December 21, 2011
When people say they want their day in court, they mean it.
What I anticipated would be a brief proceeding lasted the entire afternoon.
Not that it wasn't entertaining.
Because it was.
Just had I known it was going to be an afternoon long event, I would have taken some marking with me.
And snacks.
The Summons to Witness indicated that I had to be at Courtroom 1 by 1.00 pm.
I was.
But only after calling once and asking in person when I arrived if this proceeding was going forward.
Me, of course, hoping that it wasn't.
I even contemplated not showing up.
But apparently, this results in the judge issuing a warrant for your arrest, two nights in jail and a $100.00 fine.
This knowledge was shared via the judge when another individual was hauled into court for just that reason.
Followed by the judge informing her, and the rest of the court that she had, of late, been incarcerating people who hadn't answered the summons to witness.
But being that it was Christmas, and this young woman had three children, the judge let her off with the $100.00 fine.
Stephen turned to me with the Stephen-smug look he gets when he knows he's right.
Like so many other things that bother me, I chose to ignore it.
In spite of arriving, for once, on time, I was informed that the issue that had dragged me downtown on a Wednesday afternoon when I should have been marking wasn't slated to being until 2.00.
Resulting in me asking why I had to be there for 1.00.
That wasn't received as well as I had anticipated.
Imagine.
In the intervening hour, we were treated to several issues.
An assault, presumably a husband assaulting his wife, a break and enter just a couple doors down from Mer's apartment building, and a DWI.
That was interesting.
This 24 year old community college student was found in his motor vehicle, while it was still running, in the middle of an intersection just a few minutes walk from here. . .
. . .and as an aside, we don't live in a crime riddled neighbourhood. It just seemed like it today. . . .
. . .asleep behind the wheel of his car.
So asleep he had the foresight to put his seat all the way back.
At 1.30 in the morning, this kind of thing can draw attention in a suburban neighbourhood.
It did.
And neighbours turned the car off and called the police.
His blood alcohol level was 190 something per 100 milliliters of blood.
Or in the everyday vernacular, really intoxicated.
The judge called him an alcoholic.
He disagreed.
She asked him how often he drank.
Around five night a week, he replied.
You're an alcoholic she repeated.
She gave him a $2000.00 fine, 15 months suspended licence, 18 months probation and demanded he seek counselling for alcoholism.
The suspended licence upset him the most.
At least from what I could tell.
And then it was us.
Or me to be more precise.
I admit, I was nervous.
I've never testified in a court of law before.
No idea how things worked apart from what I watched on television and thankfully I have the intellectual acuity to know that I wasn't going to be reduced to tears, or confess to a crime.
At least not over a $172.50 ticket for failing to yield to oncoming traffic.
Which was at the heart of this entire debacle.
More entertaining, was the defendant.
Who chose to represent himself.
And not very well.
After being called to the stand twice, point out to the defendant that there was an error in his drawing of the intersection and listening to the prosecution tell him how he was supposed to be doing things, the judge gave her ruling.
Finding him not guilty.
I think she found him convincing, to be sure.
But I also think she thought that anyone with the cojones to defend themselves so vociferously, while ignorant of the process of defending oneself, who clearly took "everyone deserves their day in court" very seriously, and in doing so had provided an afternoon of entertainment, deserved to be found not guilty.
And save the cost of the fine, $172.50.
I felt badly for the other witness.
A stock person at Costco, who at the end of the entertainment asked if he would be compensated by the court for his days worth of lost wages.
Making me realize that civic duty or not, it costs to go to court.
Some more than others.
Title Lyric: Court Date by Young Buck
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