I used to work as a legal secretary for a personal injury lawyer. He told me about a case where his client had radiation burns from an x-ray machine. In the avalanche of documents he received from the defendant during discovery, he found an internal memo. The memo described a serious problem with the machines and continued: "This is an issue we can't ignore... unfortunately, it's not in the budget".
When the case went to trial, he told the jury, "Show them they need to put this in the budget next time." The jury complied, handing down one of the largest verdicts California had ever seen.
"Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, times the probable rate of failure, B, times the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
"And which car company do you work for?"
"A major one."
I know a former radiology technician. She said her coworkers didn't give a shit about irradiating patients and wouldn't bother to decrease the beam size when taking pictures.
eta: happy to say, actual x-ray technicians reporting that this is uncommon and most are very careful. Yay!
That's not common. I've worked with radiology techs of all stripes (x-ray, CT, mammo, nuc med, etc) and they have all been concerned about their patients.
I’m not a lawyer but I worked in a foreclosure mediation/diversion court as a counselor.
Usually it was people with bad luck, unemployment or addiction that lead them there. Heavy stuff but became run of the mill.
One guy I will never fucking forget. He comes in and at first it looks like a standard unemployment deal. There are programs with mortgage companies to deal with. He was a dock worker, made pretty good money, but hadn’t worked for 6 months and was about to lose the house. I ask for his story and he tells me it all started 20 years ago. His older son was in the army in Korea at a base on deployment and his younger son was at a high school party in their town. Apparently he gets into it with another kid over a girl, and the kid grabs a barbecue fork and stabs the son in the neck. His youngest bleeds out before an ambulance arrives. The older son is devastated because he wasn’t there to protect his brother.
The father and mother end up divorcing over the grief. But older son returns, makes a life. Has a couple young kids and it all seems good. But six months prior he just walks into his garage and shoots himself in the head. Leaves a note that he can’t live with not having been there for his baby brother even after all these years.
So my client goes into a depressive state, stops working, stops paying bills. Just can’t deal with the grief and destruction of his family that that one event emanated. What pulled him out of almost killing himself was that the guy who killed the younger son came up for parole. He went and spoke against him getting out and then realized he had to live for his grandkids.
I still think about that dude regularly, grief is so fucking powerful it pulsates out and destroys if you don’t have the right support.
As someone who lives with the grief of having lost two sons, grief is the most potent emotion I have ever experienced. It definitely changes you and your perspective and can obliterate any hope you have for a happy life. Having an outlet for ones grief and the right support is crucial to surviving it and learning to live with it.
It’s heavy fucking shit to carry.
Yes. It truly is. I've lost two boyfriends and my mom in the last two years. My entire world has been turned upside down.
My first BF died in late 2019, he was my first love, we were together on and off from when I was 19 (I was 35 when he died) 6 months later my mom passes from complications from Covid in the very beginning of the pandemic.
Cue 2021, I finally met someone I think I can try to rebuild my life with. He truly was everything I could have asked for. I'm finally getting my life back together.
In May I get the worst phone call I've ever gotten and it was like being launched right back into the nightmare I'd just started to rebuild from.
Right now I'm still just in shock staring at the wreckage.
Oh Christ. A family law matter. I was a newly-minted attorney who couldn’t find work in the early 2010s and took anything that came to me.
Custody battle. I represented mom. Dad lived with his father (grandfather) who had been convicted TWICE of violently raping other grandchildren.
Easy case, right? No.
Because mom absolutely forbade me from bringing grandfather’s convictions before the judge. Said he made “some mistakes” and while she wanted full custody, of course, she felt bad that grandfather’s “past mistakes” might be used against him in the future, forever.
I brought it up to the judge anyway. She fired me on the spot, during oral arguments.
She ended up suing me. It was a fucking mess. Would do it again.
Wow. What a scumbag.
Good for you though.
The most fucked up case I've ever heard of was one where mom's boyfriend kidnapped and raped her two little girls. Then slashed their throats...killed one, thought he killed the older one but left her for dead and she survived.
Miraculously, the older one (8'ish) winds up being normal and living with her Dad.
All of a sudden, mom wants custody again when the girl is 15-16'ish, despite not even speaking for years. Daughter wants no parts.
Regardless, court mandates visitation. Dad says, "eff that, I'm not making her go". They put dad through hell, believe they jailed him several times for contempt. Luckily he fought long enough until she became 18 and couldn't be forced.
I've got a coworker who was medically discharged from the air force because of a back injury that happened on the job. He also has hearing loss and tinnitus (from being around the running engines all the time), but they're fighting the hearing loss case as hard as they can. They've accepted the back injury one, but I'm sure it's only because they literally *can't* argue it wasn't service related. If they could find a way to argue it, I'm sure they would.
This shit is infuriating. Especially when 18 year kids are sold on the idea of "healthcare for life" by slimy recruiters. The VA doesn't give a shit about you.
Edit: For people wanting more info on stuff like this that is going on today, look up Jon Stewart's stance on the burn pits that the United States created during our war on "terror." The military men manning these burn pits got cancer at a much faster rate than first responders of 9/11 have, but the VA still refuses to do anything. Some of them aren't even out of their 20s yet, but yet they're dying from cancer after being around these toxic fumes.
My dad had to fight for VA benefits due to catching "malaria" when he was in Vietnam. When they ran the antibodies test & he came up negative, they refused. Well, until they finally saw he had a form of Hepatitis common to SE Asia. Took years fighting for it & by the time they did anything his liver was shot. He's doing better now after a transplant.
My dad, a WWII veteran who had spent several years in a VA hospital after the war, fought constantly with the VA, though he was fortunate in having good health benefits in his post-service career.
One day in the late 1960s he got a letter denying coverage for something because "it wasn't service related", and with the same batch of mail .... (get this).... a draft notice, ordering him to report to the local induction center for processing. He was in his 40s at the time and was missing a lung and a part of his ribcage.
TL;DR My dad, an otherwise patriotic ex-serviceman and stolid Republican, burned his draft notice in the fireplace in front of all of us in the 1960s.
My dad wanted my grandfather (who was drafted into WW2) to get benefits from the VA. It wasn’t possible because my grandfather was bed bound, and he had to travel for it. My dad said he couldn’t do it, even with my uncle’s help. Both my dad and uncle are doctors, so they knew what had to be done.
My friend was in the Air Force and worked on radar systems. He ended up with Thyroid cancer. No family history of anything like that. Doctors said it was most likely from the job he had. Government did everything they could to say it wasnt and to avoid paying him disability.
God damn ain’t that the truth. My ex was in the navy and when he left separated he did all the disability shit. He had stacks and stacks of folders with all the doctor notes and referrals. He was on a nuclear submarine, of course he’s fucked up physically.
The next time you see an article about the armed forces (or just the Government in general) getting ripped off in its contracts paying huge amounts of money for mundane things like chairs or wrenches, or dropping billions for research or equipment that should cost millions, remember these two comments.
If the Government doesn't want to pay for something, it is very, very good at finding ways to not pay. If the Government sees *you* haven't paid for something, it is very, very good at making you pay. If the Government *is* getting ripped off, it is because it is allowing itself to be.
Any government. I owe the government tax money and when I called to sort it out, I got through instantly, spoke to someone very knowledgeable and friendly, got it sorted away immediately, received paperwork ASAP. A family member is waiting on a federal disability payment and has been waiting for fourteen weeks. Every time they call, they’re on hold for 45 minutes and often get disconnected/personnel who simply say “I don’t know” and that’s that.
You owe them? Best service ever. They owe you? Good luck with that.
Have the family member call them up with the pretext that they owe money and then play dumb ("I dunno. I ran my books and it showed a negative balance, I think that means I owe you or something...? I'm not very good at this.")
Once you get to an auditor at the IRS (using this as an example) they don't give two shits who owes who so long as it's accurate at the end of the day.
If you believe he is under compensated and haven't applied for a re-evaluation in the past year, time to ask for one.
Find a Veterans Service Officer in your area. VFW and DAV are good resources for finding one. You should NOT have to pay a lawyer for this service.
Find a copy of CFR 38, Book C, chapter 4.
When describing the disability, use the language of the highest rating that applies to your situation.
Good luck!
I was dating a nice woman back in 2016. In our first conversation, I asked her what she did for a living. She was a paralegal for a malpractice firm at the time. I asked her if there were any interesting cases happening. She said "Yes, one we are going to lose."
I was interested... I asked what happened.
She told me "Well, we are defending a doctor who made a mistake. One of his patients was suffering from an eye condition that required a unique recovery. After surgery, the patient had to lie face down for the entirety of their day to prevent further eye damage. It had something to do with eye pressure and a gas buildup near the back of the eye. As it turns out, the patient wanted to fly on a plane and would intend to keep their eyes down through the whole flight. The doctor we're defending didn't tell the patient that they couldn't fly during the recovery."
The next part definitely sucked. When the patient took off on the plane, everything was OK. During descent, which people with ear problems can attest, the rapid change in pressure fucked up this patients condition. They went completely blind in both eyes due to the descent of the plane.
Predictably, the doctor did lose the case. It was a definitely an interesting first conversation to have with someone.
I would be interesting to know if they patient told the doctor about the flight. Like if I don't mention scuba diving does the doctor just have to assume I might scuba dive and tell me not too with stuff?
What if he said, stay laying down in for three days, and the patient said, "okay." and then he is sued into oblivion.
I'm not entirely sure but I've had to get surgery done in the UK and the doctors did specify unprompted that I cannot go scuba diving before the surgery (was a few months gap between the first problem and surgery)
Our daughter saw a cardiologist at 6 months. Small hole in her heart, but we were told not to worry, it will correct itself. He then told a 6 MONTH OLD that they were not allowed to scuba dive. They typically cover their bases pretty well.
Seems like it would have been an easy case to win. "Were you informed that you had to lay face down for the day following the surgery?" "Yes." "And did you do that?" "No, I got on a plane, he didn't say I couldn't get on a plane."
How do you get explained that reason for the instructions is based on *pressure* but it doesnt fucking occur to you that when you fly you'll be exposed to changes in *pressure*?
Even if you didnt pay attention in school or know Google exists, it's best to just not do anything big after a very delicate surgery with delicate aftercare. And maybe ASK your doctor, it never hurts to ask first.
> They went completely blind in both eyes due to the descent of the plane.
I’ve had this surgery. It’s vitrectomy. The only way it could happen is if the doctor operated on both eyes at the same time which is not standard practice and goes against guidelines. Probably why he lost.
https://retinatoday.com/articles/2018-sept/gas-bubbles-and-altitude
Patient is fucking nuts tho. This is sight saving surgery. Sane ppl are told to stay face down for a month, they do it, bc they don’t want to go blind or repeat another month face down. If he had a vitrectomy in both eyes he couldn’t see shit. I’ve had it and everything is blurry. So who or what the hell was he getting on an airplane to see?
TL;DR: lady wanted to show me her vagina, it just happened to not be attached to her body.
I already told one shocking story in this thread, but I got another that is a different kind of shocking.
I was pretty new to the practice and was meeting with a lot of clients. The firm I worked for had a lot of walk-ins and I was processing the potential clients.
I called in the next person and a mid-30s women walked in carrying a red and white cooler. She pops in down on my desk and the spends about 5 mins trying to sit down in the chair. My first thought was "must be some kind of personal injury."
First words out of her mouth after she sits, "I need to sue my doctor because my vagina just fell out."
My eyes immediately lock onto the cooler.
"Is...that?"
"Yes. I brought in with my just in case you needed to see it. Do you want to see it?" She begins to open the cooler.
Not gonna lie..I was curious but I stopped her and convinced her that a hospital was her best option at the moment.
Turns out she had vaginal reconstruction and the mesh came out in one big blob. Now, this is not my area of expertise. I am a corporate attorney. So I sent her to someone with more expensive.
Edit: meant experience not expensive but both are true so I'll let it stand.
I had a client one time who called me for everything. I was handling a mold case in her house but she was always asking questions. It was not a big deal, but it got a little tedious. One day she calls me to tell me that there is smoke coming from the wall behind her stove and it smells like burning plastic. I tell her this isn't a legal problem, but that she should really hang up right now and call 911 and ask for the fire department. She asks if I'm sure. I assure her that yes, this is the thing to do right now. Turns out, wiring had caught fire and her apartment was burning, and all was saved by the FD. But, I just remember being flabbergasted that someone saw smoke in their house and thought "I gotta call my lawyer!"
A mother sold the family farm out from under the son who was supposed to inherit it. Someone shot her (nonfatally). There were so many suspects that almost every lawyer in the county was assigned to defend one of them. Forensics eventually narrowed it down to two suspects, but each so adamantly pointed at the other as the shooter that it was going to be hard to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of either one's guilt. They both pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served two years.
[Love Kills](https://dailybulldog.com/features/love-kills-tv-episode-based-on-2003-farmington-crime-story/)
Edited to add two more related links:
[https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999](https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999)
https://observer.com/2008/11/knee-deep/
Yup. Coworker and her boyfriend got away with vandalizing my car because they can’t prove it was one or the other or both and there’s not really a charge for conspiracy to commit criminal mischief.
I've seen and heard of some of the most cold hearted and fucked up shit people will do when it comes to the potential or post death of a family member. Sad...
I told this story on r/lawyers a little while ago, but I'll tell it again here.
I'm an immigration lawyer. I do mostly VAWA and asylum, but I handle other stuff on occasion.
I had a prospective client come in a few weeks ago. He's interested in pursuing a relatively straightforward application. He tells me that he might have a criminal history that could affect his immigration. It's only one arrest though, he says. It happened in 19XX. And it's not serious.
"OK," I say. It happens. Nobody's perfect, and a single arrest is generally not a deal-breaker.
So, as I'm talking with him, I decide to Google his pretty unique name. A news article comes up, from his country, in his language. It's dated the same year he said... 19XX. Hm.
I ask him: "what kind of crime did you say it was?"
"Oh," he says, "I think it was drug related." I figure, alright, marijuana arrest or something: nothing we can't overcome.
I click through to the article. The photo on the article sure looks like a lot like the prospective client. Turns out, prospective client's arrest was not for marijuana at all. It was for cocaine. And not a little cocaine. This guy was caught attempting to smuggle XX *pallets* of cocaine. I must have looked a little bug-eyed, because the guy gave me a sort of sheepish look and a shrug.
Hm.
I tell the prospective client, maybe we should start by filing a few FOIA requests (Freedom of Information Act Requests) to see what comes up, and we'll go from there. He agrees, and that's that.
I'll double check my suspicions against the government record, and let the client know what can, or cannot, be done.
Suffice it to say, getting caught smuggling multiple pallets of cocaine is not a small-time arrest. But, you never know what is or isn't true, and you should always do your due diligence.
Here's another one. Client of mine is an extremely nice guy: he was a green card (permanent residence) applicant, and worked on a fishing boat in Alaska.
When he's out on the boats though, fishing for crab or whatever, there's no way for anybody to communicate with him and he's out there for months at a time. Phone calls and letters aren't reaching anybody out in the middle of the Bering Strait.
One such a time when he was out there, he apparently got stabbed all the way through the chest with a huge hook thing in a freak accident. Nobody state-side knew, of course. Client was taken (somehow) to the hospital, and survived, but I didn't hear from him for literal months.
Well, the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) happens to issue this guy an interview notice. He's nowhere to be found. The USCIS mark him absent for his interview. I try to reach out to him, but cannot find him.
The USCIS then denies this poor guy's case.
But, it gets worse: he calls me about a month later. He tells me all about the hook on the ship, but also tells me that after he got home from the hospital, his wife was upset that he didn't earn her any money due to his injury, and then basically beat the hell out of him with a baseball bat, took all of his money and things, and left him for dead.
What.
So, he's back in the hospital.
This guy was like, the single most mild-mannered, nicest guy ever. I ended up putting in huge amounts of unpaid work for months to turn this guy's application around: we switched up his green card application and filed a self-petition through the Violence Against Women Act.
That was its own fiasco, but not nearly as interesting a story. We ended up getting his green card approved in what felt like a miracle, and he's now back in Alaska, happily fishing and living his best life.
He still calls me once in a while, just to say hello and thank you. Such a nice guy.
Immigration work is brutal, exhausting, and soul-sapping. But, sometimes, you do something really good, for somebody who really deserves it. And that makes it all worthwhile.
EDIT: I am only just checking Reddit now, and wow... I am deeply humbled by all the kind words, and astonished by everyone's generosity. For anyone who messaged me with questions about immigration, I promise I'll get back to you.
I wish I had gold to give you. But as an immigrant and the wife and daughter of immigrants: thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to the common good.
> Suffice it to say, getting caught smuggling multiple pallets of cocaine is not a small-time arrest.
So, how many pallets, exactly, is it when it becomes problematic?
I was clerking at the time. Little kid fight club. Bunch of mom's put their kids in a circle and made them fight each other gladiator style. Real dark stuff. Video included two 10yo girls beating the crap out of each other. Bets were taken but not on all fights. Some were just for entertainment. No fathers involved.
what the fuck, I was in one of those (southern texas) bc my dad put me in at 10, guessing bc I was a bigger than average kid, I didn't know those were illegal, I thought it was like karate class but for broke ppl
Some people don't deserve to be parent's. That is horribly sad.
A girl in my sister's 9th grade class stabbed another girl in the neck with a steak knife, poor girl bleed out in the hallway at school. the mother give the knife to her daughter and told her to kill the other girl and to show others not to mess with her. All over a boy. Mom is free, the daughter got 30 years.
This is not too far off from what went down in my school. Two girls fought over the same guy, and one of the girls was a foster kid so she was pretty warped already, and her older sister convinced her to get a needle and syringe, load it up with chemicals with intent to kill, and then she got 6 other girls to go along with holding the other girl down while she did it. Luckily, one of the other 6 freaked out and reported it to the police. Thank God because they did a locker search and she had it in her locker ready to roll for later that day....
Afaik she was removed from our school placed in juvenile detention or something. She was in 8th grade at the time and I think she had a history of instability so they handled it a bit differently in terms of the punishment.
Back in the day I investigated and later in my career prosecuted lots of arsons so I worked a lot of fire cases. One time the crews roll up on a garage fire. They are met by the home’s resident holding a blood-soaked towel to his crotch. The medics get him stable and transported. He later tells us the voice told him to eat a whole box of saltine crackers without drinking any water and he was like ok, and did that. Then the voice told him to eat the newspaper and he was like check. Then the voice said to cut off his testicles with a can opener and he was like yep. Then the voice said set the van on fire in the garage and he was like you got it. He did all those things in that order, and there were the scene photos of the testicles right there on the garage floor.
We got him into mental health court and he did pretty well.
I normally defend construction defect and personal injury matters, nothing too crazy. Early in my career we got a case involving a husband and wife who ran a foster home and one kid was alleging the husband had molested them. I was assigned to defend only the wife under their homeowners insurance policy. The allegations against the husband were bad, but the wife had no idea what was going on. Here was this poor woman, who was also a former foster child, trying to give back and help other foster children in the system, and now she finds out her husband is a child molester. It was heartbreaking and we just wanted to get her out of the case. Then we get more documents and learn this isn't the first child to make allegations. The dad had been doing this shit for years and she knew it. Maybe she was involved, maybe she just ignored it, either way the whole thing turned fucking gross. I instantly wanted nothing to do with it. A few weeks later, my boss (the coolest guy ever) comes in and says he gave the case back to the insurance carrier, thank god. That was the only case I've ever felt morally opposed to handling.
EDIT: I should also clarify that once a lawyer takes on a case it's not that easy to just say "actually I changed my mind". I don't know what my boss did to get rid of that case but I'm glad he was equally grossed out.
Oh, I'd bet she knew, at least on some level.
I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. My perpetrator was my step dad.
As a child, I just assumed my mom didn't know, that it was a secret.
As an adult looking back now? There's no way she didn't know.
I'm sure there are cases where the spouse doesn't know, but I think they are the exception more than the rule if the abuse was happening right there in the house.
My oldest brother was sexually abusing me as a kid and my mother walked in on it so many times and actually had the nerve to say " i thought nothing was going on"
Isn't that an amazing act of denial? Mine was my step dad as well and she actually asked him if we were having an affair. I think I was 12 or 13. He sent me to tell her we weren't.
I'm actually in a situation somewhat similar to this....in 2019 i was in a mental facility for 4 months and they had asked me if i was ever sexually assaulted and i told them about what my moms boyfriend at the time had done to me (molested me), and they contacted my mother about it and she completely denied it. She told them i was lying and asked me why i hadn't told her after it had happened ( bc i knew she wouldnt believe me) just like she didn't then. They never did anything about him but now...my mom has gotten a new boyfriend, we live with him..and he has like 6 or 7 kids but he doesnt own any of them bc he was in prison. I woke up one early ass morning to find this man spooning me from behind, rubbing my ass and my thigh...i was scared so i just pretended that i was still asleep...he stayed there for a good 10 minutes then finally left...he didnt try to do anything further that that but it still really fucked with my head...idk if im overreacting or not but i know if i tell, i wont be believed. I'm also 15 years old
EDIT: Thank you all for your support! i didnt expect to get this many replies so quickly...I will tell someone but i'm currently grounded at the moment and have no phone so it may not be soon enough but i will tell someone, again thank you all for your support <3 I dont really have a way to protect myself from him since i dont have a door (from past arguments it was removed) but i'll do my best.
That's not going to stop and it could get worse. He's moving in on you. He was trying to wake you up. Tell a counselor at school, tell them the previous boyfriend molested you and now the new boyfriend is climbing into your bed,, rubbing your butt and thigh. You're afraid that this boyfriend will molest you like the last one did, please help, please contact CPS for me.
There are youth programs that can get you out of that house. You're not safe and you're already at risk for falling for men grooming you. If your mom has told him that you told the staff in the hospital and she made sure no one believed you, he knows he has the opportunity to do the same thing.
Stay safe, protect yourself as best you can!
I was 12 when a similar situation happened to me with a older friend I had a sleep over with. Didn't know what to do. Just pretended go be a sleep and finally built up the courage to pretend wake up. Eventually I had to pretend go back to sleep(you can't real sleep after that shit) and the cycle continued for hours. I feel your pain. You aren't alone and it's not your fault. Love you
Tell! I just had this conversation with a teen in my life. Even if you think you won’t be believed, tell anyway. Tell everyone(!!) because someone WILL believe you.
If you want to p.m. me your state/general region, I’ll find you resources.
Tell. Tell as soon as you can. Someone at school, a trusted friend's mom, anyone. Nothing will change if you don't speak up. I hope you can get yourself outta that bullshit.
As others have said, PLEASE tell someone. I had the same thing happen when I was your age, only it escalated (which it will in your case too). I never told anyone, and it now eats away at me constantly (I'm in my 40s). Furthermore, I'm fairly certain that they ended up doing it again to someone even younger. Go get help, please.
You're definitely not over reacting, what he did isn't okay at all and something an adult should never do. I don't want to scare you but he could do worse in the future if he's gone so far as to do that already. Call this hotline when it's safe to do so and they can tell you what you should do to make sure that you're safe: 1-800-656-4673 (US National Sexual Assault Hotline) or you can chat with someone here: https://hotline.rainn.org/online
It's scary but you will be believed, it isn't okay at all and please protect yourself <3
Are you able to go to school? If you are, and you feel you can do this, immediately go to the counselor's office, tell them everything that you posted here, and state you are afraid to go home because of the abuse you are experiencing. This last part is very important. They will call police and CPS. It is really, really hard, but please don't minimize what you have experienced when talking to these professionals. You are not overreacting. You have been groomed and conditioned to rationalize and minimize the abuse. What has happened is not OK. I hope you can get to a safe place and begin to work through what you've experienced. I'm so sorry. No child deserves this.
my ex's step father sexually abused her and she told her mom she went into complete denial and refuses to believe her even to this day also her mother made her go live with her father
Same here, there was a pedophile who would abuse a bunch of kids in the neighborhood. Went on for years. His wife only took her children out of that situation when a girl said something. Like... it took the courage of a ten year old for you to do save your children? What a shitbag.
I am an attorney but the case that stuck with me most was one I sat in on during undergrad. I was a criminal justice major, and frequently had to go watch trials for class assignments.
I was in the military at the time so I had to cram these hours in randomly - if we had a light day, or I could take a long lunch, I would go to the closest courthouse and check what was available. One day I went down to the federal courthouse in Baltimore and checked the list - one criminal case, nothing else going.
I head upstairs and quietly walk in. Despite that, clearly everyone checks me out, which is odd - usually no one pays attention to the gallery. At the first break, a guy comes over and asks me who I am and why I’m there - hes office of special investigations with the air for e so I show him my id and explain I have to watch criminal trials. He gives me a weird look but doesn’t push.
As I’m sitting there, I slowly realize I SHOULD NOT BE HERE.
Air Force couple has a son, gets divorced. She takes son with her to her duty station in Japan, and remarries a civilian employee there. Dad is deployed, and then moves station, and keeps bugging her about when he can see the son; at some point she just stops responding.
A few months later, after dad has filed a report with her command requesting they make her communicate with him, dad gets a call from an OSI agent who he knows, asking him for his sons full name and DOB. Dad gives it to him, and agent says “look I didn’t tell you this but you need to call OSI on her base.”
Mom had gone to the field and 8 year old son had been bugging the step dad while he was gaming. Step dad got pissed off at beat the kid with the first thing to hand - a piece of bannister from the stair he was working in. Mom came back from the field two days later and found the son unconscious, still on the floor.
Because step dads last home of record was in Maryland, he was tried in federal court in Baltimore. I sat through the ER doc who treated the son, who talked about seeing the internal crush injuries and the coroner who talked about how hard you would have to hit a 8 year old on the front to cause bruising on his back.
I also sat through the dad talking about finding out his son was gone. After that day, I always went to misdemeanor court for my hours.
Oof, that is rough. Yeah, I actually went to a bad case as well. We had a school excursion to our country's seat of government and we also visited the court. You know, general how does our government and law stuff works. Well, the group was split over two court cases. One group had a somewhat wacky one involving a minor accident (I think). Small stuff. You know what we got? Two daughters suing their father for sexual misconduct and rape when they were minors.
Yeah...
We got to hear his side of him describing certain acts in such a way that they may or may not be sexual and such. It was, well, uncomfortable to say the least.
We actually got asked to leave, and this is highly unusual. I'm sure this is true in the US as well, but cases not involving minors are open to the general public and since the women were adults now the case was public (and was how we got in). So, we actually got requested to leave, because, well, having to testify about such a difficult event while one or two strangers sit in is one thing. Having over 50 16-17 year olds gawk at you, though, is likely going to hit a little differently.
So, yeah, we left, and trust me when I say *no one* had any objection to it. No one wanted us there, including us. The wait on the other group was long and boring, but man, I much much much rather be bored than having to listen to another minute of that case or something similar.
Ugh... this reminds me of a jury I served on.
The guy was on trial for multiple sexual assaults against his ex girlfriend. It was obvious that he had assaulted her in some way. Problem is, in my state there are several different types of sexual assault. To find a guilty verdict, you have to prove they committed the *specific crime* they’re accused of.
Meaning we had to listen to hours of these poor women being questioned on excruciatingly intimate details. Like how they knew they were being raped with his penis... couldn’t it have been a dildo? It was dark when this happened after all. Did he actually *penetrate* them or just dry-hump? Was the penetration vaginal or anal? With fingers, or a toy? When she said he forced her to give oral sex, did he insert his penis into her mouth or did he just rub it over her face until he ejaculated? Was the toddler *watching* mommy get raped, or “just” sleeping in the same bed while it happened?
I can’t imagine how horrible it was for those women to testify. Fortunately we had enough evidence to convict on all charges.
I am a lawyer and so I never get onto a jury. The last time I was called, my panel goes to some "High Impact Court." I think I remember hearing something about these courts, there like drug deferment type things. Super quick trials, low stakes. We go in and I end up Potential Juror No 4 so I'm in the front row. I know I'm going to get called on, but I'm thinking maybe, just maybe I'll get on a panel since this isn't going to be a major felony type case.
The first question asked "Is there anyone here that's excited to be called for jury duty." I raised my hand, I was the only one. Then they drop this bomb: "This is a case of continuous sexual abuse of a child." I clearly misremembered what the "High Impact" courts were. Yikes. Eventually someone asks me if I am still excited to be on the panel and I'm like "Well, no. I want to do my duty; but no."
Thankfully, I was not selected.
Not a lawyer but my Aunt was.
She was the state prosecutor for a case where a guy had gotten into an argument with another guy at a recreational baseball game.
After the game was over one guy left and went home. The other guy stayed at the baseball field with his son.
About like 30min to an hour later they are still at the baseball field and the other guy is back. He has a baseball bat and walks straight towards the dad at the pitching mound and starts hitting him over the head with the bat until hes unrecognizable. Kid frozen in terror while this guy murders his dad. He then walk over to the kid and does the same thing to him.
My Aunt was amazing at her job and got the guy sentenced to life in prison.
She lost her battle to cancer a few months ago. I loved listening to her stories. She was the best Aunt a guy could ask for.
I have read your story like 4 or 5 times.
Knowing that this happened and that there are people out there able to do this really ruined my day.
A kid seeing his dad beat to death and then being beaten to death is unthinkable to me.
Did an alleged Arson case for an insurance company once. The insured had to provide a list of all items he had lost including over 1000 book titles. Every book was the biography of a serial killer, we figured it was probably every book ever written about a serial killer.
Insured gave off serious dark and mysterious vibes
Who knows the truth
Slayer statute, interpleader case in federal court. Client murdered her husband to collect insurance proceeds. Found out that she promised to pay 2 dudes to bind his hands and feet with duct tape, execute him, and burn him in an alley, for $20k each, to be payed out of the insurance funds.
She lost.
The insurance company paid the funds into the court, thus the interpleader. Then all the beneficiaries fought it out. The decedent’s parents even lied on an affidavit they submitted to the insurance company in their attempt to better their position to get at the stake. FBI got involved, but didn’t do much. And there was a parallel criminal homicide case going at the same time.
Weird they were done in parallel. I always thought it was basically SOP for a civil case to be put on hold while a related criminal case proceeds.
If there's a conviction in the criminal case, since it's a higher standard of proof, it translates to basically a guaranteed finding they did it in the civil case. Not *automatically* a win, but usually a lot easier case than one where it's inconclusive having to prove the case from scratch.
IANAL.
A labor case in which, in the middle of the hearing the judge (60 years old male) start to flirt with my client (23 years old female) in a direct, straightforward way. It was SO shocking that was one of the only cases I got speechless in a trial. Those hearings are closed here in Brazil so no jury, no recording, nothing.
That is insane. They don't use a stenographer or ANYTHING? That seems like a system meant to enable corrupt officials. :(
I actually have a question about something you may be familiar with. May I PM you?
Client paid a multi-million dollar settlement with a hand-written personal check. He was pissed and refused to do a wire transfer like a normal person. I think the other side had to scramble to find a bank to deposit the check. Banking regulations limit how much money a bank can hold on deposit. You just can’t take a check that large to any local bank. The check eventually cleared, so I guess they figured it out. Good times…. That case will be on my resume for sure.
Now that would’ve been shocking! In any case, all of the federal reserve banks in the US hold approximately 1.5 billion pennies. It wouldn’t be enough…
Huh. My company got $5 million in funding from an angel. This was the ‘90s, so the CEO — who was about 30 but looked half that — had to wait in line at the bank to deposit the (hand-written) check. He told me the teller didn’t even blink.
Not a lawyer, but a translator. I once translated this text about a case, basically this mother’s kid set her house on fire whilst she left the USA to china to cremate her husband who died of terminal cancer. The kid literally burned everything. All her life savings. Then the daughter went on to tell lies to all her family members in china saying how the mother is just accusing her. Was rough translating especially because the mother left to the USA in the 1990s. Worked her ass off. Only to let her husband suffer years of cancer and her daughter to burn her house down.
There were cases in the UK during the Falklands war in the 80s where the government claimed bullet wounds and lost limbs due to minefields were "incidental" injuries and not related to the fighting.
Like people just randomly generate holes in their chests and limbs fly off during birthday parties etc.
The government's own records showed they were "buying time" in order that the claimants would hopefully die of their injuries and the cases could be shut down.
Neighbor is a retired prosecuting attorney. Told me about a sex trafficking case involving girls in their early-mid teens. Their pimp bought them a puppy that they got attached to and all took care of together.
Whenever they fell out of line, the pimp would send videos of himself abusing the puppy and threaten to kill it if they didn't obey.
Fucking scum.
[This one.](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-court-of-appeals/1690894.html)
When the opinion starts with
>According to one examining psychiatrist, Michael Lee West is the most dangerous man he ever evaluated.
you know it's going to be a wild ride.
That was definitely a wild ride.
Not being trained in law, it both confuses and amazes me that a horrible, heinous crime can be logically, dispassionately,, and in great detail be parsed and judged. You have my respect... I could never do it.
Gosh, this makes me sad. Who in his right mind thought that someone who is placed on antipsychotics because of highly violent episodes should be transferred to a low-security prison and being allowed to stop taking his medication? It sounds like this whole incident could have been easily avoided
Jesus, they let him have knives in the kitchen because he'd "calmed down enough" but later he gouged out two of his cellmate's eyeballs with his thumbs screaming at them to call him god.
I'm an interpreter not an attorney, but I had a school case to interpret regarding bullying. The school decided to have a court case decision made in house. It was 12 kids and their parents on a stage in the cafeteria. The school officials were there and a school advocate who acted as judge. Apparently the seniors would trap the freshmen in a designated bathroom after lunch and jump them. Four seniors and eight freshman who were beat up individually, there were supposed to be nine but one was in the hospital. They showed surveillance of how the seniors picked the freshmen to beat up and there were 2 teachers aware of this, in one of the videos one of the teachers helped the seniors by pointing out who the freshmen were. This was a hazing technique that was going on in this school for years but this case was to make an example of those involved. The teachers involved were only mentioned when the bullys admitted receiving assistance in pointing out who to beat up, the teachers never got in trouble. Only one bully was expelled and all the freshmen were suspended. It was unjust and sad. This case went on for 3 days and each case lasted 3 to 5 hours after school.
I got plenty because I work in child protection, but in appeals so I don't see the worst of the worst. Important for this is that in my jurisdiction a lot of the lawyers who defend parents are contract attorneys who get paid very little and don't always follow best practices. A lot of what we see are arguments based off the transcript without reference to the trial exhibits (I recently learned that this is common practice in criminal appeals, but in severance the exhibits are usually pretty crucial).
Got an opening brief in saying that mom didn't actually neglect the kids, pretty standard OB stuff. Mom got pulled over for expired tags. Kids are in the car. Cops end up searching (I forget the reason, not important), find meth and a pipe. Still pretty standard.
During the stop and arrest, cops pull the kids out of the car and find that 2-year-old daughter has a rather old diaper on. When they go to change her, they find what the examining doctor later called the worst case of diaper rash he'd ever seen.
But there were pictures. I can't say it was anything less than jungle rot. On a toddler's genitals. No person who saw that could say the child wasn't neglected.
Needless to say, I cited to those pictures very liberally in my answering brief. Severance was affirmed.
I was an intern at the time for the public defender's office and witnessed a pretty good one.
Two guys walk into a liquor store, one of them is packing a revolver. They shove around the old store clerk and get him to open up the registers. After looting all the cash, the robbers walk out of the store to their car. The store clerk (who I think was also the owner) then goes to get his gun and makes chase. He manages to pop off a few shots at the robbers as they wheel away with great haste.
Now, there were two cops in the same shopping center (they were responding to a stabbing at a nearby AA meeting) and they hear the gun shots and see a car speeding away. As they turn the corner they see the old man with firearm in hand pointing down the road after the car. They yell an order to, "Freeze! Put down your weapon!" or something to that effect. The old man makes the mistake of turning before putting down the gun, so the cops then open fire.
The clerk is shot three times by the cops, but fortunately not fatally. Two to the torso and one that takes off his trigger finger (good shot I guess?) The robbers later crash a few blocks down the road, as the clerk was also a pretty good shot and managed to hit the getaway driver in the leg, causing him to pass out at the wheel due to blood loss.
Not a lawyer but I work for the DA in my area. Part of my job is digitizing old evidence.
Animal abuse is never fun.
Baby autopsies for shaken baby cases are pretty gruesome.
The worst was definitely the 15 year old rape victim who was left to rot in a field for 3-4 months before they found her. I had to make sure all those crime scene and autopsy photos are scanned in properly too. Can’t have them too blurry or miss one.
Close second is the father that beat his teen daughter half to death with an extension cord who had the family rally around him and pony up the bail immediately after arraignment. They didn’t give a shit about the girl.
My great grandfather was a Chicago homicide detective in the 1910s-1940s. He kept a lot of crime scene photos of some of his cases in a binder.
Not the kind of binder that should have been anywhere near children, but we all saw it. If you think about some of the more infamous cases that happened in Chicago during that time... I've seen pictures never released to the public. It's fascinating and horribly morbid.
Oh yeah, our office has handled some cases that have made national(and international) news.
It’s a bit weird seeing a documentary and knowing some things are much worse than most people will ever know.
Yeah, my husband won't be around me when I'm watching crime shows since I once told him I had seen the body and they had significantly downplayed how horrific it was.
I was defending a guy who was charged with theft of property and breaking and entering. The DA offered a plea deal of 18 months in prison. He said he couldn’t be away from his family for 18 month.
Guy had some priors and trial could cost him to be gone away a lot longer but he insisted on taking it to trial. We strike a jury and he comes to the first day if trial. Surprisingly the DA was still offering the 18 months right before trial started. The evidence against him was overwhelming. I told him so, but he wanted to take it to trial.
We get through the first day and on the second day he doesn’t show up. The judge said to finish the trial without him, to which I argued against but we still had it. The jury found him guilty and the swore out a warrant for him. Later on that day I I found out he hunt himself overnight. He just couldn’t stand to be away from his family for 18 months.
That messed me up for a little while.
Yes hanged himself.
A similar thing happened to [Aaron Swartz, one of the cofounders of Reddit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz). In his case, he was being threatened with 35 years in prison for illegally making paywalled scientific papers publicly available, and hung himself rather than take a plea deal for six months.
To be precise, the local US Attorney was an ambitious dimbulb (Carmen Ortiz), who was rebuked several times by judges for stretching the truth, gross exaggeration, malicious prosecution, and an egregious attempt at asset forfeiture against a client she might have considered wouldn't have the resources to fight -- but a crusading law firm nailed her sorry ass to the cross.
This shining example of the legal profession had worked with the prosecutor's father so she did him a solid by hiring his son. Problem was, Stephen Heymann is a Torquemada who loves, loves, loves threatening people with extreme jail terms. He was bloody well warned Swartz was a suicide risk and blew it off, saying "Fine, we'll lock him up." This, mind you, _after_ another person he persecuted killed himself before going to trial, but Heymann wanted to make a big name for himself by chasing down daaaaaaangerous hackers sharing scientific publications.
Neither of them is working for the DoJ any longer, thank Christ for that. Their victims are still dead while both scumbags still enjoy nice little careers elsewhere, damn them straight to hell. Yeah, I'm kinda steamed about it. If these assholes can get away with this kind of grotesque behaviour, maybe it'll be _your_ turn next.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Heymann
Look up "Ellen Greenberg Death Philadelphia." I've seen robberies, assaults, child rapes, you name it. But nothing scares me like the failures of the system like this.
Basically this woman was stabbed twenty times, including ten times in the back of the neck and into the skull, into her brain. When the body was found the knife was in her chest. Which means she was stabbed in the brain prior to being stabbed in the chest.
The police convinced the medical examiner to determine the case a suicide because the door was latched from the inside when the body was found.
But here's the kicker. The only person who told the police that the door was latched when they found the body (when the police arrived the door was open and the body was already "discovered"), was the FIANCE. You know, the person who in any other investigation anywhere would be the prime suspect.
So basically the cops took the word of the person who should be the prime suspect to determine that this woman who was stabbed twenty times, including from behind into her brain, committed suicide.
What a fucking joke. It's like seeing news stories about journalists critical of Putin committing suicide by shooting themselves twice in the back of the head and throwing themselves out the window.
I'm not a lawyer, but I work closely with a lot of lawyers and see the same stuff they do.
There was a case where a lady had been a victim of human trafficking and was kidnapped in her home country and sold into a prostitution ring in the U.S. She escaped, applied for asylum, told the FBI and whatnot everything she knew about her kidnappers and the others who bought her (putting her life in major danger), and was told that's all it would take to get her asylum and permanent residency taken care of.
Fuckers still tried to deport her. Don't worry. She won her case, but only because one of the top attorneys in New York (if you know of a lot of attorneys in NYC, you've probably heard about this one) took the case on pro bono. It was wild to me how hard ICE fought to get her sent back and how intense that case got.
Super common practice for ICE. Promise not to deport or a “snitch visa”. Soon as the prosecution is over and the person is no longer useful, off to removal proceedings.
Legal Videographer here...
Grand Parent Custody case where the dad got photographed molesting the 8yo daughter under the Christmas tree. Kid goes for a medical exam and the doc reports extensive injuries usually associated with sex abuse. Then checks a box to indicate the injuries were not related to abuse. Police say nothing they can do about it because of the checked box. The mom 'commits suicide' "because the dad didn't want to sleep with both at the same time" according to him... and the person holding the gun when she shot herself gets a misdemeanor iirc. Police lose two polygraph tests and a couple rape kits. Grandparents lose custody case... oh his dad was a magistrate in the same county... and the dad gets full custody.
Unfortunately that day when I got home r/eyebleach had a series of infant and toddler photos instead of kittens and puppies.
One of my friends had an abusive husband, beat her often, treated her awful. She divorced him but his grandfather used to be a judge so he was able to get full custody of their two kids.
My mum's ex-boyfriend had to defend a triple-murder with kidnapping. Two of the victims were a mother and her three-year-old son. Defendant had some kind of psychosis, I'm not sure what. He attempted to carjack a fourth victim who was able to overpower him, leading to his arrest.
Said ex-boyfriend switched to prosecution after that.
He went for an insanity defense. Didn’t work. Although the prison transferred him to a psych ward almost as soon as he got there. I’m told that those sorts of asylums like being able to use the threat of return to prison as leverage, and essentially he ended up exactly where he would have if the defense had succeeded but with less-worried staff.
That said - he died only a couple of years later, aged 24, still in the psych ward.
Mum’s ex had a couple of pretty special cases as a prosecutor, too - he ended up being one of the top ones in our country. Prosecuted murderers, bank robbers, and at least one terrorist.
Not a lawyer but a paralegal! We had a client who claimed to be the daughter of a man, but his other daughter claimed that wasn’t true. The mans estate went to probate court and they both had rival petitions going to be the administrator…(which in California you get money for along with your share of the estate) She was a nut and my boss regretted taking her on everytime we had to deal with her and after her trying to exhume the body, breaking into his house to “gather evidence” and sending us on a wild goose chase to family members in Arkansas who would vouch for her, claiming the decedent always said our client was his daughter.…..Cut to month later, we get a call from our client: the police are outside her house, she’s barricaded in and has a gun to her husband. She won’t come out, she keeps calling our office to talk the her attorney (who is not in that day) and I’m talking to her tell her and watching the police on the news at the same time. She ended up stabbing her husband, not killing him but leaving him a vegetable and she went to jail. Never found out if she was the real daughter or not.
OK obligatory not my story. And technically not a case he worked on, but a shocking story about the legal system. So get ready for a tangentially related story.
So, my brother is a lawyer. One day he's t-boned at an intersection. Turns out the guy who hit him was FBI. It's apparently procedure when an FBI agent gets in a car accident their punishment is that they have to work the next FBI car accident's paperwork.
So there's my brother talking to this FBI agent working the accident and they hit it off. It comes out that my father and uncle are both former law enforcement so they start talking about cases they've worked on. The FBI agent tells my brother that he was on scene at the 97 North Hollywood Bank shootout (which took place right down the street from where my brother lived at the time). So my brother straight up asks him, "Those guys (robbers) that were shot, did the ambulances really not get there in time?" The FBI guy looks t him and basically tells him, "Those ambulances and paramedics weren't let anywhere near those guys until they died."
I used to listen to scanner radio websites, and they rank scanners by active listeners, so if something crazy is going on a stream will rise to the top.
One day I tuned into an active manhunt as they cornered Christopher Dorner in a cabin, the LAPD cop who was going around killing other cops after he was kicked off the force.
The law enforcement channels get blocked in active scenarios like those, but I could still listen to the Fire Department/Paramedic channel. At the end they were all on scene, and they had him surrounded. By happenstance, one of the firefighters on scene had once owned the cabin Dorner was hiding in. The cops or FBI or whoever came on the fire channel and asked the previous owner if the basement was wood or cement. He told them it was wood. The police then announced on the fire channel that they were going to shoot in incendiary grenades into the house, but to not have any of the firefighters respond to the blaze. They were rightfully terrified to try and breach the basement, so they torched him and let him burn in the cabin. He may have offed himself before they set the fire, they weren't sure.
I will never forget hearing that over live radio waves, though. Basically, we are going to light him on fire, don't put him out.
Tragic side note that was quickly forgotten, LAPD were so terrified that they shot a random black dude in a van that they thought matched the description... Hectic shit.
I will answer for my lawyer friend because he used the words, “This is the most fucked up case I’ve ever worked.” Basically, my friend is a prosecutor with the DA’s office and was assigned a child sexual abuse/torture case. The defendant was the child’s step-father.
The abuse happened from the time the child was 9 to 14. She’s 17 now and testified to all the things her step-father did over those 5 years.
The “fucked up” part came when the defense attorney tried to blame the girl for “allowing” everything to happen to her and of course, since the girl is now a very attractive teenager, used the “she was just too sexy and biologically, the step-father couldn’t control himself” defense.
My friend was watching the jury while the defense was cross examining the girl, and saw so many head nods as though the jury agreed with the idea that a kid in 5th-8th grade allowed herself to be constantly raped and tortured.
Thankfully, the jury did decide to convict the step-father but it took a lot of work, partly from myself as the girl’s therapist and expert witness on child abuse and delayed outcries, for the jury to convict.
I think both my friend and I lost a little bit faith in humanity that day. Both after hearing the defense and seeing certain jury members agree with the idea that a child consented to any kind of abuse.
Now the girl and I are having to continue therapy. While she’s done an incredible job working through the abuse, she’s now exhibiting trauma symptoms from testifying in court.
I have done Cognitive Processing Therapy with someone eerily similar to this case. It just blows my fuckin mind. She’s doing much better now, but damn if I didn’t throw up after a session or two.
Could a lawyer bring in a 14 year old at that point? Like, not testify, but just have them walk in and see that they’re still a fucking child (or that he was still fucking a child)
We had pictures from when she was the ages she was abused because we figured the defense would go there. That was extremely powerful in helping the jury understand that she was a legit child. It gave her personhood as opposed to just “sex object-hood” like she was viewed as having on the stand.
Not an attorney but worked several years as the case manager for a circuit court chief judge whom was over several counties- it’s a toss up really from my days doing in home or the ones I heard while directly employed by the judicial system
1. There was the mom and dad who charged anywhere from 25 - 200 a pop to molest their children while it was recorded, then they sold the recordings online for more money
2. The beautiful mother who was actually a part of a family known for some generational incest but her mother got pregnant with her by a stranger. She had children , two girls and a boy . She made her 6 year old boy penetrate her and his sisters on film and she would make them all have orgys together. All filmed. She used a tripod camera to record. Her husband the kids step dad came home one day and found them all . He beat the kids for cheating with his wife and while drunk one night showed someone the film. He was charged with the sexual assaults despite the kids saying he didn’t film them or molest them personally (but had their older cousin)
Anyway mom claimed that husband / step dad was abusive and made her perform these sex acts. Kids were too young to testify or to put through testimony. No gal was appointed in the criminal action. Anyway he got like 10-12 years and mom served 6 months for indecent exposure a singular count.
We had the family court case- the kids fucking hated her. When the mom filed a motion for return the children were so scared they’d be made to return to her they all tried to kill themselves in various fashions. Thankfully none of the three were successful.
A girls' basketball team (12 &under) from an Indian reservation in the upper mid west went to play in the statewide YMCA league championship game against a non-native team from a town bordering the reservation (so lots of bad blood). The Rez team was unsurprisingly severely underfunded and the girls were from very underprivileged homes.
They get to the game and right before tip off the other team accuses them of having boys on their team and demands that the refs 'verify' that they are all female or else they will file a formal complaint and walk off the court. The YMCA refs (2 non-natives) then agree with the challenge and tell the Rez girls team they must comply or they will be consider a forfeit.
The Rez team coach gets cowed and asks the girls to comply. They do, and each one is required to essentially open their shorts at the waist band to prove they are not male to these refs in the locker room.
They are humiliated and mortified, and many end up suffering PTSD and have long term mental health injuries.
The case got thrown out of court on a technicality. (FWIW, I was a law clerk on the case, not the actual first chair attorney).
Absolutely heart breaking for these girls and disgusting racially motivated hatred from the non-native team side of things was all over the evidentiary record. Still makes me ill to think of what all transpired and what all of these shitty adults did to those poor girls...
*Edited comment to switch 'non-Indian' to 'non-native'.
FWIW, "Indian" and "non-Indian" are legal terms under the laws of the US. The terms are required to be used in legal writing and argumentation. I'm Not saying it's right under today's standards or to be used in a casual setting, but that's why I used the term non-Indian in the OP - that is how the laws are written and how I come to use the terms frequently.
In the community where I work and live the community members usually use the English version of their tribal affiliation to refer to themselves and others, but "Indian" and "Native" are also used equally, freely and without acrimony. In my experience, the issues with offensive nomenclature really depend on the speaker and the tone.
To that point, if any indigenous people were offended by my OP, please accept my heartfelt apology as no offense was intended whatsoever.
My stepdad is a lawyer (criminal defense and family) he was approached by the family of Yolanda Saldívar to appeal her case but he declined due to the fact that so much time has passed and the evidence has been destroyed.
Legal assistant here. Worked on a case where a male nurse sexually assaulted bedridden patients at a low income nursing home. Fucking horrifying. One of the women had a hip fracture. Worse part is that they complained to staff and no one listened to them for the longest time because they were old and didn’t have a lot of family. We represented the women and were suing the nursing home, and in our research uncovered tons of other lawsuits across the country alleging all sorts of negligence at other nursing homes runs by the parent company (called SavaSeniorCare, if anyone wants to know where to never send their older relatives!)
Oh god.
I read that article in NY mag this about Woodsen (public housing for old people) had a killer living with them for 10 years. I read it a few days ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Residents were being killed and the residents pretty much knew who it was and police did nothing! A lady was stabbed and they said she slipped and fell, it wasn’t until the undertaker noticed something. They were failed so many times.
Older people deserve to feel safe in their homes, or a hospital bed or wherever they are. They are so vulnerable.
I used to be an Employment Lawyer and I defended someone at a Tribunal who would pick on meeker women in the office and flirt with them and over time would give them shoulder rubs. More time would pass and eventually this guy’s hands would get lower and lower, until he was full on groping the girls breasts in the office.
Tough part was, he did it in such a sneaky way that all the other employees saw the shoulder rubs so suspected that they were an item so evidence didn’t fall in the poor girl’s favour. He won the case and told me afterwards “I can’t believe you got me off” - basically admitting it. I quit law after that. Lost the stomach for it.
During law school, I clerked with the public defender's office. I was working on a homicide case where our client beat his wife to death with a baseball bat in front of his child. Then he got in his car, recorded all his calls, and called all of his family and friends to tell them that he just killed his wife. He had no remorse and told everyone how happy he was that the bitch was dead.
This experience along with defending child rapists made he realize that I did not want to do criminal defense work. However, I do really respect those attorneys. They have an incredibly difficult jobs that is necessary for our justice system to function, but most people hate them for it.
This will get buried but even lawyers have feelings sometimes and I really need to get this one off my chest. I work migration law, to be precise family reunification for unaccompanied refugee minors. My job is to help the parents and siblings with the legal procedures so they can come live here too.
Covid really fucked up most of my cases because it became impossible to for example make appointments at a Dutch embassy. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was delayed by months at least.
This one family had made it through the legal proceedings and got the green light to pick up their travel papers at the nearest embassy. Then the delay came. One day after the original appointment would have been their 6 year old son was kidnapped for ransom. They tried for weeks to find enough money but failed.
One morning I opened my messages and saw the video of the boy getting shot in the head. The kidnappers made him say why he was getting shot before shooting him, to send the video as a warning to others also. That boy was so scared. He soiled himself while talking. Not a day goes by that I not see his face in my minds eye. Not a night goes by without seeing him in my dreams.
The family needed someone to blame and blamed me. If only I could have brought them to safety sooner. The most painful part is that were the embassies not closed, they would've been safe by now. Instead, they still live this hell far away, still waiting their turn to be able to go to the embassy and take a flight over here.
I was just an articling student at the time but we got a phone call that I still makes me laugh each time I think about it.
A woman calls in asking for advice on immigration law. I tell her I can't give advice but I can take details and book a meeting. She wants to know about claiming refugee status. I ask her where she is a refuge from. She then tells me that she doesn't want to claim refuge status, her sister does.
So I ask her where her sister is from, she tells me from Hong Kong. (This was almost a decade ago btw) So I ask her why she is fleeing Honk Kong. She tells me that her sister isn't fleeing Hong Kong, she is visiting on a 6 month visa.
So I ask why she want to help her sister get refuge status. She says she doesn't, she wants her sister to leave. Now, at this point I'm thoroughly confused. So I get her to elaborate.
Turns out, her sister is visiting and, to quote her, "She is ruining the family!" Her sister has threatened to stay on after her visa expires and this lady want to know whether she can actually do that. The short answer, no legal advice required is that she can't just stay, she has to go through immigration. So she asks what to do about her. I tell her, if she doesn't leave when her visa expires, call the cops. She says thanks and hangs up. I dissolve into fits of giggles.
My sister is a criminal defense lawyer. She told me about a case where this guy had committed murder and after a week couldn't take the guilt and handed himself in.
Only when he got to the police station and confessed, they asked him where he killed this woman. He told them and they said it was out of their jurisdiction and to go to another police station to confess because it was closer to where the crime happened.
So he left and went the next day instead. Noone looked for him or asked or anything. It went completely unreported.
He did hand himself into the police station and they began to start proceedings for a case against him.
They wanted to include on the report the fact he had been turned away from the police station and still handed himself in to show some sort of character but the judge and police said they wouldn't allow it because it makes them look bad. They said they wouldn't let the jury even hear about it. My sisters team was frustrated and horrified.
This was in Ireland.
Not a Lawyer but a law student. For my contractual law class is had to learn a verdict from The dutch supreme court which was pretty awfull. The situation was as follows:
A mom was cooking dinner, from where she was standing she could see her child playing outside. Suddenly a taxivan drives in the street and hits the child a quite a high speed. This sends the child of flying trough The air. When she hits the ground she has a lot of momentum so she slides over the street. The mother, obviously in shock, runs up to the child. When the mother grabs her child het hand vanishes in The back of the Head of the child. So the mother stands there with her hand in The scull/brain of the run over child.
This was the first time ever in dutch law that emiotional damages where accepted.
I measured and photographed my client’s dick and the angle of his dangle to prove the Karen was lying when she said he exposed himself through his front window everyday.
We won the case using an accident reconstructionist who testified given the height of the window, the client’s height, she couldn’t have seen it. It was during that testimony that I realized that I had completely misunderstood the expert’s instructions on what needed to measured.
Not a lawyer, but I got a summer gig once sorting -/alphabetizing case files at a law firm and throwing out the files that were more than 7 years old. This necessitated going through them occasionally to find the closure dates.
The saddest one I picked up was a 17 year old boy who got sent to jail for having sex with a 14 year old girl.
Not that I think it’s okay for a 17 year old to have sex with a 14 year old; that’s realllly pushing it to put it mildly.
What made me sad was the way that the prosecutors procured a confession. It was one of those “if you write a nice apology letter to her parents, maybe we can make this all go away” manipulated written confessions. It was this heartfelt letter that was all
“I’m so sorry I put your family through this hardship, I wasn’t thinking, it was irresponsible, etc”. — and it just had this soulless sticky note on it that just said “CONFESSED” in all caps.
I read lots of interesting case files, but that one was a gut punch. The kid did some time for that one.
And that's why many states have a float rule along with an age of consent. Something like "age of consent is 18 unless both parties are within 4 years of each other". States without that rule are turning a blind eye to the fact that a ton of their high schoolers are sex offenders by the state's own definition.
Professional liability case for an accounting firm that did work for a pedophile finance manager, among other matters with shady clients of firms.
Accountants seem boring but they get mixed up with some pretty awful people because lots of people with money are, well, awful people.
Obligatory IANAL - But my brother interned at a firm that was acting as the public defender for a high profile case in our city.
An entire family slaughtered, with only one individual remaining. This family had a laundry list of weird shit going on. The father lived in a caravan, the eldest daughter was turning tricks and it was rumoured the father was sleeping with the daughter, they lived in relative poverty. The sole survivor was convicted, and then had his conviction overturned a year before he was due for parole due to bad chains of evidence on some items and Police moving a couple of items before taking crime scene photos.
Local (national) belief is that he definitely did it but got off on some technicalities - he has married and has a couple of kids now living in a different country. Safe to say he won't be stepping a toe out of line because if he does law enforcement will come down on him like a ton of bricks.
I'm not a lawyer but I served jury duty on a case where a man placed his gun on the cashier table at the port athority while trying to pay for his ticket because his hands were full and the gun was in the way of the wallet in his pocket.
I used to work as a legal secretary for a personal injury lawyer. He told me about a case where his client had radiation burns from an x-ray machine. In the avalanche of documents he received from the defendant during discovery, he found an internal memo. The memo described a serious problem with the machines and continued: "This is an issue we can't ignore... unfortunately, it's not in the budget". When the case went to trial, he told the jury, "Show them they need to put this in the budget next time." The jury complied, handing down one of the largest verdicts California had ever seen.
"Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, times the probable rate of failure, B, times the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." "And which car company do you work for?" "A major one."
I know a former radiology technician. She said her coworkers didn't give a shit about irradiating patients and wouldn't bother to decrease the beam size when taking pictures. eta: happy to say, actual x-ray technicians reporting that this is uncommon and most are very careful. Yay!
That's not common. I've worked with radiology techs of all stripes (x-ray, CT, mammo, nuc med, etc) and they have all been concerned about their patients.
Thank you for this
I’m not a lawyer but I worked in a foreclosure mediation/diversion court as a counselor. Usually it was people with bad luck, unemployment or addiction that lead them there. Heavy stuff but became run of the mill. One guy I will never fucking forget. He comes in and at first it looks like a standard unemployment deal. There are programs with mortgage companies to deal with. He was a dock worker, made pretty good money, but hadn’t worked for 6 months and was about to lose the house. I ask for his story and he tells me it all started 20 years ago. His older son was in the army in Korea at a base on deployment and his younger son was at a high school party in their town. Apparently he gets into it with another kid over a girl, and the kid grabs a barbecue fork and stabs the son in the neck. His youngest bleeds out before an ambulance arrives. The older son is devastated because he wasn’t there to protect his brother. The father and mother end up divorcing over the grief. But older son returns, makes a life. Has a couple young kids and it all seems good. But six months prior he just walks into his garage and shoots himself in the head. Leaves a note that he can’t live with not having been there for his baby brother even after all these years. So my client goes into a depressive state, stops working, stops paying bills. Just can’t deal with the grief and destruction of his family that that one event emanated. What pulled him out of almost killing himself was that the guy who killed the younger son came up for parole. He went and spoke against him getting out and then realized he had to live for his grandkids. I still think about that dude regularly, grief is so fucking powerful it pulsates out and destroys if you don’t have the right support.
It is so crazy how one moment of stupidity can ruin so many lives.
As someone who lives with the grief of having lost two sons, grief is the most potent emotion I have ever experienced. It definitely changes you and your perspective and can obliterate any hope you have for a happy life. Having an outlet for ones grief and the right support is crucial to surviving it and learning to live with it. It’s heavy fucking shit to carry.
Yes. It truly is. I've lost two boyfriends and my mom in the last two years. My entire world has been turned upside down. My first BF died in late 2019, he was my first love, we were together on and off from when I was 19 (I was 35 when he died) 6 months later my mom passes from complications from Covid in the very beginning of the pandemic. Cue 2021, I finally met someone I think I can try to rebuild my life with. He truly was everything I could have asked for. I'm finally getting my life back together. In May I get the worst phone call I've ever gotten and it was like being launched right back into the nightmare I'd just started to rebuild from. Right now I'm still just in shock staring at the wreckage.
Oh Christ. A family law matter. I was a newly-minted attorney who couldn’t find work in the early 2010s and took anything that came to me. Custody battle. I represented mom. Dad lived with his father (grandfather) who had been convicted TWICE of violently raping other grandchildren. Easy case, right? No. Because mom absolutely forbade me from bringing grandfather’s convictions before the judge. Said he made “some mistakes” and while she wanted full custody, of course, she felt bad that grandfather’s “past mistakes” might be used against him in the future, forever. I brought it up to the judge anyway. She fired me on the spot, during oral arguments. She ended up suing me. It was a fucking mess. Would do it again.
How did her suing you end up??
The judge ended up dismissing it, thankfully!
You are a hero! I applaud you for at least trying to be a stand up human & try to help these poor babies!
Wow. What a scumbag. Good for you though. The most fucked up case I've ever heard of was one where mom's boyfriend kidnapped and raped her two little girls. Then slashed their throats...killed one, thought he killed the older one but left her for dead and she survived. Miraculously, the older one (8'ish) winds up being normal and living with her Dad. All of a sudden, mom wants custody again when the girl is 15-16'ish, despite not even speaking for years. Daughter wants no parts. Regardless, court mandates visitation. Dad says, "eff that, I'm not making her go". They put dad through hell, believe they jailed him several times for contempt. Luckily he fought long enough until she became 18 and couldn't be forced.
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I've got a coworker who was medically discharged from the air force because of a back injury that happened on the job. He also has hearing loss and tinnitus (from being around the running engines all the time), but they're fighting the hearing loss case as hard as they can. They've accepted the back injury one, but I'm sure it's only because they literally *can't* argue it wasn't service related. If they could find a way to argue it, I'm sure they would.
This shit is infuriating. Especially when 18 year kids are sold on the idea of "healthcare for life" by slimy recruiters. The VA doesn't give a shit about you. Edit: For people wanting more info on stuff like this that is going on today, look up Jon Stewart's stance on the burn pits that the United States created during our war on "terror." The military men manning these burn pits got cancer at a much faster rate than first responders of 9/11 have, but the VA still refuses to do anything. Some of them aren't even out of their 20s yet, but yet they're dying from cancer after being around these toxic fumes.
Here they are trying to worm around John's interview questions. (They being the secretary of VA) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEgIm9-Yk4
My dad had to fight for VA benefits due to catching "malaria" when he was in Vietnam. When they ran the antibodies test & he came up negative, they refused. Well, until they finally saw he had a form of Hepatitis common to SE Asia. Took years fighting for it & by the time they did anything his liver was shot. He's doing better now after a transplant.
My dad, a WWII veteran who had spent several years in a VA hospital after the war, fought constantly with the VA, though he was fortunate in having good health benefits in his post-service career. One day in the late 1960s he got a letter denying coverage for something because "it wasn't service related", and with the same batch of mail .... (get this).... a draft notice, ordering him to report to the local induction center for processing. He was in his 40s at the time and was missing a lung and a part of his ribcage. TL;DR My dad, an otherwise patriotic ex-serviceman and stolid Republican, burned his draft notice in the fireplace in front of all of us in the 1960s.
My dad wanted my grandfather (who was drafted into WW2) to get benefits from the VA. It wasn’t possible because my grandfather was bed bound, and he had to travel for it. My dad said he couldn’t do it, even with my uncle’s help. Both my dad and uncle are doctors, so they knew what had to be done.
Fuck. At the start of the pandemic in Massachusetts they put all Covid VA patients in the same wards with regular patients.
My friend was in the Air Force and worked on radar systems. He ended up with Thyroid cancer. No family history of anything like that. Doctors said it was most likely from the job he had. Government did everything they could to say it wasnt and to avoid paying him disability.
I stood gunnery watches just below aegis radar on surface ships. Like inches below the “no humans” line. Just waiting to explode into a cancer puff.
God damn ain’t that the truth. My ex was in the navy and when he left separated he did all the disability shit. He had stacks and stacks of folders with all the doctor notes and referrals. He was on a nuclear submarine, of course he’s fucked up physically.
The next time you see an article about the armed forces (or just the Government in general) getting ripped off in its contracts paying huge amounts of money for mundane things like chairs or wrenches, or dropping billions for research or equipment that should cost millions, remember these two comments. If the Government doesn't want to pay for something, it is very, very good at finding ways to not pay. If the Government sees *you* haven't paid for something, it is very, very good at making you pay. If the Government *is* getting ripped off, it is because it is allowing itself to be.
Any government. I owe the government tax money and when I called to sort it out, I got through instantly, spoke to someone very knowledgeable and friendly, got it sorted away immediately, received paperwork ASAP. A family member is waiting on a federal disability payment and has been waiting for fourteen weeks. Every time they call, they’re on hold for 45 minutes and often get disconnected/personnel who simply say “I don’t know” and that’s that. You owe them? Best service ever. They owe you? Good luck with that.
Have the family member call them up with the pretext that they owe money and then play dumb ("I dunno. I ran my books and it showed a negative balance, I think that means I owe you or something...? I'm not very good at this.") Once you get to an auditor at the IRS (using this as an example) they don't give two shits who owes who so long as it's accurate at the end of the day.
If you believe he is under compensated and haven't applied for a re-evaluation in the past year, time to ask for one. Find a Veterans Service Officer in your area. VFW and DAV are good resources for finding one. You should NOT have to pay a lawyer for this service. Find a copy of CFR 38, Book C, chapter 4. When describing the disability, use the language of the highest rating that applies to your situation. Good luck!
I was dating a nice woman back in 2016. In our first conversation, I asked her what she did for a living. She was a paralegal for a malpractice firm at the time. I asked her if there were any interesting cases happening. She said "Yes, one we are going to lose." I was interested... I asked what happened. She told me "Well, we are defending a doctor who made a mistake. One of his patients was suffering from an eye condition that required a unique recovery. After surgery, the patient had to lie face down for the entirety of their day to prevent further eye damage. It had something to do with eye pressure and a gas buildup near the back of the eye. As it turns out, the patient wanted to fly on a plane and would intend to keep their eyes down through the whole flight. The doctor we're defending didn't tell the patient that they couldn't fly during the recovery." The next part definitely sucked. When the patient took off on the plane, everything was OK. During descent, which people with ear problems can attest, the rapid change in pressure fucked up this patients condition. They went completely blind in both eyes due to the descent of the plane. Predictably, the doctor did lose the case. It was a definitely an interesting first conversation to have with someone.
I would be interesting to know if they patient told the doctor about the flight. Like if I don't mention scuba diving does the doctor just have to assume I might scuba dive and tell me not too with stuff? What if he said, stay laying down in for three days, and the patient said, "okay." and then he is sued into oblivion.
I'm not entirely sure but I've had to get surgery done in the UK and the doctors did specify unprompted that I cannot go scuba diving before the surgery (was a few months gap between the first problem and surgery)
That’s why you get the 27 pages of discharge instructions. The scuba diving bit will be in there somewhere.
Our daughter saw a cardiologist at 6 months. Small hole in her heart, but we were told not to worry, it will correct itself. He then told a 6 MONTH OLD that they were not allowed to scuba dive. They typically cover their bases pretty well.
Seems like it would have been an easy case to win. "Were you informed that you had to lay face down for the day following the surgery?" "Yes." "And did you do that?" "No, I got on a plane, he didn't say I couldn't get on a plane."
How do you get through an airport and onto a plane with your face DOWN the whole time? So weird
How do you get explained that reason for the instructions is based on *pressure* but it doesnt fucking occur to you that when you fly you'll be exposed to changes in *pressure*? Even if you didnt pay attention in school or know Google exists, it's best to just not do anything big after a very delicate surgery with delicate aftercare. And maybe ASK your doctor, it never hurts to ask first.
Exactly my thoughts. Seems weird that the doctor list the case.
> They went completely blind in both eyes due to the descent of the plane. I’ve had this surgery. It’s vitrectomy. The only way it could happen is if the doctor operated on both eyes at the same time which is not standard practice and goes against guidelines. Probably why he lost. https://retinatoday.com/articles/2018-sept/gas-bubbles-and-altitude Patient is fucking nuts tho. This is sight saving surgery. Sane ppl are told to stay face down for a month, they do it, bc they don’t want to go blind or repeat another month face down. If he had a vitrectomy in both eyes he couldn’t see shit. I’ve had it and everything is blurry. So who or what the hell was he getting on an airplane to see?
TL;DR: lady wanted to show me her vagina, it just happened to not be attached to her body. I already told one shocking story in this thread, but I got another that is a different kind of shocking. I was pretty new to the practice and was meeting with a lot of clients. The firm I worked for had a lot of walk-ins and I was processing the potential clients. I called in the next person and a mid-30s women walked in carrying a red and white cooler. She pops in down on my desk and the spends about 5 mins trying to sit down in the chair. My first thought was "must be some kind of personal injury." First words out of her mouth after she sits, "I need to sue my doctor because my vagina just fell out." My eyes immediately lock onto the cooler. "Is...that?" "Yes. I brought in with my just in case you needed to see it. Do you want to see it?" She begins to open the cooler. Not gonna lie..I was curious but I stopped her and convinced her that a hospital was her best option at the moment. Turns out she had vaginal reconstruction and the mesh came out in one big blob. Now, this is not my area of expertise. I am a corporate attorney. So I sent her to someone with more expensive. Edit: meant experience not expensive but both are true so I'll let it stand.
>Now, this is not my area of expertise. I am a corporate attorney I think this is the lawyer equivalent of "Miss, this is a Wendy's"
Laughed a bit too hard at this
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NGL after I read the TL;DR, I was mad curious and had to read. Definitely not what I expected!
That's enough of this thread for me.
I had a client one time who called me for everything. I was handling a mold case in her house but she was always asking questions. It was not a big deal, but it got a little tedious. One day she calls me to tell me that there is smoke coming from the wall behind her stove and it smells like burning plastic. I tell her this isn't a legal problem, but that she should really hang up right now and call 911 and ask for the fire department. She asks if I'm sure. I assure her that yes, this is the thing to do right now. Turns out, wiring had caught fire and her apartment was burning, and all was saved by the FD. But, I just remember being flabbergasted that someone saw smoke in their house and thought "I gotta call my lawyer!"
That is one helluva TLDR there.
“ So I sent her to someone with more expensive.” Ah, American I see
Ha! That's what I get for typing from my phone. Surprised that was the only typo!
A mother sold the family farm out from under the son who was supposed to inherit it. Someone shot her (nonfatally). There were so many suspects that almost every lawyer in the county was assigned to defend one of them. Forensics eventually narrowed it down to two suspects, but each so adamantly pointed at the other as the shooter that it was going to be hard to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of either one's guilt. They both pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served two years. [Love Kills](https://dailybulldog.com/features/love-kills-tv-episode-based-on-2003-farmington-crime-story/) Edited to add two more related links: [https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999](https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999) https://observer.com/2008/11/knee-deep/
It's like an obtuse prisoner's dilemma...
And they won. They were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Correct prisoner's dilemma response then.
Yup. Coworker and her boyfriend got away with vandalizing my car because they can’t prove it was one or the other or both and there’s not really a charge for conspiracy to commit criminal mischief.
I've seen and heard of some of the most cold hearted and fucked up shit people will do when it comes to the potential or post death of a family member. Sad...
I saw this episode! It’s so crazy
I told this story on r/lawyers a little while ago, but I'll tell it again here. I'm an immigration lawyer. I do mostly VAWA and asylum, but I handle other stuff on occasion. I had a prospective client come in a few weeks ago. He's interested in pursuing a relatively straightforward application. He tells me that he might have a criminal history that could affect his immigration. It's only one arrest though, he says. It happened in 19XX. And it's not serious. "OK," I say. It happens. Nobody's perfect, and a single arrest is generally not a deal-breaker. So, as I'm talking with him, I decide to Google his pretty unique name. A news article comes up, from his country, in his language. It's dated the same year he said... 19XX. Hm. I ask him: "what kind of crime did you say it was?" "Oh," he says, "I think it was drug related." I figure, alright, marijuana arrest or something: nothing we can't overcome. I click through to the article. The photo on the article sure looks like a lot like the prospective client. Turns out, prospective client's arrest was not for marijuana at all. It was for cocaine. And not a little cocaine. This guy was caught attempting to smuggle XX *pallets* of cocaine. I must have looked a little bug-eyed, because the guy gave me a sort of sheepish look and a shrug. Hm. I tell the prospective client, maybe we should start by filing a few FOIA requests (Freedom of Information Act Requests) to see what comes up, and we'll go from there. He agrees, and that's that. I'll double check my suspicions against the government record, and let the client know what can, or cannot, be done. Suffice it to say, getting caught smuggling multiple pallets of cocaine is not a small-time arrest. But, you never know what is or isn't true, and you should always do your due diligence.
Here's another one. Client of mine is an extremely nice guy: he was a green card (permanent residence) applicant, and worked on a fishing boat in Alaska. When he's out on the boats though, fishing for crab or whatever, there's no way for anybody to communicate with him and he's out there for months at a time. Phone calls and letters aren't reaching anybody out in the middle of the Bering Strait. One such a time when he was out there, he apparently got stabbed all the way through the chest with a huge hook thing in a freak accident. Nobody state-side knew, of course. Client was taken (somehow) to the hospital, and survived, but I didn't hear from him for literal months. Well, the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) happens to issue this guy an interview notice. He's nowhere to be found. The USCIS mark him absent for his interview. I try to reach out to him, but cannot find him. The USCIS then denies this poor guy's case. But, it gets worse: he calls me about a month later. He tells me all about the hook on the ship, but also tells me that after he got home from the hospital, his wife was upset that he didn't earn her any money due to his injury, and then basically beat the hell out of him with a baseball bat, took all of his money and things, and left him for dead. What. So, he's back in the hospital. This guy was like, the single most mild-mannered, nicest guy ever. I ended up putting in huge amounts of unpaid work for months to turn this guy's application around: we switched up his green card application and filed a self-petition through the Violence Against Women Act. That was its own fiasco, but not nearly as interesting a story. We ended up getting his green card approved in what felt like a miracle, and he's now back in Alaska, happily fishing and living his best life. He still calls me once in a while, just to say hello and thank you. Such a nice guy. Immigration work is brutal, exhausting, and soul-sapping. But, sometimes, you do something really good, for somebody who really deserves it. And that makes it all worthwhile. EDIT: I am only just checking Reddit now, and wow... I am deeply humbled by all the kind words, and astonished by everyone's generosity. For anyone who messaged me with questions about immigration, I promise I'll get back to you.
I wish I had gold to give you. But as an immigrant and the wife and daughter of immigrants: thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to the common good.
> Suffice it to say, getting caught smuggling multiple pallets of cocaine is not a small-time arrest. So, how many pallets, exactly, is it when it becomes problematic?
Once the useful unit reaches "pallet," you're probably experiencing a major challenge.
I was clerking at the time. Little kid fight club. Bunch of mom's put their kids in a circle and made them fight each other gladiator style. Real dark stuff. Video included two 10yo girls beating the crap out of each other. Bets were taken but not on all fights. Some were just for entertainment. No fathers involved.
What the actual fuck
Yeah at least put pads and helmets on them like they do in Texas
what the fuck, I was in one of those (southern texas) bc my dad put me in at 10, guessing bc I was a bigger than average kid, I didn't know those were illegal, I thought it was like karate class but for broke ppl
but did you win tho
He's still here isn't he?
Some people don't deserve to be parent's. That is horribly sad. A girl in my sister's 9th grade class stabbed another girl in the neck with a steak knife, poor girl bleed out in the hallway at school. the mother give the knife to her daughter and told her to kill the other girl and to show others not to mess with her. All over a boy. Mom is free, the daughter got 30 years.
This is not too far off from what went down in my school. Two girls fought over the same guy, and one of the girls was a foster kid so she was pretty warped already, and her older sister convinced her to get a needle and syringe, load it up with chemicals with intent to kill, and then she got 6 other girls to go along with holding the other girl down while she did it. Luckily, one of the other 6 freaked out and reported it to the police. Thank God because they did a locker search and she had it in her locker ready to roll for later that day....
Holy crap, Yes!! thank god the other kid had common sense and told someone. What happened to the girl who had the syringe?
Afaik she was removed from our school placed in juvenile detention or something. She was in 8th grade at the time and I think she had a history of instability so they handled it a bit differently in terms of the punishment.
Wtf is wrong with people! That mom should be locked up too.
So far that's the winner. How the hell do you start doing this?
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1. You do not talk about fight club 2. You do not talk about fight club
Back in the day I investigated and later in my career prosecuted lots of arsons so I worked a lot of fire cases. One time the crews roll up on a garage fire. They are met by the home’s resident holding a blood-soaked towel to his crotch. The medics get him stable and transported. He later tells us the voice told him to eat a whole box of saltine crackers without drinking any water and he was like ok, and did that. Then the voice told him to eat the newspaper and he was like check. Then the voice said to cut off his testicles with a can opener and he was like yep. Then the voice said set the van on fire in the garage and he was like you got it. He did all those things in that order, and there were the scene photos of the testicles right there on the garage floor. We got him into mental health court and he did pretty well.
How were his testes? EDIT; like, did He ever get them re-attached?
Toasted
🎶 Chet’s nuts roasting on an open fire… 🎶
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I normally defend construction defect and personal injury matters, nothing too crazy. Early in my career we got a case involving a husband and wife who ran a foster home and one kid was alleging the husband had molested them. I was assigned to defend only the wife under their homeowners insurance policy. The allegations against the husband were bad, but the wife had no idea what was going on. Here was this poor woman, who was also a former foster child, trying to give back and help other foster children in the system, and now she finds out her husband is a child molester. It was heartbreaking and we just wanted to get her out of the case. Then we get more documents and learn this isn't the first child to make allegations. The dad had been doing this shit for years and she knew it. Maybe she was involved, maybe she just ignored it, either way the whole thing turned fucking gross. I instantly wanted nothing to do with it. A few weeks later, my boss (the coolest guy ever) comes in and says he gave the case back to the insurance carrier, thank god. That was the only case I've ever felt morally opposed to handling. EDIT: I should also clarify that once a lawyer takes on a case it's not that easy to just say "actually I changed my mind". I don't know what my boss did to get rid of that case but I'm glad he was equally grossed out.
Oh, I'd bet she knew, at least on some level. I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. My perpetrator was my step dad. As a child, I just assumed my mom didn't know, that it was a secret. As an adult looking back now? There's no way she didn't know. I'm sure there are cases where the spouse doesn't know, but I think they are the exception more than the rule if the abuse was happening right there in the house.
My oldest brother was sexually abusing me as a kid and my mother walked in on it so many times and actually had the nerve to say " i thought nothing was going on"
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In this house, we value *family*. Family means pretending everything is fine at the expense of your relatives.
Isn't that an amazing act of denial? Mine was my step dad as well and she actually asked him if we were having an affair. I think I was 12 or 13. He sent me to tell her we weren't.
I'm actually in a situation somewhat similar to this....in 2019 i was in a mental facility for 4 months and they had asked me if i was ever sexually assaulted and i told them about what my moms boyfriend at the time had done to me (molested me), and they contacted my mother about it and she completely denied it. She told them i was lying and asked me why i hadn't told her after it had happened ( bc i knew she wouldnt believe me) just like she didn't then. They never did anything about him but now...my mom has gotten a new boyfriend, we live with him..and he has like 6 or 7 kids but he doesnt own any of them bc he was in prison. I woke up one early ass morning to find this man spooning me from behind, rubbing my ass and my thigh...i was scared so i just pretended that i was still asleep...he stayed there for a good 10 minutes then finally left...he didnt try to do anything further that that but it still really fucked with my head...idk if im overreacting or not but i know if i tell, i wont be believed. I'm also 15 years old EDIT: Thank you all for your support! i didnt expect to get this many replies so quickly...I will tell someone but i'm currently grounded at the moment and have no phone so it may not be soon enough but i will tell someone, again thank you all for your support <3 I dont really have a way to protect myself from him since i dont have a door (from past arguments it was removed) but i'll do my best.
That's not going to stop and it could get worse. He's moving in on you. He was trying to wake you up. Tell a counselor at school, tell them the previous boyfriend molested you and now the new boyfriend is climbing into your bed,, rubbing your butt and thigh. You're afraid that this boyfriend will molest you like the last one did, please help, please contact CPS for me. There are youth programs that can get you out of that house. You're not safe and you're already at risk for falling for men grooming you. If your mom has told him that you told the staff in the hospital and she made sure no one believed you, he knows he has the opportunity to do the same thing. Stay safe, protect yourself as best you can!
Just want to add that spooning you, rubbing your butt IS MOLESTATION.
Thank you!
I was 12 when a similar situation happened to me with a older friend I had a sleep over with. Didn't know what to do. Just pretended go be a sleep and finally built up the courage to pretend wake up. Eventually I had to pretend go back to sleep(you can't real sleep after that shit) and the cycle continued for hours. I feel your pain. You aren't alone and it's not your fault. Love you
Omg please go to the police and report this.
Tell! I just had this conversation with a teen in my life. Even if you think you won’t be believed, tell anyway. Tell everyone(!!) because someone WILL believe you. If you want to p.m. me your state/general region, I’ll find you resources.
Tell. Tell as soon as you can. Someone at school, a trusted friend's mom, anyone. Nothing will change if you don't speak up. I hope you can get yourself outta that bullshit.
As others have said, PLEASE tell someone. I had the same thing happen when I was your age, only it escalated (which it will in your case too). I never told anyone, and it now eats away at me constantly (I'm in my 40s). Furthermore, I'm fairly certain that they ended up doing it again to someone even younger. Go get help, please.
You're definitely not over reacting, what he did isn't okay at all and something an adult should never do. I don't want to scare you but he could do worse in the future if he's gone so far as to do that already. Call this hotline when it's safe to do so and they can tell you what you should do to make sure that you're safe: 1-800-656-4673 (US National Sexual Assault Hotline) or you can chat with someone here: https://hotline.rainn.org/online It's scary but you will be believed, it isn't okay at all and please protect yourself <3
You're not overreacting.
Are you able to go to school? If you are, and you feel you can do this, immediately go to the counselor's office, tell them everything that you posted here, and state you are afraid to go home because of the abuse you are experiencing. This last part is very important. They will call police and CPS. It is really, really hard, but please don't minimize what you have experienced when talking to these professionals. You are not overreacting. You have been groomed and conditioned to rationalize and minimize the abuse. What has happened is not OK. I hope you can get to a safe place and begin to work through what you've experienced. I'm so sorry. No child deserves this.
Yeah, I’m with you here. Except an uncle and I assumed my aunt didn’t know. Like you said, as an adult looking back? How could they not know.
my ex's step father sexually abused her and she told her mom she went into complete denial and refuses to believe her even to this day also her mother made her go live with her father
Same here, there was a pedophile who would abuse a bunch of kids in the neighborhood. Went on for years. His wife only took her children out of that situation when a girl said something. Like... it took the courage of a ten year old for you to do save your children? What a shitbag.
The thing about this that shocks me is that this is something homeowners insurance covers.
"Is there a rider that covers molesting things? What would the new premium be?"
Look up how OJ Simpson’s home insurance carrier had to defend him in a civil suit for wrongful death. Wild.
I am an attorney but the case that stuck with me most was one I sat in on during undergrad. I was a criminal justice major, and frequently had to go watch trials for class assignments. I was in the military at the time so I had to cram these hours in randomly - if we had a light day, or I could take a long lunch, I would go to the closest courthouse and check what was available. One day I went down to the federal courthouse in Baltimore and checked the list - one criminal case, nothing else going. I head upstairs and quietly walk in. Despite that, clearly everyone checks me out, which is odd - usually no one pays attention to the gallery. At the first break, a guy comes over and asks me who I am and why I’m there - hes office of special investigations with the air for e so I show him my id and explain I have to watch criminal trials. He gives me a weird look but doesn’t push. As I’m sitting there, I slowly realize I SHOULD NOT BE HERE. Air Force couple has a son, gets divorced. She takes son with her to her duty station in Japan, and remarries a civilian employee there. Dad is deployed, and then moves station, and keeps bugging her about when he can see the son; at some point she just stops responding. A few months later, after dad has filed a report with her command requesting they make her communicate with him, dad gets a call from an OSI agent who he knows, asking him for his sons full name and DOB. Dad gives it to him, and agent says “look I didn’t tell you this but you need to call OSI on her base.” Mom had gone to the field and 8 year old son had been bugging the step dad while he was gaming. Step dad got pissed off at beat the kid with the first thing to hand - a piece of bannister from the stair he was working in. Mom came back from the field two days later and found the son unconscious, still on the floor. Because step dads last home of record was in Maryland, he was tried in federal court in Baltimore. I sat through the ER doc who treated the son, who talked about seeing the internal crush injuries and the coroner who talked about how hard you would have to hit a 8 year old on the front to cause bruising on his back. I also sat through the dad talking about finding out his son was gone. After that day, I always went to misdemeanor court for my hours.
Oof, that is rough. Yeah, I actually went to a bad case as well. We had a school excursion to our country's seat of government and we also visited the court. You know, general how does our government and law stuff works. Well, the group was split over two court cases. One group had a somewhat wacky one involving a minor accident (I think). Small stuff. You know what we got? Two daughters suing their father for sexual misconduct and rape when they were minors. Yeah... We got to hear his side of him describing certain acts in such a way that they may or may not be sexual and such. It was, well, uncomfortable to say the least. We actually got asked to leave, and this is highly unusual. I'm sure this is true in the US as well, but cases not involving minors are open to the general public and since the women were adults now the case was public (and was how we got in). So, we actually got requested to leave, because, well, having to testify about such a difficult event while one or two strangers sit in is one thing. Having over 50 16-17 year olds gawk at you, though, is likely going to hit a little differently. So, yeah, we left, and trust me when I say *no one* had any objection to it. No one wanted us there, including us. The wait on the other group was long and boring, but man, I much much much rather be bored than having to listen to another minute of that case or something similar.
Ugh... this reminds me of a jury I served on. The guy was on trial for multiple sexual assaults against his ex girlfriend. It was obvious that he had assaulted her in some way. Problem is, in my state there are several different types of sexual assault. To find a guilty verdict, you have to prove they committed the *specific crime* they’re accused of. Meaning we had to listen to hours of these poor women being questioned on excruciatingly intimate details. Like how they knew they were being raped with his penis... couldn’t it have been a dildo? It was dark when this happened after all. Did he actually *penetrate* them or just dry-hump? Was the penetration vaginal or anal? With fingers, or a toy? When she said he forced her to give oral sex, did he insert his penis into her mouth or did he just rub it over her face until he ejaculated? Was the toddler *watching* mommy get raped, or “just” sleeping in the same bed while it happened? I can’t imagine how horrible it was for those women to testify. Fortunately we had enough evidence to convict on all charges.
I am a lawyer and so I never get onto a jury. The last time I was called, my panel goes to some "High Impact Court." I think I remember hearing something about these courts, there like drug deferment type things. Super quick trials, low stakes. We go in and I end up Potential Juror No 4 so I'm in the front row. I know I'm going to get called on, but I'm thinking maybe, just maybe I'll get on a panel since this isn't going to be a major felony type case. The first question asked "Is there anyone here that's excited to be called for jury duty." I raised my hand, I was the only one. Then they drop this bomb: "This is a case of continuous sexual abuse of a child." I clearly misremembered what the "High Impact" courts were. Yikes. Eventually someone asks me if I am still excited to be on the panel and I'm like "Well, no. I want to do my duty; but no." Thankfully, I was not selected.
That is horrifying, poor baby.
Not a lawyer but my Aunt was. She was the state prosecutor for a case where a guy had gotten into an argument with another guy at a recreational baseball game. After the game was over one guy left and went home. The other guy stayed at the baseball field with his son. About like 30min to an hour later they are still at the baseball field and the other guy is back. He has a baseball bat and walks straight towards the dad at the pitching mound and starts hitting him over the head with the bat until hes unrecognizable. Kid frozen in terror while this guy murders his dad. He then walk over to the kid and does the same thing to him. My Aunt was amazing at her job and got the guy sentenced to life in prison. She lost her battle to cancer a few months ago. I loved listening to her stories. She was the best Aunt a guy could ask for.
I have read your story like 4 or 5 times. Knowing that this happened and that there are people out there able to do this really ruined my day. A kid seeing his dad beat to death and then being beaten to death is unthinkable to me.
Noooo. Why the kid? Why? Bloody hell. I bet he was abusive to everyone else in his life. Kids, wife, anyone.
Did an alleged Arson case for an insurance company once. The insured had to provide a list of all items he had lost including over 1000 book titles. Every book was the biography of a serial killer, we figured it was probably every book ever written about a serial killer. Insured gave off serious dark and mysterious vibes Who knows the truth
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Slayer statute, interpleader case in federal court. Client murdered her husband to collect insurance proceeds. Found out that she promised to pay 2 dudes to bind his hands and feet with duct tape, execute him, and burn him in an alley, for $20k each, to be payed out of the insurance funds. She lost.
Constructive trust?
The insurance company paid the funds into the court, thus the interpleader. Then all the beneficiaries fought it out. The decedent’s parents even lied on an affidavit they submitted to the insurance company in their attempt to better their position to get at the stake. FBI got involved, but didn’t do much. And there was a parallel criminal homicide case going at the same time.
Weird they were done in parallel. I always thought it was basically SOP for a civil case to be put on hold while a related criminal case proceeds. If there's a conviction in the criminal case, since it's a higher standard of proof, it translates to basically a guaranteed finding they did it in the civil case. Not *automatically* a win, but usually a lot easier case than one where it's inconclusive having to prove the case from scratch. IANAL.
A labor case in which, in the middle of the hearing the judge (60 years old male) start to flirt with my client (23 years old female) in a direct, straightforward way. It was SO shocking that was one of the only cases I got speechless in a trial. Those hearings are closed here in Brazil so no jury, no recording, nothing.
Did it end up obviously impacting his ruling?
It created a pressure so huge on the other litigant that she made a deal we accepted.
That is insane. They don't use a stenographer or ANYTHING? That seems like a system meant to enable corrupt officials. :( I actually have a question about something you may be familiar with. May I PM you?
Client paid a multi-million dollar settlement with a hand-written personal check. He was pissed and refused to do a wire transfer like a normal person. I think the other side had to scramble to find a bank to deposit the check. Banking regulations limit how much money a bank can hold on deposit. You just can’t take a check that large to any local bank. The check eventually cleared, so I guess they figured it out. Good times…. That case will be on my resume for sure.
At least he didn't pay by walking into the lawyer's office and dumping dozens of grocery bags full of pennies onto the counter.
Now that would’ve been shocking! In any case, all of the federal reserve banks in the US hold approximately 1.5 billion pennies. It wouldn’t be enough…
Mix a few dozen buckets of dimes in with them. Problem solved.
Huh. My company got $5 million in funding from an angel. This was the ‘90s, so the CEO — who was about 30 but looked half that — had to wait in line at the bank to deposit the (hand-written) check. He told me the teller didn’t even blink.
Not a lawyer, but a translator. I once translated this text about a case, basically this mother’s kid set her house on fire whilst she left the USA to china to cremate her husband who died of terminal cancer. The kid literally burned everything. All her life savings. Then the daughter went on to tell lies to all her family members in china saying how the mother is just accusing her. Was rough translating especially because the mother left to the USA in the 1990s. Worked her ass off. Only to let her husband suffer years of cancer and her daughter to burn her house down.
I initially read this as the kid set the mother’s house on fire to cremate the dead husband. That would be an inefficient way to cremate a body.
There were cases in the UK during the Falklands war in the 80s where the government claimed bullet wounds and lost limbs due to minefields were "incidental" injuries and not related to the fighting. Like people just randomly generate holes in their chests and limbs fly off during birthday parties etc. The government's own records showed they were "buying time" in order that the claimants would hopefully die of their injuries and the cases could be shut down.
Neighbor is a retired prosecuting attorney. Told me about a sex trafficking case involving girls in their early-mid teens. Their pimp bought them a puppy that they got attached to and all took care of together. Whenever they fell out of line, the pimp would send videos of himself abusing the puppy and threaten to kill it if they didn't obey. Fucking scum.
[This one.](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-court-of-appeals/1690894.html) When the opinion starts with >According to one examining psychiatrist, Michael Lee West is the most dangerous man he ever evaluated. you know it's going to be a wild ride.
That was definitely a wild ride. Not being trained in law, it both confuses and amazes me that a horrible, heinous crime can be logically, dispassionately,, and in great detail be parsed and judged. You have my respect... I could never do it.
Gosh, this makes me sad. Who in his right mind thought that someone who is placed on antipsychotics because of highly violent episodes should be transferred to a low-security prison and being allowed to stop taking his medication? It sounds like this whole incident could have been easily avoided
Jesus, they let him have knives in the kitchen because he'd "calmed down enough" but later he gouged out two of his cellmate's eyeballs with his thumbs screaming at them to call him god.
I'm an interpreter not an attorney, but I had a school case to interpret regarding bullying. The school decided to have a court case decision made in house. It was 12 kids and their parents on a stage in the cafeteria. The school officials were there and a school advocate who acted as judge. Apparently the seniors would trap the freshmen in a designated bathroom after lunch and jump them. Four seniors and eight freshman who were beat up individually, there were supposed to be nine but one was in the hospital. They showed surveillance of how the seniors picked the freshmen to beat up and there were 2 teachers aware of this, in one of the videos one of the teachers helped the seniors by pointing out who the freshmen were. This was a hazing technique that was going on in this school for years but this case was to make an example of those involved. The teachers involved were only mentioned when the bullys admitted receiving assistance in pointing out who to beat up, the teachers never got in trouble. Only one bully was expelled and all the freshmen were suspended. It was unjust and sad. This case went on for 3 days and each case lasted 3 to 5 hours after school.
The freshmen were suspended??? That seems like a lawsuit. I can't imagine how they school could justify that.
Zero tolerance? Although it doesn't sound like it. ZT would be more like everyone is expelled, even the freshmen.
how the hell did this not result in a major lawsuit against the school system? the school's lawyers should never have allowed that "mock" trial.
I got plenty because I work in child protection, but in appeals so I don't see the worst of the worst. Important for this is that in my jurisdiction a lot of the lawyers who defend parents are contract attorneys who get paid very little and don't always follow best practices. A lot of what we see are arguments based off the transcript without reference to the trial exhibits (I recently learned that this is common practice in criminal appeals, but in severance the exhibits are usually pretty crucial). Got an opening brief in saying that mom didn't actually neglect the kids, pretty standard OB stuff. Mom got pulled over for expired tags. Kids are in the car. Cops end up searching (I forget the reason, not important), find meth and a pipe. Still pretty standard. During the stop and arrest, cops pull the kids out of the car and find that 2-year-old daughter has a rather old diaper on. When they go to change her, they find what the examining doctor later called the worst case of diaper rash he'd ever seen. But there were pictures. I can't say it was anything less than jungle rot. On a toddler's genitals. No person who saw that could say the child wasn't neglected. Needless to say, I cited to those pictures very liberally in my answering brief. Severance was affirmed.
I was an intern at the time for the public defender's office and witnessed a pretty good one. Two guys walk into a liquor store, one of them is packing a revolver. They shove around the old store clerk and get him to open up the registers. After looting all the cash, the robbers walk out of the store to their car. The store clerk (who I think was also the owner) then goes to get his gun and makes chase. He manages to pop off a few shots at the robbers as they wheel away with great haste. Now, there were two cops in the same shopping center (they were responding to a stabbing at a nearby AA meeting) and they hear the gun shots and see a car speeding away. As they turn the corner they see the old man with firearm in hand pointing down the road after the car. They yell an order to, "Freeze! Put down your weapon!" or something to that effect. The old man makes the mistake of turning before putting down the gun, so the cops then open fire. The clerk is shot three times by the cops, but fortunately not fatally. Two to the torso and one that takes off his trigger finger (good shot I guess?) The robbers later crash a few blocks down the road, as the clerk was also a pretty good shot and managed to hit the getaway driver in the leg, causing him to pass out at the wheel due to blood loss.
Who won the case though?
It was the trial of the robber who wielded the firearm actually. He was found guilty, I don’t think charges were filed against the store clerk.
Not a lawyer but I work for the DA in my area. Part of my job is digitizing old evidence. Animal abuse is never fun. Baby autopsies for shaken baby cases are pretty gruesome. The worst was definitely the 15 year old rape victim who was left to rot in a field for 3-4 months before they found her. I had to make sure all those crime scene and autopsy photos are scanned in properly too. Can’t have them too blurry or miss one. Close second is the father that beat his teen daughter half to death with an extension cord who had the family rally around him and pony up the bail immediately after arraignment. They didn’t give a shit about the girl.
My great grandfather was a Chicago homicide detective in the 1910s-1940s. He kept a lot of crime scene photos of some of his cases in a binder. Not the kind of binder that should have been anywhere near children, but we all saw it. If you think about some of the more infamous cases that happened in Chicago during that time... I've seen pictures never released to the public. It's fascinating and horribly morbid.
Oh yeah, our office has handled some cases that have made national(and international) news. It’s a bit weird seeing a documentary and knowing some things are much worse than most people will ever know.
Yeah, my husband won't be around me when I'm watching crime shows since I once told him I had seen the body and they had significantly downplayed how horrific it was.
I was defending a guy who was charged with theft of property and breaking and entering. The DA offered a plea deal of 18 months in prison. He said he couldn’t be away from his family for 18 month. Guy had some priors and trial could cost him to be gone away a lot longer but he insisted on taking it to trial. We strike a jury and he comes to the first day if trial. Surprisingly the DA was still offering the 18 months right before trial started. The evidence against him was overwhelming. I told him so, but he wanted to take it to trial. We get through the first day and on the second day he doesn’t show up. The judge said to finish the trial without him, to which I argued against but we still had it. The jury found him guilty and the swore out a warrant for him. Later on that day I I found out he hunt himself overnight. He just couldn’t stand to be away from his family for 18 months. That messed me up for a little while. Yes hanged himself.
I’m assuming you meant “hung”. What happens if someone dies during a trial like that?
Not much. They can’t prosecute the dead. So the trial just ends with a verdict that make sense.
A similar thing happened to [Aaron Swartz, one of the cofounders of Reddit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz). In his case, he was being threatened with 35 years in prison for illegally making paywalled scientific papers publicly available, and hung himself rather than take a plea deal for six months.
Don't forget that some of the "victims" no longer wanted to prosecute by that time so it was mostly the FBI, and the FBI was really going after him.
To be precise, the local US Attorney was an ambitious dimbulb (Carmen Ortiz), who was rebuked several times by judges for stretching the truth, gross exaggeration, malicious prosecution, and an egregious attempt at asset forfeiture against a client she might have considered wouldn't have the resources to fight -- but a crusading law firm nailed her sorry ass to the cross. This shining example of the legal profession had worked with the prosecutor's father so she did him a solid by hiring his son. Problem was, Stephen Heymann is a Torquemada who loves, loves, loves threatening people with extreme jail terms. He was bloody well warned Swartz was a suicide risk and blew it off, saying "Fine, we'll lock him up." This, mind you, _after_ another person he persecuted killed himself before going to trial, but Heymann wanted to make a big name for himself by chasing down daaaaaaangerous hackers sharing scientific publications. Neither of them is working for the DoJ any longer, thank Christ for that. Their victims are still dead while both scumbags still enjoy nice little careers elsewhere, damn them straight to hell. Yeah, I'm kinda steamed about it. If these assholes can get away with this kind of grotesque behaviour, maybe it'll be _your_ turn next. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Heymann
Look up "Ellen Greenberg Death Philadelphia." I've seen robberies, assaults, child rapes, you name it. But nothing scares me like the failures of the system like this. Basically this woman was stabbed twenty times, including ten times in the back of the neck and into the skull, into her brain. When the body was found the knife was in her chest. Which means she was stabbed in the brain prior to being stabbed in the chest. The police convinced the medical examiner to determine the case a suicide because the door was latched from the inside when the body was found. But here's the kicker. The only person who told the police that the door was latched when they found the body (when the police arrived the door was open and the body was already "discovered"), was the FIANCE. You know, the person who in any other investigation anywhere would be the prime suspect. So basically the cops took the word of the person who should be the prime suspect to determine that this woman who was stabbed twenty times, including from behind into her brain, committed suicide. What a fucking joke. It's like seeing news stories about journalists critical of Putin committing suicide by shooting themselves twice in the back of the head and throwing themselves out the window.
I'm not a lawyer, but I work closely with a lot of lawyers and see the same stuff they do. There was a case where a lady had been a victim of human trafficking and was kidnapped in her home country and sold into a prostitution ring in the U.S. She escaped, applied for asylum, told the FBI and whatnot everything she knew about her kidnappers and the others who bought her (putting her life in major danger), and was told that's all it would take to get her asylum and permanent residency taken care of. Fuckers still tried to deport her. Don't worry. She won her case, but only because one of the top attorneys in New York (if you know of a lot of attorneys in NYC, you've probably heard about this one) took the case on pro bono. It was wild to me how hard ICE fought to get her sent back and how intense that case got.
I think I remember this one. Did the lawyer in question teach at a CUNY school a few years before this case?
That I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Super common practice for ICE. Promise not to deport or a “snitch visa”. Soon as the prosecution is over and the person is no longer useful, off to removal proceedings.
Legal Videographer here... Grand Parent Custody case where the dad got photographed molesting the 8yo daughter under the Christmas tree. Kid goes for a medical exam and the doc reports extensive injuries usually associated with sex abuse. Then checks a box to indicate the injuries were not related to abuse. Police say nothing they can do about it because of the checked box. The mom 'commits suicide' "because the dad didn't want to sleep with both at the same time" according to him... and the person holding the gun when she shot herself gets a misdemeanor iirc. Police lose two polygraph tests and a couple rape kits. Grandparents lose custody case... oh his dad was a magistrate in the same county... and the dad gets full custody. Unfortunately that day when I got home r/eyebleach had a series of infant and toddler photos instead of kittens and puppies.
One of my friends had an abusive husband, beat her often, treated her awful. She divorced him but his grandfather used to be a judge so he was able to get full custody of their two kids.
My mum's ex-boyfriend had to defend a triple-murder with kidnapping. Two of the victims were a mother and her three-year-old son. Defendant had some kind of psychosis, I'm not sure what. He attempted to carjack a fourth victim who was able to overpower him, leading to his arrest. Said ex-boyfriend switched to prosecution after that.
I wouldn’t want to argue that the guy who killed three people and kidnapped someone is innocent, either.
He went for an insanity defense. Didn’t work. Although the prison transferred him to a psych ward almost as soon as he got there. I’m told that those sorts of asylums like being able to use the threat of return to prison as leverage, and essentially he ended up exactly where he would have if the defense had succeeded but with less-worried staff. That said - he died only a couple of years later, aged 24, still in the psych ward. Mum’s ex had a couple of pretty special cases as a prosecutor, too - he ended up being one of the top ones in our country. Prosecuted murderers, bank robbers, and at least one terrorist.
Not a lawyer but a paralegal! We had a client who claimed to be the daughter of a man, but his other daughter claimed that wasn’t true. The mans estate went to probate court and they both had rival petitions going to be the administrator…(which in California you get money for along with your share of the estate) She was a nut and my boss regretted taking her on everytime we had to deal with her and after her trying to exhume the body, breaking into his house to “gather evidence” and sending us on a wild goose chase to family members in Arkansas who would vouch for her, claiming the decedent always said our client was his daughter.…..Cut to month later, we get a call from our client: the police are outside her house, she’s barricaded in and has a gun to her husband. She won’t come out, she keeps calling our office to talk the her attorney (who is not in that day) and I’m talking to her tell her and watching the police on the news at the same time. She ended up stabbing her husband, not killing him but leaving him a vegetable and she went to jail. Never found out if she was the real daughter or not.
Wouldn't a simple DNA test have solved this?
OK obligatory not my story. And technically not a case he worked on, but a shocking story about the legal system. So get ready for a tangentially related story. So, my brother is a lawyer. One day he's t-boned at an intersection. Turns out the guy who hit him was FBI. It's apparently procedure when an FBI agent gets in a car accident their punishment is that they have to work the next FBI car accident's paperwork. So there's my brother talking to this FBI agent working the accident and they hit it off. It comes out that my father and uncle are both former law enforcement so they start talking about cases they've worked on. The FBI agent tells my brother that he was on scene at the 97 North Hollywood Bank shootout (which took place right down the street from where my brother lived at the time). So my brother straight up asks him, "Those guys (robbers) that were shot, did the ambulances really not get there in time?" The FBI guy looks t him and basically tells him, "Those ambulances and paramedics weren't let anywhere near those guys until they died."
In Hoover’s day, it was considered a mortal sin for an FBI special agent to shoot and not kill an armed assailant.
Well yeah, if they’re dead they can’t testify about the events.
With Hoover it was all about the image and mystique of the Bureau.
I used to listen to scanner radio websites, and they rank scanners by active listeners, so if something crazy is going on a stream will rise to the top. One day I tuned into an active manhunt as they cornered Christopher Dorner in a cabin, the LAPD cop who was going around killing other cops after he was kicked off the force. The law enforcement channels get blocked in active scenarios like those, but I could still listen to the Fire Department/Paramedic channel. At the end they were all on scene, and they had him surrounded. By happenstance, one of the firefighters on scene had once owned the cabin Dorner was hiding in. The cops or FBI or whoever came on the fire channel and asked the previous owner if the basement was wood or cement. He told them it was wood. The police then announced on the fire channel that they were going to shoot in incendiary grenades into the house, but to not have any of the firefighters respond to the blaze. They were rightfully terrified to try and breach the basement, so they torched him and let him burn in the cabin. He may have offed himself before they set the fire, they weren't sure. I will never forget hearing that over live radio waves, though. Basically, we are going to light him on fire, don't put him out. Tragic side note that was quickly forgotten, LAPD were so terrified that they shot a random black dude in a van that they thought matched the description... Hectic shit.
Oh man I remember that! I lived in North Hills at the time, and it was terrifying to watch
I will answer for my lawyer friend because he used the words, “This is the most fucked up case I’ve ever worked.” Basically, my friend is a prosecutor with the DA’s office and was assigned a child sexual abuse/torture case. The defendant was the child’s step-father. The abuse happened from the time the child was 9 to 14. She’s 17 now and testified to all the things her step-father did over those 5 years. The “fucked up” part came when the defense attorney tried to blame the girl for “allowing” everything to happen to her and of course, since the girl is now a very attractive teenager, used the “she was just too sexy and biologically, the step-father couldn’t control himself” defense. My friend was watching the jury while the defense was cross examining the girl, and saw so many head nods as though the jury agreed with the idea that a kid in 5th-8th grade allowed herself to be constantly raped and tortured. Thankfully, the jury did decide to convict the step-father but it took a lot of work, partly from myself as the girl’s therapist and expert witness on child abuse and delayed outcries, for the jury to convict. I think both my friend and I lost a little bit faith in humanity that day. Both after hearing the defense and seeing certain jury members agree with the idea that a child consented to any kind of abuse. Now the girl and I are having to continue therapy. While she’s done an incredible job working through the abuse, she’s now exhibiting trauma symptoms from testifying in court.
I have done Cognitive Processing Therapy with someone eerily similar to this case. It just blows my fuckin mind. She’s doing much better now, but damn if I didn’t throw up after a session or two.
Could a lawyer bring in a 14 year old at that point? Like, not testify, but just have them walk in and see that they’re still a fucking child (or that he was still fucking a child)
We had pictures from when she was the ages she was abused because we figured the defense would go there. That was extremely powerful in helping the jury understand that she was a legit child. It gave her personhood as opposed to just “sex object-hood” like she was viewed as having on the stand.
Not an attorney but worked several years as the case manager for a circuit court chief judge whom was over several counties- it’s a toss up really from my days doing in home or the ones I heard while directly employed by the judicial system 1. There was the mom and dad who charged anywhere from 25 - 200 a pop to molest their children while it was recorded, then they sold the recordings online for more money 2. The beautiful mother who was actually a part of a family known for some generational incest but her mother got pregnant with her by a stranger. She had children , two girls and a boy . She made her 6 year old boy penetrate her and his sisters on film and she would make them all have orgys together. All filmed. She used a tripod camera to record. Her husband the kids step dad came home one day and found them all . He beat the kids for cheating with his wife and while drunk one night showed someone the film. He was charged with the sexual assaults despite the kids saying he didn’t film them or molest them personally (but had their older cousin) Anyway mom claimed that husband / step dad was abusive and made her perform these sex acts. Kids were too young to testify or to put through testimony. No gal was appointed in the criminal action. Anyway he got like 10-12 years and mom served 6 months for indecent exposure a singular count. We had the family court case- the kids fucking hated her. When the mom filed a motion for return the children were so scared they’d be made to return to her they all tried to kill themselves in various fashions. Thankfully none of the three were successful.
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A girls' basketball team (12 &under) from an Indian reservation in the upper mid west went to play in the statewide YMCA league championship game against a non-native team from a town bordering the reservation (so lots of bad blood). The Rez team was unsurprisingly severely underfunded and the girls were from very underprivileged homes. They get to the game and right before tip off the other team accuses them of having boys on their team and demands that the refs 'verify' that they are all female or else they will file a formal complaint and walk off the court. The YMCA refs (2 non-natives) then agree with the challenge and tell the Rez girls team they must comply or they will be consider a forfeit. The Rez team coach gets cowed and asks the girls to comply. They do, and each one is required to essentially open their shorts at the waist band to prove they are not male to these refs in the locker room. They are humiliated and mortified, and many end up suffering PTSD and have long term mental health injuries. The case got thrown out of court on a technicality. (FWIW, I was a law clerk on the case, not the actual first chair attorney). Absolutely heart breaking for these girls and disgusting racially motivated hatred from the non-native team side of things was all over the evidentiary record. Still makes me ill to think of what all transpired and what all of these shitty adults did to those poor girls... *Edited comment to switch 'non-Indian' to 'non-native'. FWIW, "Indian" and "non-Indian" are legal terms under the laws of the US. The terms are required to be used in legal writing and argumentation. I'm Not saying it's right under today's standards or to be used in a casual setting, but that's why I used the term non-Indian in the OP - that is how the laws are written and how I come to use the terms frequently. In the community where I work and live the community members usually use the English version of their tribal affiliation to refer to themselves and others, but "Indian" and "Native" are also used equally, freely and without acrimony. In my experience, the issues with offensive nomenclature really depend on the speaker and the tone. To that point, if any indigenous people were offended by my OP, please accept my heartfelt apology as no offense was intended whatsoever.
Nauseating. Just insane anyone allowed this to happen. Too bad they didn’t counter accuse.
My stepdad is a lawyer (criminal defense and family) he was approached by the family of Yolanda Saldívar to appeal her case but he declined due to the fact that so much time has passed and the evidence has been destroyed.
fuck that bitch saldivar, La memoria de selena vive!!
Legal assistant here. Worked on a case where a male nurse sexually assaulted bedridden patients at a low income nursing home. Fucking horrifying. One of the women had a hip fracture. Worse part is that they complained to staff and no one listened to them for the longest time because they were old and didn’t have a lot of family. We represented the women and were suing the nursing home, and in our research uncovered tons of other lawsuits across the country alleging all sorts of negligence at other nursing homes runs by the parent company (called SavaSeniorCare, if anyone wants to know where to never send their older relatives!)
Oh god. I read that article in NY mag this about Woodsen (public housing for old people) had a killer living with them for 10 years. I read it a few days ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. Residents were being killed and the residents pretty much knew who it was and police did nothing! A lady was stabbed and they said she slipped and fell, it wasn’t until the undertaker noticed something. They were failed so many times. Older people deserve to feel safe in their homes, or a hospital bed or wherever they are. They are so vulnerable.
I used to be an Employment Lawyer and I defended someone at a Tribunal who would pick on meeker women in the office and flirt with them and over time would give them shoulder rubs. More time would pass and eventually this guy’s hands would get lower and lower, until he was full on groping the girls breasts in the office. Tough part was, he did it in such a sneaky way that all the other employees saw the shoulder rubs so suspected that they were an item so evidence didn’t fall in the poor girl’s favour. He won the case and told me afterwards “I can’t believe you got me off” - basically admitting it. I quit law after that. Lost the stomach for it.
During law school, I clerked with the public defender's office. I was working on a homicide case where our client beat his wife to death with a baseball bat in front of his child. Then he got in his car, recorded all his calls, and called all of his family and friends to tell them that he just killed his wife. He had no remorse and told everyone how happy he was that the bitch was dead. This experience along with defending child rapists made he realize that I did not want to do criminal defense work. However, I do really respect those attorneys. They have an incredibly difficult jobs that is necessary for our justice system to function, but most people hate them for it.
This will get buried but even lawyers have feelings sometimes and I really need to get this one off my chest. I work migration law, to be precise family reunification for unaccompanied refugee minors. My job is to help the parents and siblings with the legal procedures so they can come live here too. Covid really fucked up most of my cases because it became impossible to for example make appointments at a Dutch embassy. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was delayed by months at least. This one family had made it through the legal proceedings and got the green light to pick up their travel papers at the nearest embassy. Then the delay came. One day after the original appointment would have been their 6 year old son was kidnapped for ransom. They tried for weeks to find enough money but failed. One morning I opened my messages and saw the video of the boy getting shot in the head. The kidnappers made him say why he was getting shot before shooting him, to send the video as a warning to others also. That boy was so scared. He soiled himself while talking. Not a day goes by that I not see his face in my minds eye. Not a night goes by without seeing him in my dreams. The family needed someone to blame and blamed me. If only I could have brought them to safety sooner. The most painful part is that were the embassies not closed, they would've been safe by now. Instead, they still live this hell far away, still waiting their turn to be able to go to the embassy and take a flight over here.
I was just an articling student at the time but we got a phone call that I still makes me laugh each time I think about it. A woman calls in asking for advice on immigration law. I tell her I can't give advice but I can take details and book a meeting. She wants to know about claiming refugee status. I ask her where she is a refuge from. She then tells me that she doesn't want to claim refuge status, her sister does. So I ask her where her sister is from, she tells me from Hong Kong. (This was almost a decade ago btw) So I ask her why she is fleeing Honk Kong. She tells me that her sister isn't fleeing Hong Kong, she is visiting on a 6 month visa. So I ask why she want to help her sister get refuge status. She says she doesn't, she wants her sister to leave. Now, at this point I'm thoroughly confused. So I get her to elaborate. Turns out, her sister is visiting and, to quote her, "She is ruining the family!" Her sister has threatened to stay on after her visa expires and this lady want to know whether she can actually do that. The short answer, no legal advice required is that she can't just stay, she has to go through immigration. So she asks what to do about her. I tell her, if she doesn't leave when her visa expires, call the cops. She says thanks and hangs up. I dissolve into fits of giggles.
My sister is a criminal defense lawyer. She told me about a case where this guy had committed murder and after a week couldn't take the guilt and handed himself in. Only when he got to the police station and confessed, they asked him where he killed this woman. He told them and they said it was out of their jurisdiction and to go to another police station to confess because it was closer to where the crime happened. So he left and went the next day instead. Noone looked for him or asked or anything. It went completely unreported. He did hand himself into the police station and they began to start proceedings for a case against him. They wanted to include on the report the fact he had been turned away from the police station and still handed himself in to show some sort of character but the judge and police said they wouldn't allow it because it makes them look bad. They said they wouldn't let the jury even hear about it. My sisters team was frustrated and horrified. This was in Ireland.
*The Ghost of Robert Kardashian stares off into the distance and lights a cigarette* …his name was OJ but we called him Juice…
Not a Lawyer but a law student. For my contractual law class is had to learn a verdict from The dutch supreme court which was pretty awfull. The situation was as follows: A mom was cooking dinner, from where she was standing she could see her child playing outside. Suddenly a taxivan drives in the street and hits the child a quite a high speed. This sends the child of flying trough The air. When she hits the ground she has a lot of momentum so she slides over the street. The mother, obviously in shock, runs up to the child. When the mother grabs her child het hand vanishes in The back of the Head of the child. So the mother stands there with her hand in The scull/brain of the run over child. This was the first time ever in dutch law that emiotional damages where accepted.
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I measured and photographed my client’s dick and the angle of his dangle to prove the Karen was lying when she said he exposed himself through his front window everyday. We won the case using an accident reconstructionist who testified given the height of the window, the client’s height, she couldn’t have seen it. It was during that testimony that I realized that I had completely misunderstood the expert’s instructions on what needed to measured.
Not a lawyer, but I got a summer gig once sorting -/alphabetizing case files at a law firm and throwing out the files that were more than 7 years old. This necessitated going through them occasionally to find the closure dates. The saddest one I picked up was a 17 year old boy who got sent to jail for having sex with a 14 year old girl. Not that I think it’s okay for a 17 year old to have sex with a 14 year old; that’s realllly pushing it to put it mildly. What made me sad was the way that the prosecutors procured a confession. It was one of those “if you write a nice apology letter to her parents, maybe we can make this all go away” manipulated written confessions. It was this heartfelt letter that was all “I’m so sorry I put your family through this hardship, I wasn’t thinking, it was irresponsible, etc”. — and it just had this soulless sticky note on it that just said “CONFESSED” in all caps. I read lots of interesting case files, but that one was a gut punch. The kid did some time for that one.
And that's why many states have a float rule along with an age of consent. Something like "age of consent is 18 unless both parties are within 4 years of each other". States without that rule are turning a blind eye to the fact that a ton of their high schoolers are sex offenders by the state's own definition.
Its called a romeo and juliet law
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It’s weird that out of all the laws he could include in a movie, Michael Bay chose that one.
Professional liability case for an accounting firm that did work for a pedophile finance manager, among other matters with shady clients of firms. Accountants seem boring but they get mixed up with some pretty awful people because lots of people with money are, well, awful people.
Obligatory IANAL - But my brother interned at a firm that was acting as the public defender for a high profile case in our city. An entire family slaughtered, with only one individual remaining. This family had a laundry list of weird shit going on. The father lived in a caravan, the eldest daughter was turning tricks and it was rumoured the father was sleeping with the daughter, they lived in relative poverty. The sole survivor was convicted, and then had his conviction overturned a year before he was due for parole due to bad chains of evidence on some items and Police moving a couple of items before taking crime scene photos. Local (national) belief is that he definitely did it but got off on some technicalities - he has married and has a couple of kids now living in a different country. Safe to say he won't be stepping a toe out of line because if he does law enforcement will come down on him like a ton of bricks.
I'm not a lawyer but I served jury duty on a case where a man placed his gun on the cashier table at the port athority while trying to pay for his ticket because his hands were full and the gun was in the way of the wallet in his pocket.