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I spent yesterday morning in jail
Jun. 17th, 2005 04:54 ammeeting with a "guest of the county". I am an unemployed paralegal who temps for Kelly Services. An attorney in Spokane needed someone to review papers with the guest and I got the assignment. I loved it. I love doing cases that involved real people (either plaintiffs or defendants). I hate cases about just stuff (sinking shopping centers for example). Granted, the most work I have done lately was cases about stuff (Microsoft v. everyone else, over-billing of medicare, wastewater treatment plant stinks, etc.) other than a document prep for a local coco-puff killer. In California I got a cool pro bono involving a mass murder and taking on the gun manufacture. Loved it, loved it.
So yesterday I went in to meet with the inmate. This was my first time being all the way inside a jail. I now understand when people talk about the jail smell. I can't put my finger on what it smelled like, other than it is a bit stuffy in there. The inmate, whom I will call Robert. I knew the most of the paperwork was his cousin and not him. Robert went through the first 25 pages (there were 610 pages total) and didn't see the point of going through the rest. I had been instructed that if nothing else he needed to read the last 4 pages. Those were the statements of an ex-girl friend who was cutting a deal for herself.
Most inmates are jail house lawyers, Robert being no exception. Jail house lawyers are clueless for the most part and grasp at straws. This statement was not "credible" (Robert's favorite word, next to malicious prosecution) because there were date errors and the statement was not specific enough. So we did the statement paragraph by paragraph, noting what he considered important. I finally did a time line with him of when he met the gf, where they lived, etc. He told me (hadn't told the attorney yet) what he would plead out to. I didn't go into why he was willing to plead guilty to bank fraud if he didn't do it. His argument of why he didn't do the bank fraud count was would he have been so stupid to open a bank account in his name with his address if he was going to commit the crime. BECAUSE YOU AREN'T SMART. YOU ARE STILLING IN A BIG SMELLY BUILDING WITH LOTS OF OTHER MEN. I DON'T CARE THAT YOU HAVE AN IQ OF 127. I did ask him if he was so smart, why was he here? He did admit to being manipulative. You think?
What I did find sweet is that what he was willing to plead to had a deal breaker clause, that the former gf (the one you was rolling over on him) has all her charges dropped. He said that he was going to take the responsibility, he brought her into this mess and he wanted to get her out of it. It was an aww moment.
I actually liked this guy. Would he be my friend, no. But as a convicted felon, he wasn't bad.
So yesterday I went in to meet with the inmate. This was my first time being all the way inside a jail. I now understand when people talk about the jail smell. I can't put my finger on what it smelled like, other than it is a bit stuffy in there. The inmate, whom I will call Robert. I knew the most of the paperwork was his cousin and not him. Robert went through the first 25 pages (there were 610 pages total) and didn't see the point of going through the rest. I had been instructed that if nothing else he needed to read the last 4 pages. Those were the statements of an ex-girl friend who was cutting a deal for herself.
Most inmates are jail house lawyers, Robert being no exception. Jail house lawyers are clueless for the most part and grasp at straws. This statement was not "credible" (Robert's favorite word, next to malicious prosecution) because there were date errors and the statement was not specific enough. So we did the statement paragraph by paragraph, noting what he considered important. I finally did a time line with him of when he met the gf, where they lived, etc. He told me (hadn't told the attorney yet) what he would plead out to. I didn't go into why he was willing to plead guilty to bank fraud if he didn't do it. His argument of why he didn't do the bank fraud count was would he have been so stupid to open a bank account in his name with his address if he was going to commit the crime. BECAUSE YOU AREN'T SMART. YOU ARE STILLING IN A BIG SMELLY BUILDING WITH LOTS OF OTHER MEN. I DON'T CARE THAT YOU HAVE AN IQ OF 127. I did ask him if he was so smart, why was he here? He did admit to being manipulative. You think?
What I did find sweet is that what he was willing to plead to had a deal breaker clause, that the former gf (the one you was rolling over on him) has all her charges dropped. He said that he was going to take the responsibility, he brought her into this mess and he wanted to get her out of it. It was an aww moment.
I actually liked this guy. Would he be my friend, no. But as a convicted felon, he wasn't bad.
