February 03, 2005

Throw rocks at a cop, go to jail

One seems to follow the other, huh? Then why does new blogger colleague Steanso's client have to have it spelled out for him?

"Throwing rocks at a cop. Let that just roll around in your head for a minute and try to imagine how young and stupid you have to be to think that throwing rocks at a cop is a good idea."

Sadly, Steanso has fallen prey to an eternal foe of the criminal defense lawyer - The Other Dude Who Got A Better Deal:

Oh yeah, and client thinks the case should be dismissed b/c he knows some kids who were juveniles who threw rocks at cops and their cases got dismissed (this is one of those recurring themes of criminal defense work- no matter what you do for your clients, they've always heard of some dude who got a better deal. "Well, there's one guy I knew from when I was in the county [jail], and he cut some guy's head off, and he got probation, man.").

Go meet Steanso.

1 Comment:

moi said...

Haven't we seen them all? I had a client who was having a tiff with the mother of his child (his ex), who was living with her new boyfriend in a third party's house. My client, since he was there often, thought he lived there. He didn't. So one night he climbed into the house through a window (apparently, no one had keys and the locks were not operational) and started attacking the new boyfriend in bed(uh oh! I spy burglary). The girlfriend, scared, got up and ran. He chased her out of the house, dragged her back in (here comes kidnapping!), then dragged the boyfriend into his car and drove him around for an hour...in a city. While stopped at a light, the boyfriend spies a patrol car and jumps out. Client gets charged with burglary (entry into dwelling where you have no permission to be with intent to commit crime therein) and kidnapping (taking away someone's freedom to leave). He insists he shouldn't be charged with burglary because he lived there. I convinced him of the statute as written and instead of two counts of kidnapping, several counts of assault and burglary, he ended up with 12 years TES. The next day, he meets a 'friend' in jail and says to me... "Man, this deal ain't fair. I know people in here who killed and they got only 3 years". Obviously untrue, as the min for murder is 25. "I know this guy that robbed all these stores and he got only two years!" Stores, in that case, were convenience stores, the total proceeds from which were paltry, landing the 'friend' Larceny in the 5th.

They see things the way they want to see them.