Note: this was originally posted on Ben Around the Block on July 3, 2014. I have made minor edits to clean up grammar and preserve privacy.
It’s been ten days since my last blog post. Life has been active yet uneventful…until today.
Here’s a few basic notes about recent life before the main event:
It has been really hot out here in Salem. And by “hot,” I mean “almost impossible to sleep” hot. I mean hotter than [insert movie star of choice here] doing [insert sex act of choice here] to a volcano on the surface of the sun. Compounding the roasting sensation is my lack of A/C or any kind of electric fan, making Alpha House rather uncomfortable, especially my room. In more comfortable news, I’ve settled into a nice little niche in regards to my lunch hours. Because of its cheapness and access to sweet, sweet Wi-Fi, I have made it a habit to visit the Cat Cavern on Willamette’s campus. In fact, I’ve now been there enough times that the kitchen staff starts making my usual (a cheese quesadilla) as soon as they see me enter. It’s good to have this secure little certainty! The last thing to note is that I recently attended the funeral of my landlord’s mother, which though somber, was a celebration of life and an opportunity to socialize with my neighbours, where I could inquire about neighbourhood events, possible dating opportunities, law school, and other such events. All in all, I’m getting more and more integrated into this wee little community. OK, main event time!
About a half-hour before lunch, the office receptionist told me that there was a trial at the circuit court that I was possibly invited to after the lunch break. I ate my quesadilla that day with much anticipation. Sure enough, when I came back, I was told it was a go. Practically prancing, I headed over to court to rendezvous with L [actual name redacted], who was handling this case. With that, the fun (or what fun there was left, as the trial was halfway over) began!
I won’t go too into detail regarding the case, but I will say it was another fourth-degree assault case (though not domestic violence--yay), this time featuring a quarrel between neighbours. Like the previous case, it all boiled down to a self-defense argument (quick note: self-defense in simple assault and battery cases can be easy to prove for defense attorneys and hard for prosecutors to disprove). There were only three witnesses: the defendant and two members of the local homeowners association. None of the testimony was particularly strong, in my view, but L was able to milk them well to create reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury. The prosecution was less than stellar, not questioning the latter two witnesses at all and not asking very hardball questions to the defendant. After the closing arguments, where L trumped the prosecution, the six-person jury left to deliberate, leaving us with an hour to kill.
After an hour of deliberation, the jury finally arrived at a verdict. Sidling back into the courtroom, they handed their verdict form to the clerk, who handed it to the judge The judge read (note: I have shortened the actual wording so that you won’t fall asleep, dear reader), “We, the jury,…, find the defendant guilty,” then stopped, readjusted the paper while apologizing (while everyone else almost had a heart attack), and re-read, “We, the jury,…, find the defendant on the charge of assault in the fourth-degree, not guilty.” Keep in mind that the defendant was standing right there and was facing the judge when she made this little snafu. Possible pants-crapping aside, he was elated to be acquitted just in time for Independence Day and we the defense team was elated to have won at the end of the day. Once again, the verdict in this case was:
NOT GUILTY
(cue confetti and applause)
Vastly pleased with yet another not guilty verdict that brought pride to our office, I returned with L to my workplace, so that I could resume my glorious duty of sorting and scanning closed case files. All of a sudden, my boss, the Public Defender of Marion County, came up to my desk and chewed me out for not showing up at the trial sooner. Apparently, word is spreading around that I’m something of a good-luck charm to have in court, and he was expecting me to give my luck to this trial from the beginning. He then threatened to cut my salary in half…which given that my current hourly pay is $0.00, makes me think that the whole thing was a joke. All in all, my office remains an awesome and exciting place to work! To top it off, my computer at the mail station (which is where I spend 98% of my working time nowadays) is having a complete trial calendar installed, so I’ll be able to decide which trials to crash at my leisure. All in all, I’m anticipating a jurisprudence-rich July and August!
Tomorrow, the Fourth of July will be upon us Americans. As of now, I have no idea on how exactly to celebrate. Will I get drunk, blow up my hand, and get arrested? Or will I study for the LSAT, play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and buy a fan? Or will I do something completely different? Whatever the result, I’ll be sure to blog about it next week!
Modern reflections:
Salem still gets really hot during the summer, and Twilight Princess is still on my video game backlog. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I'm not quite as optimistic about trying assault cases with self-defense arguments as I used to, but it's still a useful strategy when the facts line up.
As I've mentioned in previous flashback posts, I picked up British spelling spellings while studying abroad and tended to use them in the following months. This is especially noticeable with how I spell "neighbour" throughout this entry. On further reflection, "neighbour" is one of a few words that I still spell in the British manner all the time; that "u" just feels natural to add while typing.
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