CafeChatNoir

I’ve had the interesting opportunity to observe some court sessions (and happily NOT participate) under multiple judges lately. I think I’ve figured out how the system sort of works, at least in some cases.

First, get a lawyer. Make sure it is just a plain old good lawyer and not a grandstanding twit. (Elaboration later.) If you’re lucky, the judge will kick you up to room 201 to get a lawyer if you don’t have one already, and if you’re not lucky, they’ll let you hang yourself with your own rope. Not good.  Said lawyer will also assist in trying to get a judge that doesn’t want the death penalty for everything.

Second, when you have a court date, look decent.  At least thrown on a clean dress shirt and a pair of khakis.  (Seriously, I have been amazed at the number of folks that show up in jeans/shorts/t-shirts to court.)  And take off your damn hat - there is at least one baliff who will happily remove it for you, along with your head.

Depending on your judge and the severity of the offense, first offenses will get you a suspended sentence, fines and probation.

It’s the probation violations that can get you in real trouble down the line.

If it’s a compliance issue, ie, “Do x & y in the next 6/9/12 months” and you’ve not finished yet, it seems that you have 2 tries to get your probation extended and get it done. Come back a third time and it’s not done, you’re out of luck.

If you’ve been convicted of something else and that results in a probation violation, well, you’re just screwed and you’ll be a guest of the county for a while.

If you expect that your probation officer is actually on top of things, think again. If your probation is up in January and they say, “Yes, you’re good to go, just pay the final admin fee,” don’t count on it, because you could be served with a notice of violation anywhere from 3 1/2 months to a year later (I saw that whole range) once they get caught up on their paperwork. Also, don’t expect the probation officer to say the same thing in front of the judge as they do to your lawyer 10 minutes before court convenes. The case that they are just as happy to have put to bed as long as everyone behaves suddenly becomes something they want to “make a point with” in front of the judge.

If your lawyer is a grandstanding twit, you may also suffer, given that the judge can’t really do anything to the lawyer, but they can do things to you. Like make you serve 60 days on a probation violation (traffic violation) because your lawyer had you drag your daughter into court so he could show off your single parenthood. (The baliff actually walked over to the other adult looking after the child after it was over and said, “Don’t bring her back here again.”)

I plan to never need this information, but it has been interesting.