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Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Drunk picked a fight - then the system picked him up.


This is a real case:
So three individuals were arrested for a crime, and I represented one of those individuals. It was a silly fight where both the fighter and the fightee where drunk; the ones who won the fight were the ones who were charged with a crime - that's the way it normally works, right?

Our drunk victim, who mouthed off to the 3 and ended up gettin' his butt whipped, ended up raising quite a stink with the prosecutor's office. So much so that the prosecutor was afraid to reduce the charge against the 3. The victim got beaten up; but at the same time, he was also a dumb-ass drunk who has been in scrapes with the law himself, who picked a fight - and then lost.

The odd circumstance is that our victim claimed severe emotional distress for getting his butt whipped while drunk at a bar - so much so that he participated in therapy, when to the ER and hospitals many times, and saw shrinks. Mind you, this is a middle aged athletic man, drinking at a bar; now he's a sad-sack whiner.

Which made me think: when does a victim's lunacy outweigh a prosecutor's discretion?

In this misdemeanor, the victim "cow-towed" the prosecutor - yelling at them, demanding money from the 3 defendants, and making a good old-fashioned stink.

Drunks who get into fights should be allowed to fight, sober up, and then go home. But not today, especially in Williamson County. We get to fight a serious charge for 9 months, spend thousands of dollars on legal fees, and then get to pay the nutjob money to get out of the crime.... all because of a drunk who started a fight, but couldn't finish it.
So the almighty State of Texas gets to finish the fight for him - and they call that justice.


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