Quote:
Originally Posted by d2_e4
It's a lot easier to persuade 1 person out of 12 who was too ****ing dumb to get out of jury duty of whatever you want him or her to believe, than is to persuade one who was at least smart enough to get through law school.
I say this as someone who perjured himself in a friend's DUI trial as a favour. I was one of 2 defence witnesses, it was a bench trial in front of 3 magistrates, and he got off on insufficient evidence. They even came back and said "we know you're guilty, but there is insufficient evidence to convict". He was guilty as ****, but he was able to re-build his life and career from that verdict, so I'm not sorry.
For anyone who's interested. What happened was that he was at my place, and he insisted on leaving and driving home. I begged, pleaded with him not to drive. He didn't listen. I even followed him outside and literally put my glass behind his back wheel and said "you can't drive now". He didn't care, drove over the glass and took off.
5 minutes later, I get a call. Subdued tones - "dude the cops are here, I'm ****ed". I'm like "good for you, you ****ing deserve it". I didn't really know what was happening, only that he was about to get arrested.
In the morning I managed to get hold of him in the holding cells and got the story. He managed to make it as far as a roundabout like 3 minutes from my place, somehow stalled his car (a company car) climbed in the passenger seat, and passed out. And that's how the cops found him.
I told him to conduct a no comment interview and that I'd get him a lawyer, which I did. Then we concocted this story that there was a third guy (who wasn't even there, another friend of his) that was driving, the car broke down, third guy went off on foot to find help etc. I testilied that the third guy was at my place, I saw them both drive off.
He got off on the charge, that was like 15 years ago or so, he got fired from his job, got his company car taken etc. It was punishment enough. Because of the not guilty verdict, he was able to find another job, etc. He is now very happily married with 2 kids and probably making more money than I do. So, I feel justice was served.
Not sure why I typed all this out. I mean, maybe, not everyone who commits a crime is a bad person. Prisons are full of people who are decent people, but who just made a mistake.