You Sure Look Nice In Those Bike Shorts

Here's another PD story. I know, I know--you want to hear all about Poodle Head. Well, too bad! All in good time. In the meantime, pipe down and listen up.

During my first year as an Asst. PD, I was assigned to represent a guy who was charged with exposing himself--a misdemeanor. The accusatory alleged that he pulled down his pants while in his mother's back yard and told a man who was riding by on his bike that he "sure looked nice in those bike pants."

Sounds pretty cut and dry, right? Well, it turns out my guy was mentally disabled. He was functional, but he definitely had issues. And, not just mental issues--physical issues as well. Urinary issues, to be exact.

When I first met him, he told me all about his urinary incontinence issues. Apparently, he had sudden, overwhelming urges to urinate, and he had a tendency to whip it out wherever he happened to be. And, he was in the process of doing so on the day in question, when a guy rode by on his bike, and my client felt the need to compliment him on his biking attire. It was fairly obvious to me that my client was being sincere. And it was pretty clear that the guy was mentally challenged. If nothing else, that was quite obvious.

The ADA and I were both new at the job, and handled only misdemeanors. Generally, we only dealt with a slew of shoplifting cases from the mall, occasional assaults, and minor property damage (It wasn't until we were promoted to city court that we were exposed to the dirty underside of human existence: drugs, prostitution, public lewdness--the revolving door of the criminal justice system). We weren't sure what to do with him. He had minimal contacts with the criminal justice system, but the case wasn't a typical case for a suburban town court.

We discussed my client's case briefly and decided to adjourn it so that we could talk to higher ups at our respective offices for guidance.

On the adjourned date, my client approached me and pressed a manila envelope exploding at the seams into my hands. He advised me that it contained medical records that established his medical condition and thus his need to drop trousers whenever the need arose. As he walked away from me, I started to remove the documents from the folder when I noticed that they were damp--peculiarly damp. And, they smelled funny. They smelled kind of like--urine.

Somehow, I managed to keep my lunch down. I'm still not sure how.

I held the driest corner of the envelope between my thumb and forefinger and quickly approached the judge's clerk. I asked her if we could call my guy's case right away. As soon as his case was called, I asked to approach the bench and explained the situation to both the judge and ADA. "I swear. He peed on the papers. Here, see for yourself. Can't we just unload this one now?"

Surprisingly, they weren't all that interested in examining my urine-soaked offering.

The good news was that the ADA had spoken to his supervisor, and was authorized to extend a very reasonable offer. We gladly accepted it and my mentally disabled, urinary challenged, client was free to leave.

My parting advice to him was try to pee in the bushes in the future--and to keep his fashion opinions to himself.

Who the hell searches for...

"paper weight aborted fetus inside"? And, can you believe that my blog was the very first search result? Scary.

Answering machine hell

Now for a non-firm-related post. And, to tell this story, I'm going to have to give up a bit more background information about myself. I've told you that I was either a an Asst. PD or DA before working in a firm--it was the former. And, the following is one of the funnier stories from my tenure as an Asst. PD.

I was assigned to represent a guy with a long misdemeanor record on some sort of small charge--a petit larceny, if I recall correctly. He was one of literally hundreds of my clients, about 50 of whom were incarcerated, including my guy--let's call him "Joe." I generally made it into the jail to see all of my clients once each week, although I tried to meet with them more often, if possible. I hadn't met with Joe yet, though, and, as I quickly learned, he was desparate to see me.

The only outgoing phone calls allowed from county lock up were collect calls. And we weren't allowed to accept collect calls from the jail. But, Joe still managed to get his message across.

He was all too familiar with the system, since he'd been in and out of it forever. And, he knew how to get around it. Until I was able to get to the jail to see him, he left about 10 messages in rapid succession on my voice mail each day, and they went something like this:

(Automated voice)You have a collect call from: "Ms. Moi, it's Joe. You have to..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Come down to the jail.." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Tonight to talk to me..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Come see Joe, Ms...." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Ms. Moi, PLEASE come see..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Ms. Moi, it's Joe..." Would you like to accept it?

Joe knew that he had about 5 seconds each time, and he took full advantage of each and every 5 second opening. It was quite creative, actually, but the novelty of it wore off by about the third message. After 2 days, I was thoroughly annoyed with Joe and his constant barrage of 5 second messages.

Fortunately, I was finally able to get down to the jail and shortly thereafter was able to dispose of his case quite favorably.

The next day, I was checking my messages, and to my chagrine, there was another set of messages from him. I sighed and thought, "What the hell does he want from me now?"

You have a collect call from: "Hey Ms. Moi, it's..." Would you like to accept it

You have a collect call from: "It's Joe, Ms. Moi..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "I just wanted to tell..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Thanks Ms. Moi..." Would you like to accept it?

You have a collect call from: "Thanks for your help..." Would you like to accept it?

I actually laughed out loud. That was the last thing I'd expected. I didn't get thanked all that often in that job. And I certainly hadn't expected it from Joe. It made my day.