OK, there is a blazin' thunderstorm outside, no one is out and about, and other than one caller attemptin' to make a collect call form a jail somewhere, it is quiet. Might as well catch ya'll up on why I feel like a turd floatin' in a crudper slowly spinnin' toward my eventual demise. Remember that trial that I was supposed to have yesterday. Well, the jury panel was millin' in the hallway, the court was ready to begin, the prosecutor was chompin' at his bits to win an easy case and look good for the voters and I was there to make a fool of myself defendin' an indefensible case ... and the defendant does not show up. Judge orders his arrest and sets his bonds at $30,000 each for a first offense DWI and misdemeanor Possession of MJ. The prospective jurors are dismissed and we all go our separate ways. I end up goin' to the court in the next town over and spending the rest of the mornin' workin' out a fairly good deal for another client. I come back after lunch and, before I get through the front door, my secretary says my client is in jail and is clamorin' about not havin' known of his trial date. She says she has looked all through his file, both paper and the computer database file and cannot locate where we had sent any notice of the trial date to him. It is just a regular procedure that when somethin' is calendared in the database, a court date letter is generated and mailed. It is as simple as pressin' a menu button labeled "ctdtltr." Doin' so, however, also generates a history entry that such letter was created and usually the letter is saved and its file location is also attached at a history entry. Neither of these entries was present. In most cases, my clients are incarcerated, so they are brought to court by order of the court and the few that are not in jail are regularly informed of their court date by their bondsmen, who have to pay a hefty fee to the court should these people fail to appear for their court dates. This client, however, had technically never been arrested and released on bond. He had been taken to a hospital on the night of the offense after havin' been involved in a serious accident and had been charged after his blood alcohol level had been discovered durin' treatment at the hospital. For all previous court appearances, the County Attorney's Office had provided him notice of his need to appear. They did not do so on this occasion, assumin' that I had done so upon receipt of the trial settin'. I actually should have done so, and my failure to have done so was an oversight. The client was pissed.
My first idea was to attempt to get him to agree to take probation, thinkin' the court would likely readily agree to such and we could get him released from jail on probation by the end of the afternoon. He is havin' none of that and is gettin' highly adversarial over the telephone, so I decide to go visit him. We have a very charged conversation in which he babbles somewhat incoherently about this and that and that he is bein' treated wrongfully and is not a criminal, etc. It becomes readily apparent that he is never gonna take responsibility for the actions that landed him in court and now in the jail. However, I do feel a bit responsible that he is in jail unable to be released because the amount of money needed to make the bond is unobtainable. As such, I run back to discuss the necessity for lowerin' same with the judge. He is gone for the day. crud, so I go back to the jail and give my client that piece of news, and he goes ballistic about havin' to spend the night in the jail. I get back to the office and his son comes in. I am so hopeful he is rational and can assist me in gettin' his father to understand that his case is not triable and that he should be agreeable to takin' probation, but the son is solely concerned about why his dad is in jail. Office closes and I go home, unable to do anythin' more for this guy.
I was up and out of the house at the crack of dawn this mornin' and was waiting at the door to the judge's chambers when his secretary came in. "He will be in a a few minutes," she says, already knowin' why I am there. I wait a couple of minutes and the phone rings, it is the judge. She tells him I am there and yada, yada, hangs up. "He is ill and is not comin' in and said to talk to Ron [the current County Attorney and my current political opponent]. He thinks Ray [the guy who posts almost all the bonds for everyone arrested in our county] got him out." That sounded like a possibility and was easy enough to confirm, so I ran back here to the office and called the jail. "Is [name of client] there?" "No, did you want to talk to him?" "No, just wanted to see if maybe he had been released, thanks." Click I go back to the judge's secretary, tell her that my guy is still in the jail and could she call the Judge back and let him know. "Be sure to tell him that it was my fault that he didn't get notice." She calls, discusses the situation with the Judge. I hear mostly a series of "Uh huh's" before she hangs up. "The Judge is very ill with a stomach virus and says he thinks [name of client] is partly to blame for not keepin' touch with your office. [I heartily agree with this assessment, as this client has not been good about comin' in or callin', but still ...] He said he might feel better this afternoon and think about it. Right now, he is too sick to worry about it." I went to the jail and pass that information along to the client. That did not improve his disposition one bit.
I came back to the office and found that the settin's in the next county that are usually set for 1:30p.m. had been moved to this mornin' so that the judge could leave early for some reason. So off I go to the neighborin' county so I could wait around for 2 hours to pass two cases, which took all of two minutes. Then I went to lunch, and was headin' back when I forgot there was some other papers I wanted to drop off in a probate matter, and a couple of questions my client wanted me to ask the judge, so I went back to the courthouse and waiting around another 45 minutes until that court reconvened after its lunch break for that 3 minute conversation. I doive back to the office in a blindin' thunderstorm and end up passin' my secretary as I pull into parkin' lot of my friend's store to fill my Dr. Pepper™ cup. She flips around and pulls in to tell me that she is leavin' early due to the storm. Whatever. She has been fendin' a lot of the garbage associated with the fiasco for the past two days, so deserved a break anyway, and it is not like anyone is likely to venture out into this mess to visit their attorney's office. I ask her if she had heard any news, "Nope, been quiet." Last thing I remember when I left the jail after visitin' with the agitated man was that he had asked to be allowed to call Ray. I was so hopeful he had just bonded out of jail and the rest of this could sort itself out ... but, alas, I no sooner sat down than the phone rang. It was his son. He said he had just spoken to his dad in the jail and was there any news. I was waitin' for a break in the storm to walk across the street to the Court Annex Buildin' to see if the Judge was in. It seems pretty quiet out there now, so I guess I will go make that trip.
[UPDATE: Judge is unreachable, per the Judge's Secretary. Try back in the morning was her suggestion. I do not think I will pass this word along to the agitated man, as I am sure he will get the idea when he does not get out today. I then thought that I could at least call the jail and have the jailer pass the bad news along to him and was lookin' up the number when, as chance would have it, the son of the agitated man called to inquire if there was anything new. I gave him the bad news, told him I was pissed about the situation, and that I was just fixin' to call his dad to pass along the info, but that I would just let him do so. I am tellin' ya'll, this matter is startin' to get really ugly.]
Posted by notGeorge at March 4, 2004 03:22 PM