I am feeling a little bit older and a little more mortal today. I was in court this morning when someone told me that my first boss as a lawyer, Jim Mattox, died overnight at the age of 65.
When I got my law license back in the day, my first job was to serve as an assistant Texas attorney general in the habeas corpus section of the AG's office during the Mattox administration. I cannot claim to have been a close person friend of General Mattox. I was only a lowly newbie appellate lawyer, and I met him maybe half a dozen times while at the AG and had dinner with him once at a campaign function. But I can attest to his having an excellent politician's memory.
A few years ago, while I was sitting in the lobby of the Comal County Jail waiting for visitation with a client, I saw him there trying to bail out one of his ranch hands, who had apparently partied a little too enthusiastically the night before. He saw me, walked over to me, and although he didn't remember my name, he asked me how I was doing and thanked me for working in his office fifteen years previously.
Anyone who was privileged to work in the AG's Office at time remembers it as a place with full of bright, creative lawyers and remembers Jim Mattox as a boss who wasn't afraid to take on big companies or special interests in order to stand up for ordinary people.
This goes under the category of games that courts play.
If you have a misdemeanor case in Comal County, here's the lowdown on the infamous $250.00 mentioned in those pink pieces of paper mailed out by the court: In every first court date notice sent out by the Comal County Court-at-Law, there is a sentence that mentions that court costs are due at the time of sentencing and that court costs usually run $250.00. No other explanation is given. This notice creates a huge amount of confusion.
Sometimes people accused of a crime aren't thinking quite clearly when they come to court.
Here is my personal top ten list of stupid things I have witnessed people do in court (please don't make the next list):
1. Wearing a huge marijuana leaf belt buckle to a sentencing hearing in a possession of marijuana case (The judge busted the deal);
2. Wearing a blue shirt, blue sweater, and blue pants to a jury trial in gang-related stabbing case where the defendant said his defense was "It couldn't have been me -- I'm a blood, not crip." (He was convicted.);
3. Absconding five minutes before the the punishment phase of a felony jury trial (The jury foreman told me afterwards that they would have given probation if he hadn't run off. Instead the jury gave him seven years prison. The cops caught him two weeks after the trial.);
4. Showing up to a pretrial hearing in a Resisting Arrest case and calling a male bailiff a "bitch" in open court because he asked the defendant to turn off her cellphone (She was taken into custody for contempt of court);
5. Showing up drunk to a driver's license suspension hearing in a DWI case;
6. Making out in the back of the courtroom during court;
7. Sneaking out of the courthouse during a jury trial announcement docket in order to go down the street to Sonic ("Mr. Friesenhahn, sometimes you just gotta have a strawberry shake.");
8. Confessing to me five minutes before I was to put him on the stand in his jury trial, "I forgot to tell you that I'm really guilty";
9. Accidentally dropping a condom on the courtroom floor in front of the bench while a female judge was presiding;
10. Whispering in my ear, after turning down a deferred adjudication (against my advice) in a possession of controlled substance case where he was accused of vomiting up a balloon full of heroin onto the floor of an emergency room, "Let's make 'em sweat."
OUT OF COURT HONORABLE MENTION
1. The guy who called me on the phone and told me that he needed his case rescheduled because he and his wife had had a fight the night before, she had kicked him in the groin, and now his balls were so swollen that he was unable to walk (The court rescheduled his case.)