Post Az6Db5QjDdyhiF5280 by JohnMorley@www.minds.com
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 (DIR) Post #Az6Db5QjDdyhiF5280 by JohnMorley@www.minds.com
       2025-10-11T08:16:49+00:00
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I was in court representing a friend at the end of September.I managed to get all charges discharged with no further action despite him clearly being guilty.I was going to write about it to advise others but never got around to it at the time.Court cases with me involved are normally a bit brutal.My method in debates is to attack every thing the prosecution dares to say to the point they are afraid to find out what ~I am going to say to the next point.Everyone is expecting me to get sent down for contempt of court but this was calm.  I am normally arguing with hostile judges who have never been personally attacked by advocates in their previous cases.  It does not sound like a great tactic but it does actually work if only because they don't have any practice at dealing with genuine advocates who aren't just turning up to get paid.The main takeaway to save you reading further is you need to turn up to court and fight.The second suggestion I would make is tell the court in advance that you intend defending someone if you are representing someone else.My friend was likely going to prison.It was originally a trivial matter of him not appearing for jury service.That would have just got him a fine though maybe a big fine if he had not turned up for his trial.He would not have been able to pay the fine, so, that would have ended up as a prison sentence. He exacerbated the situation by telling the clerk of the court to f*ck off when they rang him and then putting the phone down on him when there was a second attempt at talking to him.They were far more pissed off about the way he talked to them and there was some sort of charge for that that they were going to lay on him too.Just to give you an idea of how pissed off they were...He failed to do his jury selection on the Tuesday and his own trial was in the morning of the Friday of the same week.A bailiff served him with a summons on the Thursday afternoon.By the time I knew about it it was already too late to get hold of anyone at the court and I forgot I needed to tell them before going in that I wanted to represent him.  I also forgot to train him to tell the court he wanted a representative to speak for him.This meant the judge just told me to shut up and sit down the first time I tried to speak.My second attempt was a psychological trick to engage the judge.The judge asked my friend why he didn't turn up and my friend said he had no money.I shouted out "He was never going to turn up even if he did have money".I was expecting the judge to ask me why but he just turned to me and and then I proceeded "He was planning on taking a train".I left a precisely timed pause while the judge processed my words and realised it still made no sense.Then once that had soaked in and he wanted to know why I said "The trains stopped running years ago".This caused the judge to think a moment and then invite me upto the witness stand whereupon I was able to do my thing.The reason I have repeated the dialogue word for word including the pauses is because I have some more advice which this example illustrates. The first part was to engage the judge.  That is why I was choosing a sentence that seemed initially to work against my friend.  The judge expected me to make things worse for my friend and thus wanted me to speak some more.The second part was to get parcel up information into small packets because otherwise people forget the beginning of the sentence by the time you get to the end.  They hear a few buzzwords and rearrange everything in their heads not necessarily hearing the sentence you actually said.The third line bedded in the last bit of info once he had the earlier part properly in his head.Once I was on the stand I was then able to bat away all the questions such as why couldn't he send us an email or write us a letter.  That kind of stuff.A lot of it is hard to convey because I use the tone of my voice and facial expressions rather than just words.He got told off by the judge for telling his clerk to f*ck off but all charges discharged with no further action.I was never asked about the abusiveness and I had hoped the clerk had not told the judge so had not defended that part of it for fear of making things worse.  It only became clear that the swearing at the clerk was an issue after I had gone and sat down.I had a prepared argument to defend him on that point based on him having ginger hair.  I regret not getting to give my gingers speech but never mind.The main thing was turning up to court.  It is worse for you if you don't turn up.I missed turning up to a trial in 2013 and I never found out what the sentence was but in that case I had other reasons to be on the run and I got the conviction withdrawn and wiped from my record later.  I have had atleast three convictions withdrawn.  Even when they find you guilty they can erase the whole thing if you keep fighting them.  They have the power to do what the hell they like. It is not like in the movies.https://like.It