13 June 2004

A Friendly Judge

Once in a while I wish I could find more judges who were sympathetic to the plight of my clients. However, I'm not sure I'd want one to help my clients escape.

You know, the judge could have avoided all this if she had just found the Detective in contempt. That way the Defendant would have been arrested and the judge would have punished what she viewed as inappropriate behavior.

Link via The Legal Reader.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am not 100% sure she could have held him contempt. 1) He had not done anything YET and contempt usually requires more than mere intent to do something; 2) since he was not a party to the proceedings it probably would have had to be demonstrated that his conduct somehow interfered with them; and 3) in order to hold him in contempt she would have had to explicitly have ordered him not to arrest the defendant she might not have been able to do.

Although I think that these therapeutic approaches to justice are a bad idea, it doesn't seem like that good an idea to use them as a means to lure people to a courthouse to make an easy arrest. If the cops want to arrest someone they can just as easily get a warrant.

When all is said and done, this will blow over. The detective was cutting too many corners, and probably trying to upset the whole point of such a hearing.