Wednesday, December 23, 2009

*danger ahead*

Be afraid asserting constitutional rights. Be very afraid.

Today, I was yelled at by a judge for asserting my client's right to confront witnesses guaranteed by both the state and federal constitutions. There was an emergency hearing today to take my client away from his family and send him to jail two days before Christmas. The State had no witnesses to back up its charges. I was just doing my job putting things on the record (the judge only glared at me and took no notes as I made my arguments, so I realized I was speaking only for the record). I couldn't even get through my sentence before the Judge told me I was being disingenuous and blamed the lack of State's witness on me. Somehow it was my fault that the witness couldn't come to the emergency hearing which had practically no advance notice.

It's too bad I didn't learn my lesson and plan to continue to assert my client's rights in this judge's courtroom in the future.

It's also too bad that I had to cry with a boy and his family split right before the holidays.

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