Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Congratulations on Establishing New Defensible Grounds for Homicide!

Your latest client is a curious case. He killed his boss a few days ago in what could be considered a moment of rage following his unfair termination and was escorted out of his office by a cheering throng of supportive co-workers. He entered police custody without any sort of struggle and has been nothing but cooperative since his arrest. He is clearly sane, articulate, well educated, and generally not prone to violent outbursts.

You’ll get up in front of the judge and do your all to get his sentence down, citing his lack of violent behavior in the past, his full cooperation and his attempt to control violence, but the judge won’t want to hear about anything from you. He’ll just get the kid on the stand and talk to him.

The two will converse for several hours in front of a crowded courtroom, with occasional breaks where the young man’s co-workers come forward to defend his actions by describing how big of a douche their boss was. One woman will even come up and, tearfully, announce that she was once drugged and raped at an office event by her superior and that she did not come out publicly due to threats of termination. After this long, forum style discussion he’ll tell Jeremy to return to his seat at your bench and announce his decision.

“Time served,” he’ll mumble, then shuffle back off to his chambers.

In the write-up of the decision he’ll explain that he believes that the removal of certain excessively douchey people from our general populace is actually a public service, and that Jeremy was performing just such a service in a responsible, brave and honorable fashion. If anything he deserves some sort of reward, but the best our system can do for such a man is simply to let him walk free among the people he has given hope to.

You’ll scratch your head, collect your fee from the state and enjoy the business that being a part of one of the strangest legal precedents in recent history (just behind the dog one) brings with it.

Congratulations on Establishing New Defensible Grounds for Homicide!

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