Conversation overheard while waiting for the elevator at the courthouse: "Yeah, I was on a jury a few years back. We ended up finding the guy guilty of negligible homicide." Is that kinda like the old "he needed killing" defense?

Got a letter from an inmate today, who says, "I am not an angel by any sense of the word but I did not deserve the beating I received from [another inmate]." He then asks that I "prefer" charges against the other inmate.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram article about the teenager who shot his father and got 80 years, says that he used "racial epitaphs" to describe his dislike of black inmates.

This contained in a writ I received complaining about parole law and losing street time:

"The sentence service shall be based on the information contained in the judgment not on whimps of legislature and extension of the sentence by 'The Statute'."

I read a hand-written statement of a defendant recently charged with restising arrest who was calm until "those guys started to put the "handcups" on me...."
Must be some sort of Chinese restraining device!

With the heat waive in full swing we have a local that is trying every way he can imagine to get himself mentally committed. It seems he does not have air condition and Terrill state hosp. does.
A neighboring county has a defense attorney is threatening a jury trial and requesting the max. because his client wants to stay in jail until the weather cools off. Prosecutors want him out of jail. What a world.

I had a secretary one time from outer space (or was it Crosby?). She did, however, understand that she and I were not meaningfully communicating. She replied to a scathing memo to her personnel file that she and I were not on the same "waive-link", but that she would try harder in the future to understand what I wanted her to do.

And, while I'm on the subject, why can fewer than half of the population spell "Definitely"?

Most of the people that we deal with would never even think of trying to spell a word like "definitely", they are still stuck on the difference between words like, "wood" and "would" and "there" and "their" and how to spell dog and cat, etc. Besides, how are we ever going to reach the lucky number 13 on this thread without the good folks that murder the language on a daily basis. It is so fun though when they try to use big words they have no idea of how to spell or define instead of the few they are familiar with, excluding expletives I mean.

Like the guy who sort of confessed to a burglary, who closed with the statement, " I am being honest and exepting my part in what has happened." And the guy who wrote me and confessed to everything before we even got the report and said among other things, that, "I was told that charges could be pressed on her because sopposely she knew the ware abouts of where I was at." Ah, it is definitely never ending.

A defendant who had insisted upon proceeding pro se made his first appearance Friday for a Monday trial. After about 15 minutes, he realized it would not be wise to persist in his plan. He was about as comfortable as a dolphin in a toll booth. Before he gave it up, he did have a few questions about the State's extrenuous offense notice.

I can see why some Dolphins might be uncomfortable in a toll booth, say Vern Den Herder, for example, especially if it was one of those cramped, one-person jobs like they used to have over the Brunswick River in south Georgia. But I know of at least one toll booth on
Beltway 8 that could probably hold Mercury Morris and Dan Marino fairly comfortably.

"Most of the people that we deal with would never even think of trying to spell a word like "definitely", they are still stuck on the difference between words like, "wood" and "would" and "there" and "their" and how to spell dog and cat, etc."

Don't forget the masses who never mastered the difference between "your" and "You're", and most of them are not customers of ours.

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert S. DuBoise:
My favorite still has to be the at least one police report I get a year on a sex case where the investigator reports the victim was touched in the "gentile" area.

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Along the same lines, I've read several times in police reports (not written by the same officer!) that the offender touched the victim's "virginia."

[This message was edited by clm on 09-09-05 at .]

[This message was edited by clm on 09-09-05 at .]

I just had a client relate to me that she was:

"Driving radically"

when pulled over for DWI.

Local defendant, upon being arrested, complained that the officer failed to read to him his "5th Commandment."

I once a civil case concerning an accident on a drilling rig. One the crew mebers was asked if they were all smoking dope at the time. His reply was "yes, we were smoking it fluently"

Officers report reads, "Subject refused to give a specimen of her breath and refused to perform any more testes."

Just read a report which indicates the officer was "dispatched in reference to a wreckless driver".

Wreckless driving is rather common in reports, as is Failure to Yield Right Away. I guess they were slow to react.

Got a call from a client's mother to inform me that her son has several warranties out on him from the Money Pool Court.

I have an offense report on my desk in which an undercover officer "proceeds to make a consensual encounter" with the defendant and goes on to say the "consensual encounter was made in (notorious drug dealing apartment complex) parking lot". Wow. Those dedicated officers will do *anything* to make a case!