand what he was doing when he signed this Will, a month before his homicide?
Earlier in the case I had to fight to get in that word "homicide." Dad's coroner in Florida, it turned out, ruled death was the result of "inanition" -- starvation. The county prosecutor in Florida nonetheless decided to not prosecute for Manslaughter or Murder, however.
WITNESS: Yes. I can. He used to sit.
MR. DAWSON: Why do you mean by that? Please understand that I am not allowed to lead you in your testimony.
WITNESS: Oh. Yeah. He used to sit in the dark!
MR. DAWSON: Well, so what? I'm sure that you have sat in the dark.
I'm getting frustrated, here. Getting her to tell her story is like pulling teeth, despite weeks of practice.
WITNESS: Well, he would sit in the dark for hours. Days.
MR. DAWSON: What, if anything, would he be doing?
WITNESS: Sorry. I'm nervous. Dad used to sit in the dark for hours or days squeezing his balls!
At this point, the crowded courtroom exploded into uproarious laughter. The judge, who was 75 years of age, laughed so hard that he fell out of his chair to the floor.
The mood I wanted was gone with the wind. But, we still won.
I have seen lawyers pull some pretty funky stuff in little Magnolia Municipal Court.
Once when I was waiting for my case to be called, a case involving a charge of Driving While Intoxicated was the subject of a trial in the courtroom.
To understand the case, you have to understand The System's attitude toward drunk driving. Political dynamics in our country, beginning in the late 1970s, so effectively demonized drunk driving that DWI cases, though tried in municipal court, are treated with all of the seriousness of a murder case.
And God bless Mothers Against Drunk Driving and similar organizations for doing this! A drunk who gets behind the wheel is a killer.
At any rate, since this was a DWI case, it was a critical event in Magnolia Municipal Court that night.
Now, one of the things prosecutors love to do is have witnesses actually physically point at the accused in court, to identify him or her as the disgusting wrongdoer. In cases I have prosecuted, I had my non-police witnesses play this game.
However, when a policeman points at the guy sitting next to the defense attorney at the table in front of the judge, and says, "THAT'S HIM!!! HE DID IT!!!," it's not quite the same thing as an actual victim doing it. Why? Well, police sometimes take dozens of people into custody per month, and interview several more dozens of witnesses, and dozens of cases. How can they be expected to keep it all straight in their heads?
So, defense lawyers are always a teensy weensy bit skeptical when a police witness points at a defendant in the courtroom, sitting next to the defense attorney, and dramatically declares, "THAT'S HIM!!! HE DID IT!!!"
But few defense attorneys have the courage to actually test the policeman's identification of the defendant. Doing that could make the judge really, really mean, just before imposing sentence on our precious client.
But, I finally got to see an attorney do it, in Magnolia Municipal Court.
While the judge and prosecutor and public defender were back in chambers, I saw the defense attorney in the DWI case about to be called talking, talking, talking endlessly to a guy in the audience, while he ignored the young man in the seat for the defendant.
"Hmmmmmmmmmm," I thought. "What's going on here?"
Finally, the judge and prosecutor came out, and the Clerk called the case, and the prosecutor put the arresting officer on the stand. It was an open-and-shut case, with a .14 Breathalyzer reading. I knew the policeman well. He was my good friend. He did an excellent job in rendering his testimony.
But the Prosecutor couldn't resist. No one goes to the trouble of connecting the defendant to the offense with fingerprints taken while he is in custody. Instead, they do the pointing thing.
PROSECUTOR: Do you see the individual whom you had seen operating his motor vehicle in a drunken and disorderly fashion that evening, whose Breathalyzer test then yielded a Blood Alcohol Content result of .14, in the court room tonight?
ARRESTING OFFICER: Yes, I do.
PROSECUTOR: Would you please point him out for the court?
ARRESTING OFFICER (pointing): Yes. It is the individual sitting next to defense counsel at the defense table. THAT'S HIM!!! HE DID IT!!!
Suspicious on account of what I had seen in the courtroom before the judge and prosecutor came out, I watched with interest as the prosecutor announced, "Prosecution rests, Your Honor," and the judge said, "Defense can now put on their case."
It was at that moment that the defense attorney "sprung" his "trap": He shook hands with the young man sitting next to him at the defense table, smiled and said, "Thank you very much. Good job." And then the young man walked out of the courtroom to the street.
The judge ask the defense attorney, "Counselor, where's your client going?"
The defense attorney said, "Oh, my client's still here, Your Honor." And then, to the audience, "WILL THE DEFENDANT PLEASE COME TO THE DEFENSE TABLE AND SIT BESIDE ME?" And another young man came up out of the audience and sat next to the defense attorney.
And suddenly the entire courtroom realized that technically the police officer and prosecutor had implicated a perfectly innocent man, and then the prosecution had rested.
The police officer blamed himself -- he shouldn't have. The prosecutor turned red -- he was most to blame. And the judge stared daggers at defense counsel. The judge ordered defense counsel into chambers, and spent a half-hour "reading the riot act" to defense counsel for pulling a stunt like that -- defense counsel was implicitly requiring that every prosecution include an in-court verification of identity by comparison of fingerprints in court with those in the record.
As I was sitting there in court, I thought of a way to salvage a conviction: Simply hold the feet of everyone involved to the fire by continuing the trial.
Think about that.
Instead of getting angry at the defense attorney, the judge should say, "Counselor, that individual from the audience isn't the defendant. I distinctly heard evidence to the effect that the one sitting next to you at the counsel table during the police officer's testimony is the defendant. There is nothing in evidence to the effect that this new person is the correct defendant.
"But the one identified as defendant by the police officer has left the court before his trial is ended. And, I saw you send him away. Therefore, I am issuing a warrant for the arrest of the defendant for leaving the court room in the middle of his trial. And I am having you arrested for Obstruction of Justice, by sending the defendant away."
And then the judge should say to the real defendant, "Sir, I don't know who you are, but you can go."
The consequences of such a ruling would be very interesting.
Undoubtedly, the young man posing as the defendant who then left the court room would have been a friend or relative. So, the real defendant would have to watch his friend or relative go to jail. So would the friend or relative's family.
And, the lawyer, to save his own neck, is cornered into straightening things out by having the real defendant give testimony against himself, which would serve as the basis for his conviction for DWI.
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