" The suspect showed up in court day one wearing the same exact rig as the ' obscure defendant ' in the video of the crime . "
Recently,u/Sunieta25askedlawyers to share the dumbest thing a client has donethat ended up compromising their entire case. Of course, the answers were so good that we decided to round up some of the best ones:
1.“Workers compensation claim, guy falls down at work and claims he injured many different body parts. We tell him to stay off social media. No problem, he doesn’t use social media. At trial, he tells the Judge he used to be a spin class instructor, but since the accident, he cannot teach classes anymore.”
2.“Client added nine years to a short sentence. He got like a year or two for being involved in a drag race where the other guy had crashed and severely injured someone else. Then towards the end of his short prison term he tried to escape, got nine more years!”
u/50yoWhiteGuy
3.“Client was being sued and didn’t like the opposing counsel or the judge, so he left the court a bunch of voicemails so profane that he was subject to a criminal contempt of court hearing.”
4.“With the utmost certainty in his voice, he yelled at the arresting officer that ‘It’s not domestic violence; I’m on public property!’ You could tell from his face he really thought he had the cop over a barrel on this one.”
u / dixiedemocrat
5.“The man claimed workers compensation and threw the kitchen sink at us, meaning, he basically listed just over half of his body parts on the claim petition stating that he injured each one. He was full of shit and my firm knew it. Anyways, we were going to trial and the day before we ran one more social media search. This absolute moron posted a video of him winning a break dance competition that was only a few months after the alleged work incident. Never saw a quicker dismissal in my life.”
6.“Friend of mine used to be a latent print analyst. They were going to get prints of a suspect arrested for breaking into a home to rob it. While she’s getting the ink and paper set up, suspect shouts, ‘whaddya need the prints for? She looked right at me when I kicked in the door!'”
u / FjordReject
7.“I’m a paralegal. Once had a convicted criminal explain to me how their murder charge should be overturned because the victim didn’t die at the scene of the crime. The victim died at the hospital, therefore the defendant couldn’t be charged with anything more than attempted murder.”
u / notreallylucy
8.“I had an instructor who was a prosecutor. He called a witness who had seen the whole thing, and had an interest in seeing the defendent punished. Slam dunk case. She thought she was on TV, and overacted EVERY WORD. Completely embellished the retelling of the events. Didn’t lie, but she was the centre of her version of events. He said you could see the faces of the jury members sour minute on minute. He lost the case.”
uracil / shaidyn
9.“The defendant showed up in court day one wearing the same exact outfit as the ‘unknown suspect’ in the video of the crime. It took only a few seconds before the judge immediately called a stoppage. All lawyers went into the back with the judge and they came out like seven minutes later and announced the defendant had taken the plea deal.”
10.“Around 1990 there was a guy on trial for armed robbery. He pled not guilty. A witness on the stand identified the defendant. The defendant jumped to his feet and roared, ‘I should have blown your head off when I had the chance…’ paused, then added, ‘if I had been the one who robbed you…'”
u / Yugan - Dali
11.“The judge asked if the defendant was remorseful (if you show regrets, you can have some leniency). ‘No’. The guy didn’t understand the question, and when he doesn’t, he just usually says ‘no’.”
u / lowanddisorder
12.“I’m not a trial lawyer but a real estate one. I had clients spend $15k on new lounge furniture and four TVs WITH THEIR CLOSING MONEY 48 hours before I was due to close for them.”
13.“Not me, but a colleague. A wealthy client’s son got picked up for drug dealing at a local music festival. The client bailed him out, and then had his whole fancy law firm defend his son. The son stumbled into the courtroom stoned off his ass, and loudly attempted to buy drugs off the bailiff. There wasn’t a lot the lawyers could do after that.”
u / AliMcGraw
14.“A theft client confessed to the prosecutor during a court recess, which was then used against them.”
u / Maya_na9
15.“I was defending a client who was accused of trademark infringement. Thought he knew better than the IP Attorney assigned to his case (me) and so went on his company’s website to ‘defend’ himself by basically confessing to what he did, and claiming it wasn’t against the law and the trademark owner was a ‘woke baby’ who needed to either ‘learn the law’ or ‘get back in the kitchen and make her husband a sandwich’ (I wish I could say I was joking).”
16.“I once had a client who showed up to court wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘Guilty as Charged’. I wish I were joking!”
u / Maleficent_Okra9963
17.“Client in the interview with police… Police officer: ‘I don’t care how angry you are, you can’t go around threatening to kill a five-year-old!’ Client responds: ‘I didn’t threaten to kill her! I threatened her mother!’ He thought there was some sort of distinction there. We took a plea deal.”
u / Conscious_Second8208
18.“He had multiple cases, including aggravated battery and drug possession. At the insistence of his family, we moved heaven and earth getting him a bond, so that he could get out of jail and live with said family until the case was over. The whole process took weeks. Less than a day after getting out, he was caught stealing $16 worth of batteries from Target. Bond revoked. To be fair, the line between stupidity and compulsion is blurred with this one.”
H/T tou/Sunieta25and AskReddit for having this discussion!
Note : All submissions have been edited for length and/or uncloudedness .
