Lawyers In This Online Group Are Sharing The Moments They Knew People Had Messed Up Big Time (25 Stories)

When I was a prosecutor I had a guy who was representing himself. He was charged with car theft and evading. He was actually able to escape the cops for quite a distance and was captured later. His defense was that he wasn't the person.

I got his calls from jail and he talked so much to his girlfriend about how he had committed the crimes. The look on his face when I told him that I was providing him copies of his jail calls was great.

Edit: I remember an even funnier thing! I had another guy who was representing himself. It was a residential burglary and one of the elderly neighbors saw the defendant running from the house. At trial, the defendant was cross-examining the witness and he asked, "now when you saw this person running away..." and the witness said, "You! I saw you running away."

The first case I ever did, opposing counsel misplaced the copy of my client’s drivers license. Rather than admitting his mistake and asking me to resend it, he filed a motion to compel, claiming we never sent it. Well I was able to provide proof that we’d sent it to him like 8 months ago, so the judge was rather displeased with his antics

I represent tenants in eviction proceedings. Landlords being landlords, I have lots of "gotcha" stories. The most recent one was last week, in a classic "he-said, she-said" case. That is, the entire case depended upon whom the jury believed.

When the landlord was sworn in prior to testifying, she unnecessarily said "yes, on the bible," when asked to tell the truth, the whole truth, etc. Her testimony, however, was evasive. She avoided answering almost every one of my questions. She even avoided answering some of her own lawyer's questions. During a recess, but still in the middle of her testimony, she was seen outside the courtroom, in full view of the jury, whispering with her lawyer and a family member about, obviously, what she was supposed to say on the stand.

When she got back up, the first thing I did was ask her what she was talking about with her lawyer and her family member outside the courtroom. I demanded to know whether they were telling her how to answer my questions. Her lawyer objected. The judge overruled the objection and ordered the witness to answer. The witness responded: "my life is my life."

During closing arguments, her lawyer tried to argue that she must have been telling the truth because she swore "on the bible" even though she didn't have to. That meant, according to him, that she took her oath more seriously than the average person (impliedly, my client) who wouldn't bother swearing on a bible when not asked to do so.

In my response, I agreed with the landlord's counsel that his client must take her oath to tell the truth seriously. She must have taken it so seriously, in fact, that she refused to lie under oath when her truthful testimony would have sunk her case. So, instead, she just refused to answer almost every question put to her.

The jury came back in about 30 minutes with a 12-0 verdict in the tenant's favor.

EDIT: verdicts in my state do not have to be 12-0. In civil cases a verdict can be reached with 9 votes. In my line of work, unanimous verdicts are rare even in the most obvious cases.

Also, the conversation in the hallway was not privileged because there was a third party there. But even if the family member had not been in the conversation, I would still be allowed to ask whether they had discussed her testimony, as long as I don't ask what they said to each other.

In a protective order hearing a respondent admitted on cross that he choked his partner. His attorney looked like his head was going to explode. The judge still only granted an order not to abuse. He wouldn't grant the stay away or any other relief we asked for. Go figure.