"How am i supposed to defend you"? (r/AskReddit Top Stories)

lawyers of Reddit has any client have made you go how the [ __ ] am I supposed to defend you and if so how did it go my client gave a textbook perfect confession to a robbery the police had no leads on he had walked into the police station and told the front desk that he thought the cops were looking for him he then volunteered that he and a friend robbed a gas station last week then after police arrested and warned him right to silence e.t.c and after he spoke at length with counsel not me he repeated his confession in an audio / video statement he wasn't forced or coerced he hadn't been detained for an unreasonable time in cells first they hadn't even interrogated him but as a result of his confession they were able to get a DNA warrant and matched him to blood swab did the scene and the best part the police had no idea beforehand that it was him my client and his friend had covered part of their faces the surveillance video was horrible quality and they had bear sprayed the store clerk a 16 year old kid immediately upon entering so the kid hadn't been able to provide the police with his description beyond two miles and since he had no criminal record he wasn't in the DNA database from previous crimes he had just heard a rumor that police were investigating and assumed they knew it was him I had to laugh when I got the police report and read all of this I then focused on securing him as fair plea deal because he had no chance at an acquittal I'm a criminal defense guy so I have had plenty most infuriating one was a guy that got busted for selling rocks to a confidential informant the CI was wired for sound and video so the whole transaction is crystal clear plus the cops ID'd his car is the one that drove up the scene and he was stopped a couple of hours later with the buy money in his possession serial numbers were recorded he had three prior convictions for cocaine sales the prosecutor offered him five which was the mandatory minimum he absolutely declined to even consider a plea insisted on a jury trial insisted on taking the stand and telling a ridiculous story about how it wasn't him in the video there wasn't any doubt I felt like Lionel Hutz trying to string together a closing argument with a straight face he got 20 years I had a family client whose ex wasn't letting him see his kid so we were in court with him explaining how important parenting was to him how much he loved being a father etc after 45 minutes of this the mother says back quote I don't know why he's saying this he abandoned his other kids Kumi who has never heard him mention having other kids turned out yeah 100% abandoned them has had no contact for years never made any efforts please give your lawyers important information especially if another party involved knows your secrets I have a part-time job as a court bailiff and hate standing in court for these in a recent case the father was arguing that he wanted additional visitation and joint custody which had previously been granted solely to the mother the judge asked the father a whole host of questions about his kid who is his teacher who is the school principal who is his pediatrician when was the last time he went to the doctor do you didn't know anything but said it was because the mother hadn't told him mother knew all answers and had text messages to prove that she'd offered any and all information to the father and he responded by cursing her out telling her not to text him unless he asks a question about the kid not only did he not get joint custody his visitation was reduced to whatever the mother wanted since he admitted that he refused to give their kid a prescribed medication when he had him because the father had decided he didn't need it so he'd just throw it away causing the mother to have to get more if she sent it with her son the father was the only one in the room who was surprised at a deposition it's the questioning lawyer's responsibility to ask the right questions to get the info he or she is after and the lawyer has to be thorough and methodical if they neglect to ask about something that's their problem those defending the witness always tell the witness not to volunteer information and to just respond to the questioning lawyers questions again don't volunteer I had a witness come in and we went through the whole preparation meeting where I gave her all the instructions and told her not to volunteer again don't volunteer I ask if she's reviewed anything to prepare nope so that's good you have to disclose things you've reviewed we go through the deposition and she does fine questioning lawyer is done he's packing up his stuff the court reporter is packing up her stuff and the lawyer is waiting toward the door witness says did you want to see this and pulls out a stack of books that no one had ever asked about she hadn't told me about and which contains stuff that the other side was able to use [ __ ] dumb bust the client who said they didn't speak English so we had to get an interpreter when asked questions the client kept answering in English and the interpreter would have to stop and ask again and then answer in the language long confusing deposition to say the least the client spoke better English than anything he made the rally goal although a minute now but previously I was in other areas well in court the case before ours at the time was for theft and was going on much longer than it should have defense lawyer calls for a motion to dismiss claiming lack of evidence judge says he will entertain said motion after lunch hits gavel says court will reconvene at 1:00 p.m. court dismissed defendant stands up and says really loudly told you I could get away with stealing that she thought his case had been dismissed it's a toss-up between the one who called the judge a [ __ ] to her face and the one who didn't show up for a hearing because while out on bail he got arrested in the next county over and was in their lock up at the hearing time does that count as an excused absence I had to try to defend a man who walked into a convenience store with a knife demanding money he wore no masks just as casual clothes and walked through every aisle before he robbed it being spotted by every security camera in the store after the robbery he ran back to the hotel he was staying at also carrying an open backpack full of money being seen by the hotel's security cameras in the process he then went into his room threw the bag on the floor and hid under a bed until police arrived I spent a long night thinking about it before passing the case to somebody else because I have no idea how to defend someone who has so much evidence against them I've told this story here before but it's a good one my friend's mom was a defense lawyer for a hospital her job was to represent doctors accused of malpractice or anything relating to doctor / patient interaction I forget all of the details that she had one case where a female patient had accused a male doctor of sexual assault the claim was that the doctor groped the patient several times during a procedure allegedly the doctor had been coached to say that during a routine procedure it's possible that he had inadvertently brushed up against the patient's chest and that if it happened it was an unintentional consequence of following standard procedures so they get to the deposition and I guess the first question the doctor gets is something along the lines of walk me through what happened and the doctor says I don't know what you want me to say man I'm a tit guy always have been they settled and meanwhile I worked under a doctor who was accused of sexual harassment during a spinal tap because he pressed his knuckles into her back before inserting the needle and for some reason her mind thought that it was his dick she really believed this doctor pressed his erect penis against her spine while performing the procedure with a giant needle right next to said dick they had to have the nurse who was in the room validate that the doctor had not been engaging in frot tourism not that phrase on two different occasions in the last three years I have declined representation and in each case it was someone who had been sued was served with the papers had completely ignored them was defaulted received and ignored the request that the court enter a judgment based on the default and then ignored subpoenas and other directives relating to creditors Exum's then it finally occurs to them that they should consult with the lawyer far too late to do anything my question not spoken out loud how in the world do you get through life you wonder how people like that live when they are such idiots but somehow they manage to stumble into enough food and housing to keep surviving I'm pretty sure the lawyer who served the girl who sued my brother had that same question for her my brother started dating the girl right after he and his first Finn cake holds things off from the get-go this new girl was bastard he brought her home to hang out and she burst into my room without warning to introduce herself and tried to hang out with me she told my brother she wanted him to get me our mom and our stepdad together downstairs so we could all meet and play board games she found our dad and stepmom on FAFSA Balcon friended them she was the weirdest clingy girl I've ever seen my brother wasn't looking for that kind of relationship so he ended it with her this girl proceeded to [ __ ] with our house his car his friends she started making calls to the local police saying she'd seen criminal mischief happening and she thought it was my brother after months of trying to ignore her and hoping she'd go away it didn't work my brother came home and found her sitting on our porch with this other girl apparently they were in a relationship when they wanted my brother to have sex with them and get them pregnant so they could have kids my brother snapped after months of stalking and basically threatened her with violence if she didn't leave him the hell alone a few weeks later he got served to show in court to determine an order of protection against him filed by that girl he didn't bring a lawyer and he didn't expect her to have one anyway her lawyer started talking about how my brother had threatened his client and she felt like she was in danger and how my brother deserved to be locked up she also tried to have him banned from being near the local elementary schools for reasons unknown to us my brother was entitled to call witnesses so he called our mother me our step dirt and the three friends each of us detailed the months of stalking and property destruction then my brother presented the photos he had of everything she'd done the screenshots of messages sent to him to me to our relatives on cell phone and social media based on the look on her lawyers face she hadn't mentioned and had probably lied about it she'd instigated everything my brother was given an order of protection against her that she ended up breaking a few weeks later she moved away after she was released from County Jail and last I heard she sells her body for drugs and money this isn't my story but is just too perfect to not mention when one of these threads comes up so we are at a bail hearing for the client an older guy in his seventies accused of sexually assaulting his granddaughter who is in her teens we are just wrapping up have made all our arguments that the client is an upstanding member of the local immigrant community no priors ect and the judge has granted bail with a reasonable bond all done right no the client insist he wants to say a few things so he stands up and gives his bit that he hadn't mentioned to his lawyer at all about how he doesn't get why there is all this fuss he didn't even penetrate her with his penis after all and she was asking for it with that short skirt at this point the judge tries to interrupt this by suggesting that maybe this comment would be better sweeted for sentencing but the old guy is done digging he just has to tell everyone how he really doesn't know why people are wasting so much time over all of this as he is going to fly back to his home country in a couple of days anyway so yeah apparently that one didn't go well I went to a meeting where an older couple eighties sent their lifesaving to a nigerian prince 2009 who was going to triple their money and send it back they sent money into installments grand total was around 40k and it was obviously stolen they wanted to know every option they had to get it back and the answer was simple none there's nothing you can do to get your money back I've never seen two people so mentally broken they were attired no longer had access to money in any way I excused myself from the meeting by faking a call and started crying in the bathroom I couldn't handle it my mother-in-law also sent money to a Nigerian prince we don't ask her how much it was but it was a lot many years ago she sold her house for quite a lot had she kept it and sold it last year instead she'd have probably gotten way more but I digress so her daughter my sister-in-law took control of all the money on her behalf she lent it to herself to pay off her own mortgage which is fine because she paid it back at no interest versus the mortgage interest at first I thought it was sort of rotten taking the money to protect mum from being scammed until I got to know my mother-in-law more and a Nigerian prince payment came to light then I understood later on my wife said hey my mom gave us $500 in Apple iTunes card so if the kids want to buy a movie or something we can use that I asked why she gave us such a nice little gift an yep someone convinced my mal that the eyes was after her and that the eyes wants Apple gift cards instead of money luckily she actually stopped to think about it and realized it was a scam but had the cards and she gave them to us she learned from her experience so that's something not many who fall for these scams do I had a client come in and spin me this yarn about how he owed all these child support arrears and the payments are killing him and could I file a petition to have the payment reduced he spins this tale of his spouse alienating the children and that's why he never saw them I filed the petition in the clerk called me aside one day and said I might want to review his actual divorce file not just his child support file that was a wild ride orders of protection due to stalking losing his visitation due to Mathews not making a single child support payment in 14 years I did the best I can until he admits on the stand that he smokes a carton a week and drinks over a liter a day so that's over $200 a week in cigarettes and liquor and a little weed sometime it did not go well I was a baby attorney at the time and I could tell the judge wanted to tear me a new one for even filing this that I was so beaten down by the end of the hearing that it would have been child abuse at that point as a PD pretty much every single client that wants to take their case to trial and is completely delusional about how strong their defenses I don't know if it's drugs narcissism mental illness but so many just are in complete denial even when you show them the whole thing on video they don't understand that a witness saying what they saw happened is evidence despite telling me they are being railroaded with no evidence especially with strict liability type offenses like driving under suspension and don't get that I was only driving three miles to do X in those cops just wait outside my trailer park waiting for me because they know my car isn't a deference oftentimes during discovery you'll get requests for admission which are a set of yes-or-no questions designed to get basic uncontested info like where they're our client was the one driving the car at the time often plaintiff's lawyers will throw in a gotcha question that pretty much states admit the whole thing is your fault and you owe plaintiffs a bunch of money 99 9% of the time wield an item because it would sink a whole case but I had one idiot defendant who insisted on admitting that one we lost sometimes Peter files and fraudsters are often in denial they'll refuse to enter a plea of guilty even if the evidence is overwhelming and even though a plea would substantially reduce their sentence in those cases you're just put in the position of explaining to the client they're low prospects of success and putting the prosecution case to the test in a guilty plea you have the opportunity to explain some mitigating details in the defendants favor very occasionally the defendant is a miserable unrepentant [ __ ] who had every advantage in life and still [ __ ] it up in those rare cases I'm forced to brush over the defendants antecedents and focus on making sure the sentences in range teenage boys can be very difficult to work with because they are focused on impressing you so getting those mitigating details is like extracting teeth note if you are a teenage boy this doesn't impress us the actual hardened criminals that we deal with have danced the dance many times and they are forthcoming with details like their difficult upbringing the courses they've enrolled in and so forth fortunately in the case of teenage boys their mother often comes with them so I can ask her for humanizing details like their favorite subject at school their future plans how they fell into a bad crowd and so forth makes sense for pedophiles Society hates pedophiles more than anyone if you're a thief the victim's family will hate you a murderer the victim's family and a bunch of other people will hate you a rapist most people will hate you but you'll probably still have people you can trust and maybe people won't want to instantly stab you once you get out if you're a pedophile every single person on the planet will viscerally hate you as soon as they know that word is linked with your name most will want you dead many will want to torture you before you die once you get out you're still basically imprisoned from the rest of life not geographically but from people makes sense that they would take a 1% chance of freedom and semi respect over a 0% chance of ever being looked upon favorably ever again all I can think of is I saw this guy on the TV Dutch who was accused of possession of firearms he didn't have an attorney as he didn't want one his reason he didn't need an attorney because what he was doing was actually legal the judge asked him if he was sure he said he was then he was convicted that was pretty much it I'm like 99% sure that the story I'm about to type out didn't actually happen but your post reminded me of it so I'm sharing allegedly there was a guy on trial for armed robbery and his argument was that he wasn't armed the prosecutor had testimony from the store clerk saying that there was a bulge in the pocket of his jacket bat in the Clark's eyes looked like a gun the defendant asked this jacket and this bulge indicating the jacket he was wearing and the witness nodded then the defendant pulled a 5 kilogram brick of cocaine out of the jacket pocket to prove that it wasn't a weapon judge had to call a five-minute recess due to laughing too hard I interned at legal aid not our client custody case he accused her of using coke all the time which made her an unfit mother she defended herself backquote Your Honor I have never used cocaine in my life and I wouldn't I only smoke crack case closed I have posted this here before I'm not a lawyer I read about this two guys were being tried for robbing a gas station a customer who saw the robbery was now on the witness stand the prosecutor asked him to describe what he saw the witness said that he saw two guys robbing the store and while running out one of them bumped into him then the prosecutor turned towards the two defendants and asked are those two men in the courtroom today at which point the two idiots raised their hands I am sure the defense lawyers thought how the [ __ ] am I supposed to defend you now lawyer here my client committed another crime during the trial and judge found out about that during one of my first divorce trials our client attempted to kill his wife two days into a three day trial a group of three young boys in my city drowned their neighbor's cat and recorded themselves doing it with their phones the videos were copied by their friends and would inevitably be shown to the jury in court it was a case of the evidence speaking for itself all I could really do was to argue for lighter punishment using their Aegis defense and the disastrous effect that group mentality can have on young people former criminal defense attorney here the answer is almost every single one but keep in mind you don't defend clients you make prosecutors do their job my lawyer father once had a client who was suing the federal government because he claimed his parents had sold him to the feds for testing as a child the client claimed they had him constantly under surveillance when asked how he knew who was watching him the client said government used minivans and station wagons laterz and they were always parked outside his residence the client lived in a motel in a resort town my aunt is a retired lawyer she once had to defend a guy who was in the possession of weed and other drugs he swore he didn't have any but he obviously did because on the days leading up to his trial he looked and smelled more shittier than the day before finally on the day of history all he showed up with a cigarette in his mouth and a can of lager he was high as frickin there was obviously some drugs in his system my aunt told me as she was retelling this story as soon as he walked in I knew it was about time for me to freaking rarity herbs he lost the case even though my aunt tried to get him a lower sentence I think he's serving like 20 years or something now long I work in the legal system not a lawyer sorry but this situation is pretty good not to share a defendant was arrested for a breaking and entering went into a neighbor's home after being told not to an sat down acting like they owned the place and started smoking a cigarette if I remember the charge in court paperwork correctly when the police came and proceeded with an arrest the defendant straight up with no prompting said basically oh and I killed my other neighbor they didn't have many leads so this pretty much gave them what they needed I don't know how the defendants attorney is going to be able to defend with that confession [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Reddit Cubed

Views: 84,689

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Keywords: reddit, askreddit, r/askreddit, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, askreddit top posts, ask reddit, reddit stories, funny reddit, best reddit posts, best of reddit, askreddit new, askreddit stories, reddit story, askreddit funny, reddit best, funny askreddit, reddit funny, funny reddit stories

Id: mdYL5HT_7_I

Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020