Things That Make You Go Hmmmm . . .

The rumor which passes around the jails every single year that the General Assembly has shortened the time amount of time those convicted of a felony must serve from 85% to 66%. Every single year I have clients who believe the scuttlebutt at the jail which tells them this is going to happen and tell me to my face that I'm wrong when I say it ain't gonna.

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Why can't the regional jail that a lot of my clients are at stop giving my clients a number which I haven't used for about 4 years? The clients are assigned to me via a televised pre-trial hearing and the jail gives them this old number. I've tried fixing it a few times but nothing has stuck. The worst of it is that the phone company has reassigned this number to some poor family which I just know is getting attempted collect calls all the time.

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How did my client's mother in the Virgin Islands get my cell phone number? I didn't give it to Client.

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Why have all my white clients decided that getting tattoos all over their bodies is the thing to do? Here's a hint – if you think you are going to ever go to court at least don't get a 311 tattoo on your neck or the ever popular, ever varied message tattoos in front of your knuckles. A shirt, or even the jail coveralls, can cover most tattoos but those are going to show and the judge and/or jury will assume they mean bad things. For that matter, don't put number code tattoos anywhere. People can figure out what those things mean pretty easily.

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In the last couple months I've had two, count'em TWO, cases with issues preserved for appeal which were slam-dunk winners. Slam-Dunks!!. I mean, the law was so clear that even the Virginia Court of Appeals was going to have a heck of a time finding a reason not to overturn. Both clients decided not to appeal.

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On the other hand, after going almost a year without any of my clients wanting to appeal anything, suddenly within a week I have three. I was substituted in for one, so I don't know how strong that case is. Another has a strong argument (unless the Court of Appeals is going to tell me that collateral estoppel doesn't exist anymore). The third will have some sort of argument, I'm just not sure what it will be yet. I take some small pride in the fact that I've never had to file an Anders brief so I'm going to have to look at that transcript pretty hard and find that glaring error which I don't remember at this moment.