08 February 2006

Bittersweet

Sometimes "wins" just don't feel like wins. This week has had a couple of these moments.

The week started out with a hearing for a motion to suppress evidence gained from an unconstitutional arrest. I'd read the case law, prepped my argument, and thought I was probably going to get all the evidence excluded. Of course, the prosecutor had read all the caselaw as well. Being no dummy, he knew which way the winds were blowing and when I walked in he offered to reduce one felony to a lesser included felony, another felony to a misdemeanor, and drop the third felony; he also agreed to a sentence far lower than what I think my client's looooonnng record would give him if he is convicted of his current charges. I take the offer to Client and after what seemed like an eternity of tortured soul searching (probably 30-40 minutes) Client decides to take the bird in the hand. So, I don't get to make my brilliant argument, but Client gets a sentence he is comfortable with.

Wednesday was scheduled to be a whole day jury trial. Client was charged with taking and writing bad checks from his mother. Mom had told me he had permission to use her checks and even wrote a letter to me stating this. I was pretty confident about how the trial would turn out. Then at the end of last week the prosecutor called and told me that he was going to drop the charges. Normally that would make me ecstatic. Of course, then the other shoe dropped. The reason the prosecutor was dropping the charges was that Client, after being bonded out by his mother, went out and wrote more checks on his mother's account and then assaulted a police officer. The prosecutor figured he had a much stronger case on those charges and therefore he wasn't going to push forward on the less viable charges I represented Client on. So today we came to court and the prosecutor dropped both charges instead of having the jury trial. Still, it wasn't exactly the most fulfilling "victory" I've had in court.

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