By Brian M. Roberts

This is the response my legal assistant got a couple of weeks ago from a man who called my office seeking legal advice on a criminal matter when she told him I charge a consultation fee. “I don’t pay for legal advice.” Um, what? You don’t pay for legal advice? You called me pal, I didn’t call you.

Advice is a lawyer’s stock in trade, it’s our inventory and product, and the quality and value of that product comes from years of training and experience, but this caller expected to get it for free. Do you think he works for free? I seriously doubt it. So, why was he so entitled (cheap) to believe I should give him something of value for nothing? He was seeking advice that could make the difference between being charged with a crime or not, yet he felt it was something that he should not have to pay for. I bet he would open his checkbook for a good criminal lawyer if he got charged with a felony and landed in the can.

As I was writing this, a lady called my office and told my legal assistant her son was charged with illegally carrying a gun but she does not have the money to hire a lawyer. “So, why are you calling lawyers if you can’t afford to hire one? The Court will appoint a lawyer to represent your son.” She said, “I need free legal advice.” When my assistant told her I charge a consultation fee, want to guess what she said? You got it, “I’m not going to pay him for legal advice when I can call another lawyer and get it for free. You know how many letters I’ve gotten from lawyers?” I’m sure you received quite a few. Good luck with that. I’m sure the advice she gets will be stellar. People like this make bad clients because there is an excellent chance if she does hire one of the letter-lawyers that she will stiff him or her on the fee. I’m not interested in that kind of client. Please, call someone else.

When I call a plumber or an AC repairman or an electrician, I know I’m going to get charged a fee just for them to come to my house, which may or may not get knocked off the bill if they do the work but you can bet they will charge me for parts and labor. I certainly don’t expect to call them and get free advice on how to fix my toilet or AC or how to install a ceiling fan. “Hey buddy, my AC is making a funny noise and blowing hot air, can you tell me how to fix it over the phone because I don’t want to have to pay you to do it.” Anyone expect to call a doctor and get a free diagnosis and treatment plan over the phone? “Hey doc, I got this lump, but I don’t want to have to pay you to find out if it will kill me in six months because I don’t pay for medical advice.” Said no one ever.

Maybe it’s the COVID lockdown hangover. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel people–not all, but more than pre-pandemic–are surlier, ruder, angrier, more impatient, less caring of their fellow man, and carrying a heaping amount of entitlement. I have represented people pro bono or at a substantially reduced fee when I felt compelled by the person and his or her circumstances. But, I am not a charity. Representing people charged with crimes in exchange for a fee is how I make a living, how the doors to my office stay open and how I feed my children who are accustomed to regular meals and a roof over their heads.

The one thing I have found to be true in law and in life is that most people do not value what they get for free. It cost them nothing, they have no skin in the game, therefore it does not have the same value as something they had to pay for. I don’t know any experienced lawyer who gives free advice to people who call in asking for it. Experienced lawyers know their time and advice have value and they do not give it for free to someone they know will never hire them. What’s the point? You want free information? Get on Google, look it up. It may not be accurate but who cares, it was free. New lawyers, inexperienced lawyers, bad lawyers will give free advice (how good do you think their advice is?) because they can’t recognize tire kickers and hope that giving free legal advice over the phone will bring in paying clients. It won’t. Something else I have found to be true in law and life is very often free legal advice will cost a person more in the end than if he or she had sought for and paid a good experienced lawyer who knows their subject and has a lot of experience. You get what you pay for.

Good advice and good representation are not free. Good legal advice costs because it has value. If you are charged with a crime and your freedom and maybe your life are at stake, it is not the time to look for a bargain-basement lawyer or free advice. You might as well grab your toothbrush and check into the county jail. But, it’s not my life.

It has been a while since I have written a blog, not for lack of want but by the time I have finished a day or a week of representing folks accused of crimes, I don’t have much left in me for writing. However, after six months of dealing with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office during a pandemic has encouraged me to find the time to write this little missive.

I considered writing this piece earlier in the week but I figured the two bourbons I had after a long day might inspire a narrative I would regret in the morning. After another day of more of the same from the DA’s office, I am confident the bourbon had nothing to do with my mood. In writing this article I found myself becoming so angry and frustrated that I had to leave it alone, more than once, to let it marinade overnight.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has a leadership problem that has created a systemic breakdown. I thought Pat Lykos was bad but Kim Ogg has destroyed the Office and few if any will disagree with me, including her employees. Prosecutors are defecting because they are being mistreated, poorly managed, unappreciated, and, if perceived to be disloyal to the Supreme Leader, investigated, harassed and punished by termination, reassignment or a nastygram in their personnel files. Boss Ogg, as my friend Murray Newman likes to call her, is a political animal and makes prosecutorial decisions based on politics rather than the law. Ogg’s administration is an abomination, the worst thing that has happened to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and the rule of law in recent memory and she should not only be removed from office but prevented from ever entering any Texas courtroom. The fish rots from the head and the disease of her leadership has infected the rank and file prosecutors under her command. However, that does not excuse the conduct of some prosecutors in how they handle their assigned cases. To be clear, there are still a number of good prosecutors in the office who I respect, not because they give me what I want in a case, they often do not, but because they are professional, conscientious, hard working, and intent on doing the right thing. Unfortunately, there are a number of other prosecutors who aren’t worth their weight in cow manure.

As with other social media, the rarity of interpersonal contact and the rise of Zoom as the primary medium of interaction between the state and the defense bar during the pandemic, has turned some prosecutors into keyboard cowboys – you know, people who make nasty comments and forget courtesy and civility because they are talking to you by video or email. People tend to mind their manners more when they have to deal with one another face-to-face. Unfortunately, the decline of civility is not the biggest problem at the Harris County DA’s Office.

What has become endemic is the total lack of professionalism and professional responsibility prosecutors have to the cases they handle. I cannot tell you how many emails I have sent to prosecutors to discuss a case where the prosecutor does not respond. Ever. The lack of response to emails and phone calls and the lack of work done on pending cases, which has inevitably unnecessarily prolonged the disposition of cases, especially those that are bad for the state and should be dismissed, is inexcusable. I was a prosecutor at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office under Chuck Rosenthal for five years. Whatever your opinion of Chuck, I never had to worry about being second-guessed about my decisions because I did the work that was expected. If a case was bad or could not be proved I dumped it without a second thought. Some cases need to be prosecuted and some need to go away. I was promoted to the Special Crimes Bureau after three years as a number 2 prosecutor when that meant something. I worked hard to get there. I did my job and if I promised a defense attorney I was going to do something, I did it. I never dodged emails or phone calls and if I dropped the ball I owned up to it and fixed it. I would have been ashamed as a lawyer and a professional to not return multiple emails from a defense lawyer or, worse, not live up to my word. When I was a misdemeanor prosecutor, I worked my ass off to get my work done on my cases. I remember getting a call at 11:30 on a Friday night from former judge Brad Hart, who was my division chief at the time, asking me why I wasn’t at the office Christmas party. I told him I had ten cases set for trial on Monday morning and over ninety cases set for trial because I was what was known as a Number 5 prosecutor handling all number 3 and number 2 prosecutor cases. I know, no prosecutor today wants to hear war stories about “Back in the days when I was a prosecutor … ” but maybe they should because too many of the current crop don’t get anything done. I’ll give you some examples:

I had an aggravated assault case where my investigator uncovered evidence through witness interviews that killed the state’s case. Thinking the prosecutor would do the right thing, I shared my investigator’s information. Nothing. I emailed the prosecutor handling the case at least five times and she responded to none of my emails. I had to contact the chief who would then contact her prosecutor and copy me on the emails. To say the prosecutor dragged her feet would be polite. Ultimately, the chief dismissed the case but my client sat in jail longer than necessary because the prosecutor couldn’t get her shit together. And she never replied to my emails.

I have a client charged with assaulting his now ex-wife. The prosecutor handling the protective order dismissed it because I sent her audio and video evidence that the complainant was lying. So the prosecutor handling the assault case dismissed it right? Nope, I continue to get the standard “we’re still evaluating the case” all-purpose bullshit response. What is there to evaluate when you have recordings of the complainant that contradict her statement to police and the DA, recordings that show she lied? Meanwhile, my innocent client is on bond with the specter of a criminal charge hanging over his head, unable to move forward freely with his life. But the prosecutor shows no concern for that. Want to guess if she replied to the email I sent her yesterday?

I have a client charged with a DWI. She has a brain tumor, which is known to affect field sobriety tests, including horizontal gaze nystagmus, balance and gait. The arresting officer left the agency and went to work for another agency in another county. The prosecutor talked to the officer who said he administered the tests incorrectly and thought the case would get dismissed, and, he would rather not testify but will appear if subpoenaed. That was almost two months ago. The chief prosecutor told the Court the state will not take the case to trial but needs to evaluate the case further. That was two weeks ago. This week, the officer testified at the ALR hearing (for those who do not know, the ALR hearing is a separate administrative hearing before an administrative judge, brought by DPS lawyers, to determine whether the defendant’s license should be suspended, and in most cases the license is suspended). The ALR judge found no probable cause for the arrest, which, after an officer testifies at an ALR, is rarer than seeing a rainbow-striped unicorn. I sent the ALR court’s decision to the chief prosecutor. Plenty of evidence to dismiss, right? Nope. The chief told the Court that the last prosecutor handling the case did not evaluate it and they need more time to evaluate the case. Are you kidding me? There is no dead body here. There is no case. What are you holding onto? The case is a turd. Flush it.

Last, but not least, and unfortunately one of many more, I have a client charged with injury to a child – allegedly biting and striking the child’s arm. The child called 911 because he was worried for his mother, not because he was scared of her. When police arrived, she was non-responsive. She was transported to the hospital by ambulance where she remained for seven days and was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. No drugs or alcohol in her system. Her brain short-circuited because of a previously undiagnosed medical condition. The state cannot prove the mental elements of the charge – intentionally, knowingly, or even recklessly because of the medical condition. It’s like charging a person with a crime because he had a heart attack while he was driving a car and crashed into somebody. The state has my client’s medical records. Numerous emails, many with no response. Want to guess the response I get when I do get a response? “We’re still evaluating the case.” My client has made her child available to the prosecutor to meet and interview. I offered my conference room. No response to my emails. Another client with the specter of a criminal charge hanging over her head for no good, justifiable reason.

I understand due diligence. I expect prosecutors to perform their due diligence in every case, but when you prolong a case unnecessarily and use the excuse of performing due diligence because you failed to do your job, I have no use for you. If you have a bad case, do the right thing. How hard is that? Not hard when you know what you are doing and care about doing the right thing. If a prosecutor can’t tell the difference between a pile of cow shit (bad case) and a pile of gold (good case), he or she is in the wrong job. Defense lawyers cannot use the threat of trial to motivate prosecutors to act more quickly because there are no trials right now, not yet. As we work our way out of this pandemic, the number of cases that can be tried will be limited. Custody cases, meaning cases where the defendant is sitting in jail, will take precedence over cases where defendants are out on bond. So, prosecutors figure we can’t push them to trial and very likely they will be transferred to another court and the case will become another prosecutor’s problem before it ever gets to trial. And we will start all over again from square one with nothing getting done. Defendants will have to keep their lives on hold while prosecutors drag their feet. There is no impetus to resolve cases.

Here is the bottom line; one day, we will be back to normal. We will all be back in court, face-to-face. You, DA’s, will have to deal with us in person. And the defense bar, as reasonable as most of us are, will become very unreasonable when the DA’s office and certain prosecutors find themselves overwhelmed with cases. We will remember who blew us off and didn’t respond to our calls and emails. We will remember who screwed with us and our clients, and we will become as disagreeable to work with as you are now. We will start pushing you to trial, and we will put your feet to the fire when you need a continuance, and we will make your lives as miserable as you have made ours and our clients’ lives. We will object to you asking for more time to get done what you should have gotten done long before. We will kick the shit out of you at trial because we are better at it than you are and we will force you to keep trying cases when you have too many set for trial and need a break. Sound fair? When you treat a reasonable person unreasonably, you sew the seeds of contempt. Karma’s a bitch and she keeps score.

I’m pretty user-friendly. I am friendly with and respectful to prosecutors, judges and court staff. Respect and courtesy begets the same in return. The criminal bar is unique because we work with each other daily so it is important to maintain good working relationships with everyone, especially prosecutors, because good working relationships inure to the benefit of the client. There are prosecutors I trust and if they tell me they are going to do something I know I can take their word to the bank. If a prosecutor calls me and tells me they didn’t get a case evaluated in time and promise to have it done in the next few weeks, fine. Things happen and all of us drop the ball at one time or another. But, when a prosecutor doesn’t do what he or she is supposed to do for several months and continues to ignore calls and emails, and hides behind “we’re still evaluating the case,” then I am not so forgiving. I have NEVER been this frustrated or furious with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and with certain prosecutors because I have never experienced anything like the lack of professionalism and professional responsibility that I have experienced over the last six months. Prosecutors, if you think this is just one really angry defense lawyer and you can ignore what I am telling you, think again. There are more of us than there are of you by at least 3 to 1 and a whole bunch of us are very unhappy with you. Do you really want to get the wrath that is coming your way?

If that doesn’t do it for you, keep in mind that you are government employees subject to public scrutiny and your work records are not private (except for your personal information, of course), so you better hope to the good Lord that one or more of us defense lawyers doesn’t get so irritated with your lack of response and your lack of candor that we file a public information access request for your work records and time sheets to help us figure out why it is taking you so long to do your job. Take a few minutes. Think it over. Let it sink in. I’ll wait, for now.

By Brian Roberts

This morning, like every morning, as I was getting ready for work, I grabbed my cell phone off the charger to check messages, emails, social media updates and news stories. The first thing I saw was a CNN banner announcing that fifty people were murdered in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. I adjusted my glasses and lifted my phone closer to my face to make sure I saw it correctly. Though I knew better intellectually, my first thought was this had to be some kind of bad joke. The unfortunate present state of our world made me think that this had to be a terrorist attack after I realized this was not a bad joke after all. As the story evolved I went from shocked to infuriated because Las Vegas is my hometown.

I was born and raised in Las Vegas. I came into the world at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital (after 42 hours of labor as my mother often likes to remind me), which is now known as University Medical Center and is where the most seriously wounded in last night’s attack are being treated. I graduated from Las Vegas High School and earned my undergraduate degree at UNLV. My uncle attended UNLV when it was Southern Nevada University. My mother worked as a waitress in the Las Vegas Hilton Steakhouse for thirty-eight years, lugged heavy trays and served countless movie stars, athletes and regular folk living it up in Las Vegas. I remember the night she called me when she was serving Muhammad Ali and told me to come by the hotel to meet him. I will never forget that moment, shaking his hand and his kindness to a starstruck fan who grew up with a love for boxing in the boxing capital of the world. I grew up in probably the most unique city in the world and while I look back on my childhood with fondness and a deep sense of longing for days long since passed, I didn’t always appreciate Las Vegas.

Sometime in my late teens I got the hair brained idea that I wanted to leave Las Vegas for a more “metropolitan” city with “regular seasons” and “culture.” Whatever the hell that means. I look back now and think man, I was a dumbshit. I moved to Dallas when I was twenty-six, leaving behind year-round great weather, crystal blue, cloudless skies, low-cost of living and the most diverse entertainment options anywhere for tornadoes, ice in the winter, rain and, worst of all, withering humidity. I never watched the weather channel until I moved to the South because I never had to check what the weather was going to be like in Las Vegas so I could plan my day. But, living in the South, it’s a whole different ball game.  Check the weather. Go out, don’t go out, grab an umbrella. Tornado? Torrential rains? Sunny weather? All possibilities in the same day. And the weather was not the only thing. The first time I went grocery shopping I circled the store twice looking for the alcohol aisle before asking the girl at the register who gave me an odd look and said it was a dry county and I would have to go across the county border to get booze. Are you kidding me? What kind of uncivilized backwater is this? Can we get out of our lease? Needless to say, my desire to live in a “metropolitan” city with “regular seasons” and “culture” quickly evaporated and I moved back to Las Vegas nearly three years after moving to Dallas.

Two years later I moved to Houston to attend law school. I attribute my decision to temporary brain damage but that’s a discussion for another day. Las Vegas opened a law school the same year I decided to go to law school, the William S. Boyd School of Law, but it was not ABA accredited and for that reason I would not be able to practice outside the state of Nevada so I opted to go to an ABA accredited law school in Houston to have more options to practice law. As it turns out, the William S. Boyd School of Law obtained ABA accreditation in time for its first graduating class. Three years after I graduated from South Texas College of Law, not sure what name it goes by these days, and taking a job as an assistant district attorney for Harris County, I sat for the Nevada Bar and passed. For reasons I will not get into here my dream of moving back to Las Vegas to practice law died a slow, merciless death and I remain here in Houston (which, by the way, has the  worst weather and traffic on the planet and is a natural disaster magnet – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, you pick it) because my new wife and children live here. Were it not for them, I would be in Las Vegas now. No question in my mind.

I feel more than just a hometown connection to Las Vegas. It is part of my heart and my soul. It is in my DNA. It is as much a part of me as a family member and has been a constant leading character in the story of my life. When I moved away I watched CSI not because it was a great show but because it would give me a small glimpse of Vegas every week. One of my favorite movies is Ocean’s 11, again, not because it was worthy of an Academy Award, but because it is a two-hour Vegas getaway. Homesick? You bet. Pathetic? Probably. But this is why what happened last night hurts me and angers me so much.

It is hard to fathom the sociopathic mentality of a person who can senselessly murder 58 people and injure more than five hundred. I am glad he is dead. I am only sorry that he pulled the trigger himself. I hope he felt every centimeter that bullet travelled. I hope he burns in hell for the rest of eternity and I hope he saw that fate as the bullet spun on its path to turning out his lights. He does not deserve to have his name repeated nor his life to be remembered in any way. Whatever good he did in his life, if he ever did anything good, was wiped out when he decided to take out as many people as he could before punching his own ticket. He is a diaper stain on the world and mankind is better without him as a living member. I don’t care what his reasons were for his rampage. I don’t care if his mommy never hugged him and that it made him feel bad. I don’t care if he was mentally ill. I don’t care who he was mad at or why.  He was the typical coward. I have never been able to understand these pathetic wastes of flesh that feel the need to take others with them on their missions to kill themselves. You’re pissed off at the world and want to kill yourself? Go ahead. Put a bullet in your head but leave innocent people who’ve done nothing to you out of your sick plan.

I am tired of seeing so many senseless mass shootings. CNN published a list of deadly shootings in the United States from 1949 to the present, from Columbine to Sandy Hook to Virginia Tech, with last night’s Las Vegas attack topping the list as the deadliest in U.S. history. Any normal, rational human being would have thought that the cold-blooded murder of 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school would have been more than enough to push every politician with even the most feeble conscience to say enough is enough and work to enact effective gun control measures. This is not a political issue but a human issue. I do not advocate eliminating all guns because it is not realistic nor do I advocate denying citizens the right to possess firearms if they are legally eligible. Those who pound the table and scream the NRA slogan, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry  it from my cold, dead hands“, have twisted the Second Amendment to read as an absolute right to possess any gun and as many guns as they want as if it came from God himself as the 11th Commandment and have done much to stifle a national conversation on gun control. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (emphasis added)

Miriam Webster’s dictionary defines “militia” as:

The Second Amendment was drafted at a time when America was a young country with a scattered population and had to rely upon the citizen soldier at a time when it could not muster a military of sufficient size to present a national defense. Can someone please tell me where the hell it says that Americans have the inalienable right to own assault rifles? Or as many guns as they can carry? Or high-capacity magazines? Constitutional rights are not absolute, Con Law 101. For example, you do not have an unfettered right to say whatever the hell you want under the First Amendment. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater or threaten the president. Try it some time and see what happens if you don’t believe me. Likewise, firearms rights are not and should not be unfettered. If you are a convicted felon you lose your Second Amendment right to possess a firearm. If you are charged with a crime of family violence and the court imposes a protective order, you are not allowed to possess a firearm. These should not be the only restrictions. Nobody needs an AK-47 or an AR-15 to protect their home and certainly not for hunting deer or any other animal except the human animal. They are called assault rifles for a reason, because that is their intended design. Somehow the NRA and the Second Amendment folks have hijacked the meaning and purpose of arming the citizenry. Last I checked, the only active militias in the United States are made up of dim witted wing nuts the government recognizes as potential criminal threats and the officially recognized citizen soldiers are national guardsman. Can someone cite for me a time in the last century when an armed militia – outside the National Guard – was mustered for the security of the United States or any one state for that matter?

It has been reported that police found twenty rifles in the shooter’s Las Vegas hotel room, including AR-15 style assault rifles, at least some of which were fully automatic, along with a cache of ammunition. The sound of rapid fire can be heard on videos taken at the time of the shooting. Anyone who thinks now is not the time to discuss gun control is numb from the neck up. If you’re cool with 20 school children being murdered in their school or 59 innocent people being murdered at a concert as long as nobody infringes on your Second Amendment right, then you are as mentally defective and as devoid of conscience as the people who committed these atrocities. Our national mores are completely out of whack. When Janet Jackson’s boob popped out of her top during the Super Bowl, the FCC – a government agency – launched an investigation before the second half even started. But, you can rest assured the government will not do anything to address gun violence after 59 people were slaughtered. If 20 dead kids doesn’t get the government to act, nothing well. The best the families of the innocents lost to gun violence can expect from the government is lip service, condolences for their loss and inaction to prevent the next mass shooting. Our country deserves better than this. The people we lost deserve better than this.

 

By Brian M. Roberts

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and baby unicorns are jumping over rainbows. Today, I got the best news I have heard in a long time; former 179th District Court Judge Kristin Guiney was appointed to the 232nd District Court bench, which has been vacant since Judge Mary Lou Keel was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in November 2016. For the last nine and a half months, the 232nd was presided over by a number of rotating retired judges. Why? Politics, but that is another story for another day.

For those of you who do not know her, Judge Guiney defeated Judge Randy Roll, who served only one-term from 2008 – 2012, for the 179th District Court bench. Judge Guiney brought fairness, civility, respect and justice tempered with mercy to the 179th. Judge Guiney cared about crime victims and was unquestionably tough on serious crimes and dangerous offenders but she also recognized defendants who needed help, not prison and was very innovative in her approach to justice. She was more concerned about what was right than she was about her docket numbers, a meaningless statistic too many judges fixate upon. That justice be done in her courtroom, whatever that meant for each case. Her loss to Judge Roll in the November 2016 election was a tremendous loss to the people of Harris County.

As a defense lawyer, you expect, but mostly hope, that your client will get a fair shake from the judge, especially in trial, but you don’t always get that. Any lawyer who practiced before Judge Guiney knew that whatever the outcome, she was going to hear and consider every argument and make the call demanded by the facts and evidence. In the interest of full disclosure, Judge Guiney is a friend. We worked together in the Harris County DA’s Office and were colleagues in the defense bar. She is a Republican and I am a Democrat. Not that party affiliation has any relevance in the criminal justice system but it is an unfortunate condition of Texas politics. Despite our friendship, she is not going to do me or any of her other friends in the defense bar any favors, she will do what she thinks is right and what the law demands in each case. That’s a good thing. It’s the right thing.

I remember watching an indigent defendant plead guilty before her a couple of years ago. The prosecutor added a fine as part of the plea deal. Judge Guiney questioned the fine because the defendant didn’t have any money and was represented by a court-appointed lawyer and I will never forget what she said because it says a lot about her as a judge and as a person. She eliminated the fine and said, “The criminal justice system will not be funded on the backs of the poor.” It’s easy to become cynical in this line of work but that was a powerful statement, unplanned and unrehearsed and it has stayed with me.

Judge Guiney will take the bench on Monday, September 18, 2017. I look forward to her picking up where she left off nine and a half months ago. It’s good to have her back.

By Brian M. Roberts

Today was the first day of business for the Harris County Criminal courts after Hurricane Harvey and, oh boy was it something! I have heard some people describe what is to be our journey for the next six to eight months as the CJC is repaired (translated: year to eighteen months) as the “new normal” but I wouldn’t use the word “normal” to describe the atmosphere in the civil courthouse today. Shock and horror, yes. Normal, no. The civil folks are having to share their Taj Mahal (it’s actually a county building but not if you ask them) with the unwashed masses. You know, criminal defense lawyers and their clients. The looks on the faces of the civil lawyers and court staff as we took over their little fiefdom was priceless. Like they were in danger of being molested or worse, talked to by one of “those people.”

Only two elevators for the upper floors were working, which is par for the course at the CJC everyday, but the civil folks were beside themselves at the sea of humanity trying to catch a ride to court. They stomped around and grumbled, “This is bullshit.” People were lining up like cash was being given away on the upper floors. Except for the one lady who was screaming to get off the elevator an nobody moved because nobody wanted to lose their spot.

When I finally got to court via the freight elevator, I searched the empty hallways for my client. You see, the civil courthouse is considerably bigger than the CJC even though on any given day you could fire a cannon in the hallway of the civil courthouse and not hit a lawyer. Makes perfect sense to design a small building for use and occupation by the most people (CJC) and a big one where there isn’t a fraction of the traffic and use (civil courthouse). I think this genius design came from the same brain trust that thought it would be a great idea to put flood doors underground and build the jury assembly room underground with an atrium to street level. So flood waters could come in through the open ceiling. Kind of like designing a submarine with a convertible top, but I digress. Anyway, when I got to the courtroom, folks with criminal cases were seated on one side and the folks who had civil business were sitting on the other  and generally bewildered by the frenzied activity we brought into their world.

But, we showed the civil folks we’re just as good as they are. Yes sir, we sure did! Like when one criminal district court judge threatened to have another criminal district court judge arrested for refusing to get off the bench when it was his court’s turn to use the courtroom. That was really cool. I don’t know what the civil folks are so worked up about.

And this was just day one. Three hundred sixty four to go. Or so. Give or take.

I received an email from a friend last week.