My First Conviction!

This morning was crazy! There were so many violations, cases with status checks and stuff going on that we weren't finished by noon. The judge wanted to get everything done, so when she saved the trial for last and worked through everything else first. I felt a lot more comfortable doing it all this time, as last month, I had only been working there 3 days and truly had no idea what was going on. At least now I have somewhat of an idea....

These little bench trials are basically for people who didn't want to flat out pay the fine for their violation and couldn't reach an agreement with the government on a reduction of that fine. They are allowed to have a trial if they don't want to plead guilty and pay their fine. This case was one of those, so it's not like it was a big deal. But I did have 2 witnesses (the citing officer and a ride along) that I questioned. The statute that was violated was pretty straight forward- a certain act was done on US Forest Service property. The defendant admitted to the act but tried to say he didn't really know where he was. Of course, ignorance is not a good defense and the statute didn't have any wording about "intent" or "knowingly". Apparently the guy just didn't want to pay the money. Nice try, but it was a no brainer for the judge and she found him guilty. I have no delusions that it was my legal maneuvering that convinced the judge. There just wasn't much to argue.

A couple more of the cases from today are going to be future little bench trials. I cannot even believe one of them. I wish I could post about it, but discretion tells me I should not. I only wish I could add to this person's fine the amount of court time they are taking up! Ugh.

With all this activity, I didn't even get out of court until about 1:30pm. My afternoon class was supposed to start at 2pm today, but by the time it would take me to get home, eat, change, get all my school stuff together and get across town I would have been at least a half hour late, so I decided to not bother. My professor wasn't even sure if he was going to make it today since he was having a medical procedure this morning. Didn't seem worth it to rush to maybe not even have class.

So, I suppose I need to start a tally sheet on my bulletin board at work: 1-0, I'm winning.