In any court of law, people are given the chance to defend themselves. Judges listen and later decide on a verdict of guilty or not guilty, some defendants claims being better than others. However, not all defense tactics are the best. In this piece, lawyers share the worst defense they've ever heard in court. Stories were edited for clarity.
Dead And Guilty?
“I’ve worked as a Criminal Justice Attorney for only a year now, but there was one really bad defense I’ve witnessed.
I was prosecuting the murder of the defendant’s twin brother. He pleads not guilty and comes in on the date of the trial without a lawyer and was clearly belligerently wasted. OK I thought, this should be easy then. The trial actually seem to be going his way somehow until I presented the security cam footage as evidence.
Judge: ‘So you mean to tell me that that guy right there, isn’t you?’
Both the guy and the figure in the footage had the same windbreaker on, since the guy was stupid enough to not wear a suit to the trial that will decide if he can continue life normally or gets locked up for the rest of his life.
Guy: ‘No, your honor.’
Judge: ‘So who would you think it is then?’
Guy: ‘My twin brother, your honor.’
Judge: ‘So you mean to tell me that your twin brother was stabbing himself in the security cam footage?’
Guy: ‘No, your honor.’
Judge: ‘So who is the guy being stabbed in this video?’
Guy: [in as of a serious tone as possible] ‘Me, your honor.’
Judge: ‘Are you kidding me?’
Guy: ‘No, your honor.’
Judge: (probably realizing at this point he’s at least a little tipsy and wanting to make a spectacle of it) ‘So you mean to tell me that you’re dead right now?’
Guy: ‘Yes, your honor.’
He would get 47 years behind bars and another 2 for public intoxication in court afterwards. Legend has it his dead twin brother is still stabbing him to this day.”
The Dirty Deed
“I worked part-time as a paralegal when I was in college. We had this massive case with a lot of people involved that had spun out into a bunch of little side cases. In one of those side cases, this guy was claiming our client had left him threatening voicemails related to the main case, and he and his wife sued for loss of consortium. Loss of consortium, and I swear to you this is a real thing, basically means something happened that is stopping a married couple from doing the dirty, and they want to sue you over it. The guy was claiming that he was so scared from these voicemails that he couldn’t sleep with his wife anymore.
Deposition time rolls around and I’m sitting in the other room, but it’s a small office and I can hear everything. My boss starts asking the wife how we’re supposed to know that it was our client’s fault they stopped doing it with each other. Maybe she’s just not as attracted to him anymore. Maybe he’s not attracted to her. Maybe they didn’t have that much of an intimate life to begin with, etc. So this woman starts yelling, ‘I love getting it on!’ and banging her fists on the table. Her lawyers try to calm her down and tell her to stop talking, but she keeps on shouting, ‘I love getting it on! We used to do it 2, 3 times a day! We’d be thrown out of hotels because of the noise we’d make!’ And to the protestation of everyone in the room, her counsel and ours, she proceeded to describe their history in graphic detail, all of which was recorded in the deposition and filed with the court.”
Being On Time Is Essential
“Was in court for a traffic violation in the state of Florida. I’m sitting with a room full of people who are also contesting their tickets. There was a lady who looked like she was a waitress who got up to make her case in front of the judge. She point-blank told the judge in front of the officer that ticketed her that her violation was ‘pointless from a know it all cop.’
The judge then questioned the officer. ‘Your honor, the defendant’s car was going 75 in 35 and ran several stop lights.’
The judge then proceeded to ask why those charges were unreasonable. Her answer was parody level. ‘I was drinking last night and woke up late. I couldn’t lose another job, so I needed to be on time.’ She ended up paying $500 for wasting the judge’s time in addition to her tickets.”
The Court Was Not Expecting That
“We had a guy in court when I worked in CPS who beat his kid with a belt. In court, he asked the judge if he could take off his belt and demonstrate how hard he hit his kid by using his jacket on the back of a chair. The judge was like ‘Whatever, go for it’.
I was expecting him to go half as hard but the guy WAILED on the chair until the bailiff told him ‘That’s enough…’ The entire courtroom was like, ‘Good grief dude…’
And that’s how I got quite possibly the easiest child removal to date. Not that I had any thought I’d lose the case, the pictures were horrific and that kid will have scars from that beating for life.”
Thrown Under The Bus
“It was an assault trial we had this past summer. Guy brutally took advantage of a woman in a park, then took her bike and ATM card. A few minutes later, he is recorded withdrawing $80 from her account. He is arrested within hours of the assault. At trial, he testified that the action was consensual and the victim enjoyed performing on him so much that she gave him the bike and ATM card to show her appreciation and that someone else came along and beat her after he left.
He also practiced his planned testimony with an inmate who had just been sentenced on a weapon charge and bragged about the assault in detail. That inmate threw him under the bus and testified against him. Weapon charge inmate freely admitted he hoped the assaulter would wind up in the same prison he did, so he could hand out some rec yard justice. Running a dope and weapons business was one thing, but he couldn’t tolerate someone touching a woman.
It didn’t take long for a guilty verdict and life sentence”
He Literally Had To Do One Thing
“Obligatory not a lawyer, but I was a paralegal for a district attorneys’ office for several years.
I’ve seen…a lot of very dumb criminals in court. Most of the time I volunteer to go take notes because I can get a good laugh once in a while. I always have one story that sticks in my mind about dumb criminals.
It was during in-custody arraignments on a Saturday morning, so mostly wasted folks that did something stupid while partying on a Friday night, young guys and gals in jumpsuits looking scared. The judge that morning had a pretty easy-going nature, and would ask a few questions to each defendant, usually along the lines of, ‘What’s your name, says here you committed [blank crime]…tell me what you do for a living and how you’re going to better yourself so you don’t commit [crime] anymore, and I’ll let you go home [until later arraignment date].’
ALL of the answers were scared responses from these kids, like, ‘I live at home with my mom…I’m a banker, so I get a paycheck. I promise I’ll never drink again, so I won’t commit [crime] anymore!’ Then they’d get dismissed or set up for their next court date, but they got to go home regardless.
…all the kids except one guy. To give you a mental picture here, imagine a 30-ish male with no hair, big long blonde beard, and facial tattoos so you could barely tell that he was white. He walks up to the podium, before even being asked the questions from the judge, and says, ‘My name is Mike, I live [at his address], and I make no promises I’m not going to commit this crime again.’ So, first statement, a basic confession. Way to go.
Judge blinks a couple times, then says, ‘…Ok. And what do you do for a living, Mike? How do you make money?’
Mike responds, ‘Well judge, no offense or nothin,’ but that’s none of your effing business, so don’t ask.’
Judge just makes a big smile back at him and says, ‘Great! You’re in contempt for swearing at me, sooooo….see you tomorrow! Maybe you’ll have some better answers for me then.’ Guards just wrapped Mike right back up and took him back to holding. It was wonderful.”
Easiest Win Ever
“This feels like a good time to share the story of my first (and only ever) civil trial.
I was representing the plaintiff who wanted to evict the defendant from her property for non-payment of rent. After presenting my case (basically just presented the contract to the judge and my client stated she has not been paid for four months – this took 5 minutes tops), the judge asked the defendant to present his evidence. The defendant replied, ‘Huh?’
Judge: ‘Now is your turn to present your case.’
Defendant: ‘I don’t understand.’
The Judge then leaned over the bench and asked, ‘Why are you here?’
The defendant said, ‘Oh yeah… yeah, right.’
The defendant then went on a thirty-minute tangent about all sorts of things like how he only parks his car so he can see where he is going when he pulls out because that was taught when he was in the military and how he has a very large extended family. I could have objected but the more he talked, the more the judge disliked him. I actually laughed a couple of times. I was trying not to, but I’d only been a licensed attorney for three months and the whole scenario was just completely absurd. After thirty minutes, the judge finally asked, ‘About the rent…?’
The defendant says, ‘Oh yeah. I’m not trying to debate that I didn’t pay it.’ That’s how I won my first civil trial.”
She Deserved It
“Lawyer here. During an order of protection hearing the 6′ muscular tattooed idiot told the judge that my 5’1″ female client deserved the black eye he gave her because she wouldn’t stop running her mouth. He actually expected the judge to be sympathetic or something. The second he admitted to hitting her, the judge cut him off and said, ‘Order of Protection granted. Next case.'”
They Were All Losers
“Former assistant state attorney/prosecutor here.
This defendant is called up for arraignment and the judge is telling him that he’s been charged with theft for stealing a roll of scratch off tickets from a gas station. The judge informs the defendant that the value of the tickets was over $300, therefore it’s a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
The defendant says to the judge, ‘But your honor, to be fair the tickets were all losers,’ implying it’s not theft at all.
I was amazed at the ingeniousness yet futility of the argument.”
There Is An Explanation For It All
“In a recent trial in the UK, we were reading to the other side’s witness (male, married, straight) a document in which he literally said :
‘I’m a genie [(not genius)], I’ve managed to boink [John] and get him to agree to this stupid proposal.’
We asked him ‘You were happy because you had deceived [John] into agreeing to this proposal, and you know you had “had one over'”him and had sold him a bad deal, correct?’
To which he replied ‘No. What I actually meant in that email was that I had sold [John] a very good proposal, one that I would accept myself, and I was so ecstatic that I wanted to do the dirty with him to celebrate.’
Aside from the fact that this response was clear perjury, I loved it because it allowed me to turn around and give a long, long stare at his wife who was sitting at the back of the courtroom – and she became so red I wondered whether she might explode.
The man was basically boasting about having deceived our client (this was a fraud case) in this and other emails, but he came up with a number of fantastic explanations as to why we all misunderstood his emails. This was the example that stuck with me but there were a number of other ones (including several ones where he called our clients idiots and fools, and said that he could probably get them to erect statues to worship him, which he explained away by pretending he was a big fan of Michelangelo’s David and always wanted a statue of himself) The judge ended up throwing out his testimony as deceitful and untrustworthy, and slapped him with contempt of court (perjury under oath).”
This Man Was a Regular Favorite In The Courts
“At the start of one of these trials one day, a guy with the greasiest mullet enters the room. Thin, tall, disproportionately sized limbs, tattoos all over; I swear the way he sat before the judge, the only thing that was missing was a drink in his hand and a chicken under his arm. Now, this guy chose not to have a lawyer represent him, as he’s a regular and spends short periods of time in jail or doing community service pretty much every month, anyway. Real problem case; violence, addiction etc., but still he comes across as a really sympathetic dude and has a really entertaining way of telling a story while keeping a straight face and not realizing how funny he is.
He knows he’s getting fined and a couple of hours of cutting weeds as community service to keep our Dutch streets nice and tidy, but tries to win the sympathies of the judge to decrease his sentence. This man’s dog was sent to a dog shelter when they found it malnourished a couple of weeks before when they brought him in for dealing–real sad, but also the reason he’s standing trial. The guy got high as a kite and belligerent as an Irishman on St. Patrick’s and while completely messed up out of his mind, decided to get his dog back from the shelter, because he really missed ‘his girl.’
The judge asks him if it’s correct that he broke the lock and some camera equipment on site of the dog shelter, and he confirms. You could really tell from his passionate account of the progression of the evening that he did all this out of pure love as his dog according to him was the only thing that pulled him through all of his rough patches with his girlfriend and his substance problem. So the judge orders camera footage to be shown to confirm that it is the suspect, and he confirms. On it he is seen stumbling about and wrenching one of the dog enclosures open and hugging a German shepherd.
At this point everyone is touched by seeing this guy be so emotional on the camera footage with the dog, hugging it, petting it and playing with it and you can see the judge really get into it, as well. Anyway, so this guy continues with his story and tells about how he took the dog to his car and went home never feeling happier in his life and ends his account with the driest delivery of: ‘Needless to say, I was surprised when I woke up the next day and there was a German Shepherd in my room instead of a Staffordshire terrier.’ Everyone just broke out in laughter. He didn’t get what was funny. Turns out the dude stole the wrong dog. Judge sentenced him to 50 hours of community service and €3,000 or so repairs for the broken doors and camera equipment.”
“I Made Him Hit Me”
“This one comes from my time as a law student. As a first year, they send you to go watch a day in a courtroom to see what it’s really like. One of the things nobody tells you is how much talking goes on in courtrooms when motion hearings are going on rather than an outright trial. There’s a noted buzz throughout the room, usually of attorneys speaking to their clients about how the process was going to go.
I happened upon a domestic violence hearing. When the poor victim took the stand, that buzzing stopped. You could hear a pin drop as she was sworn in and began testifying. Her attorney set the stage for the morning, and then asked her, ‘And then what happened?’ The victim looked right at the judge and said, ‘I made him hit me, your honor.’
There was an audible gasp. The judge, probably overstepping his bounds a little here, intervened in the questioning to say to her, ‘Ma’am, forgive me, but I feel like this is an important point you need to know, dear: you can’t make anyone hit you, and you didn’t make him hit you.’
The woman, instead of consoled, looked completely baffled. She waited a few beats, and then finally said to the judge, ‘I’m pretty sure I did. I mean, I jumped on his back and hit him over the head with a frying pan, after all, your honor.’
The entire courtroom burst into laughter, and the judge conceded that she had, in fact, made him hit her.”
Arguing The System Never Works
“Family lawyer here who handled a lot of international and inter-provincial (Canada) abduction cases (one parent taking a child and fleeing to another place without a court order or agreement of the parties.
The opposing party was self-represented. She brought forth a new case years after abducting her children from school several years prior, and moving them across the country. The children are with the father now (my client) or living independently. She tried to make a case that the children should be back with her. Her argument being ‘the Supreme Court Judges, opposing counsel, the social workers and doctors are all conspiring against me. They are all child-abusers and should be found guilty of taking my children from me, who are rightfully mine.’
She basically tried to argue that the system, including the judge she was appearing before, were all conspiring against her. Unfortunately, my client had to fork out over $20k to have the case thrown out because every time we would appear, judges would roll their eyes and adjourn it without reading anything simply based on her demeanor and the fact they instinctively knew they didn’t want to hear the case themselves. Passing the buck over to some other judge instead.
She posted on websites, including Craigslist, the names of every person ever involved in the case, stating that we were kidnappers, child-abusers and should be locked away. The threats continued for months against myself and the law firm I worked with, trying to tarnish our reputations on every comment thread and posting she could make.
Needless to say, she wasn’t of sound mind and her behavior/posts made every trip to the Supreme Court feel tense. I was taken out by sheriffs wherever I went in the Court during the case and for an extended period after due to her unpredictable and erratic behavior. Still shaking my head over someone arguing the Judge and the Supreme Court was conspiring against her after asking a clarifying question about her materials and before the judge had even commented on the merits of the case.
The joys of the self-represented litigant sometimes. Never know what to expect.”
Breaking And Entering
“Adverse possession. Which is basically taking ownership of real property, because the true owner didn’t use it and you did.
Texas has different versions of adverse possession with different time requirements: 3, 5, and 10 years. Each one works a little differently, but you always need the ‘hostile intent’ to take someone’s land.
This guy sued some homeowners, alleging he adversely possessed their house. What he actually did was break into the house while they were on vacation and rent it out. Family comes back from vacation and finds other people living in the house. Guy who broke in, rather than scattering into the wind, quadruples down and sues the homeowners in State District Court. Issue goes before the judge on the grounds the lawsuit is frivolous and should be dismissed. The judge heard the facts and the owners’ arguments and then the following exchange happened:
Judge: ‘Well sir, how do you believe you adversely took possession of these fine folks’ home?’
Dummy: T’hey wasn’t using it, so I did.’
Judge: ‘Well, do you think you fall under the ten-year statute?’
Dummy: ‘NO!’
Judge: ‘Well, how about the five-year?’
Dummy: ‘NO!’
Judge: ‘How bout the three year?’
Dummy: ‘Judge, I ain’t had it no three years neither.’
Judge: ‘You see, that’s what I thought. I thought your pleadings just said you broke into that family’s home and tried to steal it from them. Don’t worry, the bailiff here will take you to the jail where you belong and I’ll forward your pleadings to the District Attorney’s office where they belong. I hope you have a great rest of your morning, sir.’
And he got arrested right then and there. It made for a great laugh in evening despite the tragedy of it all..”
Restraining Order Definition Is Unclear
“I was waiting after case call when the judges asked a woman how the restraining order was going with her husband was in the room.
Woman: ‘It’s good, I’d actually like to get rid of it since we’ve been getting along so well.’
Judge: ‘Wait, what do you mean, “getting along so well?”‘
Woman: ‘When we talk it’s better.’
Judge: ‘Sir, are you contacting her?!?! Do you know what a restraining order is?’
Man: ‘Yes, I can contact her when she’s not at home.’
Judge: ‘No! It means no contact! Why would you think… I mean I wrote the order, no contact!’
Man: (getting agitated) ‘It says not at the house.’
Judge: ‘Look, right here, OK? See this? It says no contact at… the… house… why did…’
It was pretty funny to watch. Then the man got angry that the judge wouldn’t get rid of the order, instead she modified it to mean no contact at all. He starts ranting about what she should do since neither of them want the order anymore, and she threatens him with 30 days if he doesn’t be respectful and leave immediately.”