I’m Taking the Day Off…

In my current position, I rarely, if ever get a day off.  OK, that is not completely true I frequently have days where I don’t have to come in to the office, however equally frequently I get calls about all sorts of stuff while I am on my personal time.  These calls typically come from officers and are anything from “What do you think we can charge,” to “any idea where we can store an oversized dead body.” OK that second one was totally made up.  Anyway I am always on call.  

I have to admit from time to time I get frustrated by this.  It sucks that the calls seems to always come when my Cougars are driving in the fourth quarter, or right as my kids comes up to the plate in Babe Ruth league.  It can however, be nice when the call comes in the middle of church and the speaker is dragging a bit.  More than once I have left my wife to juggle all the kids by herself as I slip out of the pew with a “sorry hon, its work.”  Anyway, a I mentioned I am always on call. 

Now you may be surprised that the point of the blog is not to make you feel sorry for me, in fact, it is quite to the contrary.  I have it made in the shade.  I get a call saying “what should we charge,” after the poor detective was called in at 2:00 a.m. and has been working for 45 of the last 48 hours.  I answer a five minute call, the officers give their lives to helping those in need. 

There have been many times that I have received a call on a Sunday afternoon and then met with the officer on Monday morning to talk about the case.  I spoke on the phone and then went back in to the church, the officer has not been at home or slept since we talked.  

From time to time I mention to my wife, I just can’t deal with these cases any more.  I lament that I have spent the entire day going over autopsy reports and looking at pics of dead bodies.  She is kind enough to remind me that at least I was not the one who had to be there taking the pictures, moving the bodies and notifying their loved ones… The officers were.  

So my point, it is pretty simple: I have it great! I am on call and I have to be interrupted in five minute increments on occasion.  The Detectives and Officers who keep us safe, they are interrupted in multiple day long increments.  They are always on call, always working, always doing what we don’t even want to talk about because it scares us… They do it for their communities, their families, their loved ones.  They do it for us, strangers who they may never meet.  We are safe because of them.  We sleep well because of them.  

So to the Detectives who brought me over an extremely sad case involving little kids yesterday and to those Detectives who were forced to listen to my whining about having to read about these atrocities, thank you.  Thank you for not reminding me that you did not just read about it but you lived it.  Thank you for being the ones who were there with the kids.  Thank you for being the ones who tired to dry their tears.  Thank you for being the ones trying to remain stoic as you were doing the best you could to provide their moms and their dads some relief.  Thank you for spending another weekend away from your own kids little league games, barbecues and sports on TV to make our community a better and a safer place.  Thank you for your sacrifice for us.

My most sincere thanks to all the men and women in blue.  If I can help you in some small way, please... call anytime.

I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed!

OK, back to the fun stuff my last post was a bit heavy.  This one is just plain fun, well unless you are the defendant.  Digging in to the deep recesses of my mind, I have come up with another one that I thought was fun and worth sharing.  Now I need to be honest, I am not doing any research and the facts may have become a bit foggy, or even slightly blurred over the decade plus since I have prosecuted this case but this is the honest truth as I remember it.  

I was prosecuting cases in juvenile crimes back in 2004 – 2005.  I had a great case where a juvenile stole a car.  The fun part was this was not just any car, he stole a police car.  Now I am not an officer,

nor have I ever been one.  That being said, some of my all-time closest friends have been police officers and as they have explained it, this is about the worst thing that can happen to an officer.  

To use the best analogy I can in an effort to explain what it is like for an officer to have his car stolen, pretend you are playing on Super Bowl Sunday.  You pick up a fumble and charge for the end zone.  Somewhere in the carnage of the game you get turn around and run it in thinking you have scored the winning touchdown, however, in reality, you have given the other team two points for a safety… on national TV.  That is what it is like for an officer.  It is something that they will never live down. 

What makes this case so funny is not the poor officer who is now the Jim Marshall of his department, but the 15 year old kid who stole the car.  Right after stealing the car he got nervous about his new foray in to the thug life so did the only rationale thing to do in this situation, he called 911 to report the theft. 

OK, the following is close, but this is in no way a perfect word for word transcript of the 911 call I had in my file.

Dispatch: 911, what is your emergency.

Juvenile Delinquent (JD): Ahh I would like to report a stolen car.

911: Do you know where the car is?  

JD: I do, it is on University and Country Club right now.  

911: Right now?

JD: Ahh yeah I am driving it. 

911: You are driving a stolen car?

JD: Uh huh.  

911: You need to pull over and give me your exact address so the police can come meet you.  

JD: I think they know where I am, they are chasing me.  

911: Sir, you need to pull over. 

JD: Will they arrest me?

911: I can’t answer that, but you need to pull over.

JD: Do you know how to turn on the sirens? 

911: Sirens?

JD: Yeah the sirens?

911: I am not what sure what you mean sir, you need to p… wait are you in a police car? 

JD:  Does that matter? 

911: Yes, it certainly does! You need to pull over imediat… (Interrupted by JD)

JD: Never mind, I got em. (The sound of sirens start.)

911: SIR, PULL OVER NOW!

JD: So, can you get them to agree not to arrest me if I pullover. 

911: No, you need to stop the car now!

JD: Nah, if they are going to arrest me, I am going to have some fun.  They are not going to catch me.  

Call ends.

Approximately 30 seconds later. 

911: 911 what is your emergency? 

JD: Ahh I need to report a wrecked car. 

OK, I am not doing it justice, but the kid kept driving and quickly wrecked the police cruiser.  He was then, of course, taken in to custody by the police.  

This juvenile was so nice to give me a play by play commentary of most of the pursuit, it made it oh so easy to prosecute him.  This case just goes to show it is always a good idea to give it a ten count before you make any decision.  If you see a police cruiser running with the keys in it.  Just take a second and decide whether or not it is really worth it.  It’s not!

Even Ted Bundy Had Friends

In my previous posts, as I have taken on this blog adventure, I have talked about some of the cases I have seen that have been humorous to me.  As I mentioned in my first post, I am doing this in part to vent, in part as a survival mechanism and because it is required for my class (smiley face emoji that I do not know how to add).  The reality of it is much of my job is not only difficult to deal with but can take its toll.  I literally witnessed a three year old little girl that had been murdered by her step farther and buried in the back yard removed from the ground more than two years after her death.  While I am not comparing my position as witness to the poor officers who had to dig her up, this type of work can take its toll.  I can only pray that one day I will forget her autopsy that I had to witness.  

Anyway, my point is this, not every aspect of my job is light hearted and sometimes it can be hard.  No one wants to hear about the hard times, so I am going to blog about them so it does not bottle up.  Hence you are not getting a funny and light hearted post today.   

One of the challenges that I face is that in every prosecution is that while much of the community

sees me as the hero of the story, the one fighting for truth justice and to keep the streets safe; the rest of the community sees me as the evil corrupt overzealous prosecutor with a personal agenda.  In other words, the people love me until I start prosecuting one of their family members or friends.  Little known fact, after joining a church group in Salt Lake City, many of Ted Bundy’s friends from

church protested his arrest.  They made appearances and wrote letters in his support because he was their friend and Ted just would not do such a thing.  Even murders have friends who want to believe they are innocent.     

To illustrate this, I share an experience I had when I was a prosecutor at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Mesa, Arizona.  I was assigned a child abuse case where the mother of the three year old victim filled a bathtub with scalding hot water and then held her little boys feet where they cooked in the water.  Once his feet were done, she did the same to his penis.  This was a punishment for wetting his pants.  The boy learned his lesson as he had third degree burns covering his feet and up past the ankles as well as second degree burns on his penis.  The injuries were so severe that doctors has to filet the feet open so the infection and swelling would not tear his feet apart.  He will never recover from the disfigurement associated with the injuries to the more sensitive part of his body.  The level of depravity associated with this crime goes beyond my comprehension.  

While I was not the original prosecutor on the case, I was assigned the case a few years after the crime to defend a request by the defendant to be excused from probation.  

Now the reason that I am sharing this is because of a conversation I had with my sister regarding that case.  Shortly before Christmas my sister and I went to go do a little Christmas shopping.  While in the car, and making casual conversation my sister brought up this case, well at least the version of the case that she heard.  Purely by chance, the monster that inflicted this abuse upon her son attended the same church as my sister.  

Not knowing that I was involved with the case, my sister started telling me of the atrocity’s being perpetrated by the County Attorney’s Office on this lady that she knew and asking if there was anything I could do to stop it.  As she explained to me “There is a lady in my ward that is being prosecuted by your office and they won’t let her see her kids or be with her family just because her little boy turned on the hot water in the bathtub when she was not looking and got a little burned.  What are you guys doing over there?”  

I explained that her story did not sound right and that we would not be prosecuting a case with those facts.  I did not even recognize the case that she was describing was my case until she told me the defendant’s name.   Once she mentioned the name and I made the connection I about flipped my lid, I was so angry.  That this woman would have the audacity to do what she did and then attempt to paint a picture for her friends as if she were the victim was beyond my comprehension at that time. 

I quickly explained the real facts of the case and offered to show my sister the pictures of the little boys feet, which she declined.  She, of course agreed with me that prosecution was not only appropriate but that this woman should not see the light of day.  

My take away from this experience is that almost everyone charged with a crime claims to be innocent and tells people that they are being railroaded and that the system is rigged.  Their friends then believe them… regardless of the facts.  Again, look at Ted Bundy, he convinced hundreds.  

There have been innocent people accused of crimes, and my worst nightmare is that I would somehow ever convict one, but those are very few and far in between.  Just keep in mind that before you jump on the police and prosecutors are corrupt bandwagon when you see a Facebook story that the writer has an agenda. 

I learned that I had to grow a thick skin, heck even my own sister was ripping me and my office for prosecuting this case.  It is just too bad she did not have the real facts of the case initially.  

So, what’s my point to this whole blog, you know besides the school credit?   The simple answer is that there are two sides to every story, every author, including me in this post, has an agenda.  Just remember that when reading posts on Facebook or in the news to be objective and notice the biases of the authors, and before you repost that story on the corrupt cops, or the overzealous prosecutors make sure that the atrocities that you are now sharing with your family and friends are actually true.       

Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

Sometimes the funniest things that happen in the Courtroom are not necessarily the dumb criminals, but the reaction to the criminals.  One of the best days I ever had in Court was when I saw a Judge about fall out of his chair he was laughing so hard ant the idiocy of a defendant. 

Back in 2004, when I was a brand new prosecutor I was assigned an early disposition court.  The EDC is a court designed to move the less serious cases very quickly.  We give an offer and the defendant either accepts it or rejects it that day.  The typical cases that come though this court were drug related, felony DUI’s and burglaries.  On occasion we would get something a bit more serious, but it was not typical. 

One of these anomalies occurred when an armed robbery was sent to our EDC court.  The basic facts of the case are as follows:

The defendant, who worked at a Jack-In-The-Box in Mesa was off duty one Friday night, and he needed some money quick.  So, our genius defendant wandered in to the restaurant to ask his co-workers for a loan.  After asking everyone on shift if he could borrow some money and being turned down by all of them he did the only thing that makes sense.  He walked in to the bathroom of the restaurant, put on a ski mask and after coming out of the restaurant in full disguise, he robbed the place.  

Now let me try to paint the scene a little better.  He was wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, was the only person in the restaurant and had literally just asked everyone working for money.  He never left the restaurant, nor did anyone else come in.  He walked in to the bathroom where he didn’t even change his clothes, but simply put on a ski mask.  The defendant then pulled a knife and

claimed to have a gun.  Oh, and of course everything that occurred in front of the register was on video tape. 

The staff thought it was a joke.  In fact the initial response “very funny Robbie.” It should be noted that I am using pseudonym in this post.  Everyone clearly knew who he was. 

The only response from the robber was “Give me the f*&%ing money.  Oh and I’m not Robbie!”

After finally convincing the staff that he was serious, the defendant made off with just over $150. 

The robbery was reported to police along with the identification of the defendant and even his address, which has been pulled from his personnel file.  The police were waiting for him when he arrived home and arrested him for the armed robbery as well as the meth he had just purchased with the money he was so desperate to get. 

 While this could go down in history as perhaps the dumbest armed robbery ever, the best part was the sentencing Judge.  He started laughing at the stupidity of Robbie and just could not stop.  The Judge, who could not contain himself sentenced this individual as he recounted the sheer stupidity of his foray in to a life of crime.  The final stamen of the Judge was “In 20 years as a defense attorney and eight years on the bench, this was without a doubt the dumbest, most ill-conceived and ridiculous plan I have ever seen (great laughter).  Did you really think the mask would help?  What were you thinking (uncontrollable laughter).  Please, don’t ever commit another crime, you are just too stupid to be a criminal.” 

Let me explain, I thought the cop was a drug user.

As has been pointed out in past posts, sometimes you just gotta laugh where you can to avoid crying.  In an effort to maintain my own mental health I have taken to blogging about some of the less than brilliant criminals I have encountered in my career and some of the fun situations that arise from prosecuting criminals in a small town. 

One of the best arguments to live a drug free lifestyle was brought to me by our Department of Public Safety Drug Officers (We give them the pseudonyms of Brisco and Curtis).  These Brisco and Curtis, who are not undercover, but dress as if on the streets get in with the drug users and develop information on local drug dealers.  While most those who are in the drug community know them, not everyone does so they do, on occasion, successfully buy drugs from unsuspecting drug dealers and then bust the dealers.

Another responsibility of the Brisco and Curtis is to develop relationships with drug users and then use the drug users for law enforcement purposes.  The drug users do this for one of two reasons.  #1, they are being paid or #2, they are working off charges so they won’t be prosecuted for their own criminal conduct for which they have been arrested.  Before a drug user starts to work with an officer, they meet with them, enter in to a contract and then report to them daily. 

One of our local druggies, just for fun we will call him Walter White, who sales just so he can keep himself in product has been busted several times by Brisco and Curtis.  He has been arrested by them for simple possession and even sale of a narcotic drug.  He goes to prison, gets out and the cycle repeats.  He gets out and then Brisco and Curtis then see him selling and arrest him again. 

At one point, Walter White decided that he did not want to go back to prison, so he agreed to work with the officers as an informant.  He entered in to a contract and successfully gathered evidence which resulted in the arrest of several other drug dealers. 

Approximately 6 months after W.W. completed his contract, our drug officers went up to him and

asked if they could by any drugs from him.  Now this started as a joke as Brisco and Curtis have arrested him multiple times and W.W. had even worked with them.  Walter did not catch on of get the joke and immediately asked Brisco and Curtis “Do you have any money.” The officers realizing that this guy was so stoned that he did not remember them, promptly showed Walter the money, gave it to him and bought some meth from him.  Right after the money and the meth were exchanged Brisco and Curtis arrested the defendant for possession and sale of a dangerous drug. 

As Walter was arrested Curtis asked the newly arrested defendant “how did you not recognize us, we have known you for ten years?”

Whites only response was “Ah sh$# I knew I recognized you.”  The defendant was successfully prosecuted and remains in prison today.”

The moral of the story, don’t do drugs.  When you are so impaired that you cannot recognize someone that has arrested you multiple times and you have even worked with as an informant, you have gone way too far down the druggie rabbit hole.

Where Do I Know that Guy From?

Church or work? Church or work? Church or work!?!  "Where do I know that guy from?" 

I wish I had a nickel for every time I was forced to ask myself that on the fly as I am approached by someone who definitely knows me, but I am…well not too sure on.  

So as a small town prosecutor, it is not at all uncommon for me to run into people that I have dealt with at work.  Sometimes, defendants, sometime victims and sometimes neither of the above.  What makes matters worse is I have the name recognition of a gnat.  I have literally forgot a name and a face when the person is introducing themselves and has only gotten through the first two syllables of a three syllable name.  

The long and short of it is people come up in Walmart or at little league games to chat and I have no idea who they are.  They may be a close and lifelong friend of my wife who was at our wedding, or may be the mother of someone I just put in prison for murder.  Finally the cherry on the top of this “oh crap” Sunday is I can actually catch a bar complaint if I start to chat and have it wrong. 

More than once I have been

five minutes in to a conversation when I interrupt them and say, “wait, am I prosecuting you?”  If the answer is a yes, I am in huge trouble. 

In the legal world it is unethical for an attorney to speak with a represented party.  The problem is I can’t always remember and they don’t always tell me.

While this has happened many times, I know to stop the conversation if anything legal comes up so I have never gotten in to trouble, but boy is it uncomfortable.   

I was once in Walmart shopping with my daughter when a lady came up and just hugged me and started crying.  She thanked me for all I did for her and her daughter and how they were so grateful that I was able to put away the person who hurt her daughter.  When the encounter was over my daughter asked me “who was that?”  My only response was “I have no idea.” 

Clearly she was a victim’s mother, and I truly feel awful for not remembering her, but unfortunately I just didn’t.  I have a gnat’s memory, remember. 

While that was a positive exchange, it was not so good natured when I was approached while my three little boys and I were eating lunch in the playground in the McDonalds.  A former defendant came up and started yelling at me for what he perceived to be his mistreatment in his criminal case.  Did I mention that my little boys where right there with me.  Ahh the joys of being a small town prosecutor. 

I enjoyed the antimony of the big cities when I prosecuted in the Phoenix area and I never ran in to those I met through work, it is different here.  Everyone knows me, and where I live.  Good times in a small county. 

So, if I appear stand offish and aloof and you are wondering why you shelled out all that money for a toaster all those years ago when you were at my wedding, don’t be offended.  Just know you look kind of like a criminal😀.