I went to shadow a PD this week. I was to watch a trial. I woke up at 7AM for the first time in a month, put on my suit and rolled the minivan out to middle of nowhere courthouse. Watched some pleas (which was fairly interesting) and then the defendant showed up. The jail people screwed up and hadn't dressed him in civilian clothes. The defendant was a larger man so he needed his own clothes. Because of this his case was continued. I got to watch all of an hour of court.
The pleas were interesting. I remember from one of my crim pro classes that in order to accept a guilty plea there has to be a factual basis for the plea. Our professor never really explained where this factual basis came from. The judge I watched would read the elements of the crime to the defendant, ask the defendant if he understood all the rights he was waiving and if he remembered signing the plea agreement. After doing that she would take a minute to review the police report and inevitable say "I find the police report contains facts sufficient to support the plea."
I got an email from one of the attorneys I worked with over the summer. The appeal I wrote for her is going up for a motion on the merits on March 14th. Not looking good for my client. In the email she said "I suspect you will have the jurors eating out of your hand." That inflated my ego a little bit.
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Some of the attorneys I work with mentioned that they like to do the factual basis when it means they get to swear in court. For example, they will ask their client, "Did you tell Mrs. Jones that she was a 'fat ass ugly bitch' and that she looked like 'a fucking monkey with a mustache?'"
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