Another Day in Court

It’s always a little surreal when you walk out of a courtroom, especially a federal district court. All of the lawyers have suits on and are talking as if they are completely sure of what they are doing and that they are in total control.

I thought, “Wow, that was pretty good. The new judge in Jeff’s federal marijuana case just spent a half hour of the courts time grilling him so that she could determine if she was going to let him proceed in the court without an attorney.”

Both the prosecution and the judge admonished or enlightened Jeff (I wasn’t sure which way they were going) that they had the best lawyers around and that he was making a big mistake proceeding without an attorney. The bombardment of their “you should have a lawyer” mantra was thrown off a little when Jeff informed them that the previous judge would not let him make his motion to dismiss because he had an attorney.

So for a half hour they tried to convince him to get an attorney and in the end they reluctantly decided to allow him to proceed without one. When this happened, the attorney for the government said to the judge, “Do you understand that he is challenging title 21?” “Yes,” she replied, “this is a big motion.”

Wow, I thought again, Jeff had asked for the judge to hear the case today, five separate times, and she finally said she would rule on the merits of the motion on November 3, 2011!

This basically translates to the judge ruling on the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act that has been putting people in prison, WRONGFULLY, since the early 1970’s. Yes, this is big!

As I grabbed Jeff’s jacket that he’d left in the chair next to me when he went up to address the court, the attorney for the government came up to ME and said that he saw that I had signed a couple of proof of service’s in the case and that he wanted me to “re-consider” and encourage Jeff to not file the motion.

Why would the U.S. attorney do that? Desperation is all I can think of. While we were discussing this “highly unusual request” the attorney showed his hand and now we are looking forward to his response to the motion to dismiss.