02 December 2004

Day Five

Wednesday

In the morning I go to the general district court first (it starts a half hour before circuit court). When I get there I find no client and there's a capias for him alleging that he did not comply with pretrial reporting and drug testing obligations. Because there is already a capias the judge does not issue another and the case is continued to the officer's next date.

Then I go upstairs. I'm not in any huge rush because I know the prosecutor is going to ask for continuances in both cases. Docket call had been Monday a week before and the subpoenaes for this court date had hit people's doors on Monday or Tuesday of this week. Pity the poor prosecutor who has spent the last two days fielding phone calls like this: "I'm going to Idaho tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I planned this trip 2 months ago and paid $400 for the tickets. My 97 year old grandmother is going to be there and it's probably her last Thanksgiving because she has cancer. I don't care what this subpoena says, I will not be in court tomorrow." He's continuing case after case and the judge looks none too happy about it.

My first continuance is a joint motion. I point out that client has just received a sentence from him the week before and that she has picked up some time in another jurisdiction so she is going to be held for a while and the court can set this for a late date if he wants. "The court does not want to." Then the judge gets the case set for two weeks later.

The second continuance is a prosecution motion and I object to that one. My client is ready to plead not guilty and go to trial. Nevertheless, when the prosecution points to its lack of a subpoenaed witness the judge grants the continuance. It doesn't really matter much to the client who is serving time on another charge but it irks me because I think Client, who is not an angel by any stretch of the imagination, is actually innocent of this charge; I want to go to trial.

And thus ends court the day before Thanksgiving.

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