Courtroom smackdown! Judge and defendant get nasty

“Wait a minute, judge, can we back up a bit? I missed my cue where I was supposed to ask if Barry Manilow knows you raid his wardrobe.”

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I feel like I am hip again because of you.

This is like watching the Matrix and knowing I have the CDs of half of the music used in the film already.

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I do not go on reddit.:wink:

Actually, it was @navarro (see above). I also subscribe to Underhill’s blog, but I believe it was here first. (Another well done for @navarro for scooping Lowering the Bar!)

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I have a middle school student with exactly this same gift. His mom is a lawyer…

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Worth reading. What sets the defendant off is that he has ineffective counsel. There are some initial claims about his court appointed lawyer soliciting sex that are probably dubious, but it also looks like the attorney has failed to obtain or provide some critical materials to the defendant, so the defendant is attempting to fire his lawyer. The judge won’t look at ineffective counsel and says his only option is this (shitty?) lawyer or to represent himself. He asks the judge if he reps himself, won’t he be more likely to be convicted and the judge says that’s probably true. It goes from there… Guessing he did the crime though (jail cell murder narrows the possibilities of who did).

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I read the transcript and chuckled at the exchange when the guy threatened to kill the judge’s kids. When the judge informed him that he has no children the guy then said he would kill his grandchildren. Alrighty then.

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Would love to see the Taiwanese Animators interpretation

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It sounds like the Defendant (if not also the Judge) is incompetent to such a degree that his lawyer is trying to get leniency on that basis, but the Defendant rejects that possibility and is trying to fire him for pushing it, later citing the issues of discovery.

The fact that the Judge was not aware of the case that this was related to, is somewhat worrying to say the least. I presume that sort of thing is brought up in the docket.

Also, the inability to replace bad counsel is not appealing. It makes me wonder a little if counsel could be slanted against defendants to make things easier for prosecutors, and all that incarceration entails

It’s funny, till you think about it

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Guy reasonably concluded some earlier defendant had already taken out that generation.

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“That man… is a brownie-hound.”

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Durham: I sentence you to suck your own dick. And that of a donkey - at the SAME TIME!

Durham: Bailiff, go and find this man a donkey and bring them to my chambers. And make sure it’s a BOY donkey!

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Well, it is a “cum-courthouse” after all.

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He’d accurately observed that the judge had no intention of running a fair trial, and realised that his only chance of getting one was to provoke him into such gross unprofessionalism that whatever happened would be thrown out on appeal.

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Well, you can replace your counsel… if you hire someone. The issue here was not that he wanted to hire an attorney but that he wanted to replace his public defender with another one, which was not permitted. I think this is certainly correct considering that most municipalities have a lack of public defenders and those they do have are overworked already.

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Both of these morons need to be voted off the island.

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I understand that he could replace his attorney with one that he would hire, but what I was getting at is addressing the problem of public attorneys in general. We need to hire more of them, and they need to be held to a high standard. That could and probably would entail higher pay. If, for someone without means, the quality of your legal representation is luck of the draw among a hand full of short sticks, the system is unfair and broken. Which I’m quite sure it is.

I’m trying to remember the figure of cases resolved by plea bargain, it was very very high. I think part of the reason for that is that charges can be stacked in large amounts, and preparing a capable defense for all those charges requires a lot of time to invest. Split that time among multiple clients and you have an uphill battle with a cliff. It becomes infeasible to actually go through with a full trial because it’s impossible to be adequately prepared for one.

I’ve heard it suggested to remove plea bargains entirely, though I’m not sure that is the answer. Perhaps a limit on the amount of charges with the exception of serious counts, such as multiple murders.

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Ah sowing the courtroom grounds with salt so that if the Judge does rule against the defendant there can be an automatic appeal and mistrial declared.

Heck, I’d be ok with the Judge admitting that they are no longer impartial and declare a mistrial.

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This is super relevant!
Rick and Morty Courtoom Animatic (adult swim on the green)

Starts at about 17s in.

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Holy crap, thank you!

Slightly better quality (from reddit)

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