Oh, please. Spare us all the drama.

2006-08-01
9:25 p.m.

Today's defendant was a pain in the ass. Yesterday he was full of bravado, declaring his court-appointed attorney was not doing a good job and that he would represent himself today. And then he asked for a continuance. Ha!!

My judge did not grant a continuance, and we commenced jury selection bright and early this morning. At the end of the voir dire process, he decided to plead guilty. And then he proceeded to give the most heart-rending tearful snot-slinging guilty plea I've seen yet. (They should teach an acting class in court reporting school, because it was really quite hard for me not to show my disgust.)

He cried and bawled and carried on. He pretended to be so emotional he could hardly summon the strength to answer the questions. So weak was he that he could only whisper in the tiniest of whispers.

And then when the assistant DA made the motion to retire the last count, he snapped out of it, because he thought it wasn't going to be dismissed and that the state would later revive that old charge. He leaned over and told his attorney (as his attorney later told us in chambers) that if it didn't get dismissed right now, he was going to crank it up. His attorney told him he was fixing to crank it up all the way to maximum sentence if he did. That almost shut him up. He has such a hard head, he still had to get an explanation from the judge.

This whole drama was played out with nine deputies standing around in our courtroom. Usually we have three. The sheriff's office knows his reputation.

In fact, his charges today were simple assault on a law enforcement officer, and he has ANOTHER charge of simple assault from a fight in the jail yesterday with another inmate. When the deputies went in to break it up, he again assaulted a deputy. One of the deputies today told me he's crazy. I told him no, he's just a stupid spoiled brat, but he wants us to think he's crazy.

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Oldest Son has been having a great time the last couple of days. Since school starts on Thursday, there's no camp for him to go to this week, and he definitely didn't want to go to Youngest Son's day care, so we let him stay home "by himself." He's actually not home alone, Hubby is here, but he's sleeping. Oldest Son knows he can go wake up Hubby if he needs to, but also knows not to do it for something frivolous.

Anyway, he has been watching TV and playing his video game all day. He's reorganized his room exactly like he likes it. He's read a couple of books and talked on the phone to his friend in SC.

Today my brother called and talked to him, then called me on my cell. He said OS told him he was just sitting back and chilling, because school starts Thursday, you know. My brother was quite amused at how huge he's making school sound. Why, it's going to be so tough, I need to sit back and chill, don't you know?

OS has called me at lunchtime both days this week, and both times he pretends to want to know how my day's going. How many cases have I done? What kind of cases were they? Am I having a trial? Followed closely by: Can I have a Coke? And as soon as I grant the Coke, he's done talking, thanks. Have a great day! Bye!

Today I called him back and assigned him some extra chores. He's wanting to earn some money, so I gave him several jobs around the house he doesn't usually do but can do, and I'd pay him. He picked out the chores he didn't mind doing and did those. The objectionable ones? He just didn't do them. But he only wanted half of the money for the part he did! Tut tut tut, that wasn't the deal. I told him he could finish them tomorrow, and then I'd pay him. I'm really curious to see if he'll do them!

Over and out.

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