Oh nice...

A recent MN Supreme Court case has held that a defendant's post-arrest, pre-Miranda silence can be used against him in the state's case-in-chief.
Because that makes a lot of sense.

The Universe is Out to Get Me...

Jan. 19, 2012: President Obama breaks into "Let's Stay Together," by Al Green. This shoots the song into the spotlight, so that it is constantly played or discussed on the news. Until this impromptu performance, it was very unlikely to randomly hear this song.

Jan. 20, 2012: legendary singer Etta James dies.  One of her most well-known songs, "At Last," is repeatedly played or discussed on the news. Although relatively well-known, this was not a doing that was regularly heard.

May 15, 2009: I walk down the aisle on my wedding day to "At Last," by Etta James.

May 15, 2009:  At our wedding, Hat and I have our first dance as a married couple. Our wedding song is "Let's Stay Together," by Al Green.

It's bad enough having one song from my wedding day, one song that is forever linked in my memory with YKW, suddenly catapult into the spotlight again. But two? And one has to be our wedding song?

Thanks, Universe.

Second Trial of 2012

Starts tomorrow...apparently, I never want to get to that enormous pile of stuff that has been sitting in my inbox since I got back from vacation and that has only grown more and more overwhelming while I've been in trial last week.  


I'm in trial again this week.  Sigggghhhh....


Different client.  Different judge.  Same prosecutor (both she and I are going to be very tired ladies at the end of this week). 


Not only is it only January and I will have knocked out 2 jury trials already, but this is my first back to back jury trial experience.  I'm not going to lie, I'm not looking forward to it.  However, I am grateful that I won the last one, because otherwise that would have made it really hard to gear up for yet another one.

I won! (Again!)

I'm getting good at this...

In Grueling News...

Although I'm still not done with my current trial, I've found out that I'm the #1 case for next week's trial calendar, on another case! Back to back jury trials? Please kill me... I'm going to be a zombie by the end of next week.

Shopping is clearly the best response

So our judges sometimes give the jury a survey after trials are over, to assess the attorneys and stuff. I hate these things. In the two juries I've had fill them out, a jury member commented on my appearance as the thing they liked the least about me. I was incredibly offended. One said I should have dressed more professionally, despite the fact that I wore a business suit every day.  Wtf? What am I supposed to wear, a ball gown?
First off, I know how to dress professionally and appropriately for court. Second off, although I dress a little more flashy for routine court appearances, since the judges and court staff and other attorneys are familiar enough with me that they aren't surprised if I show up with hot pink eyeshadow or giant earrings, I dress conservatively for jury trials. Neutral make-up, low-key colors, etc. So, it's not like I dress like a freak.
Third off, how is telling me you don't like my appearance constructive at all?
Fourth off, I doubt male attorneys get comments like that...
So, naturally, I am now all self-conscious and worried about how I look. Which necessitated a trip to the mall today to get myself some new work clothes.  And maybe I found an adorable pair of kitten heels that I also had to get because they were only $10!

Ready, set, TRIAL!

Day one of my first trial of 2012 starts this afternoon.  Game face on!
In case you were wondering, my current trial pump-up song  is "I Need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler. Look it up!

First trial of 2012

I start another trial on Monday. Oddly enough, the client in this trial is the same client as my last trial. He had two cases pending and he just happened to have his cases actually make it to the top of the trial calendar one right after the other. So, we are going to trial on the other file starting on Monday.
I'm going to be exceptionally far behind on things after this trial. I still haven't caught up from being gone for vacation and now I will be gone for trial, as well. So I am going to be super crazy back-logged. Sigh...I'm not looking forward to that pile-up. But that's what happens, I guess.
And of course, I get to work over the weekend now to prep the case for trial since I've had basically zero time to be in my office since getting back. Woo-hoo. Oh well, it is what it is.
I'm just hoping that this trial goes better than the last trial, which we lost (and I was pretty surprised by that loss, actually). So fingers crossed that this one will be a winner!

Oh, you fancy, huh?

This is Ward.  He's very fancy, clearly.  That's why he sits like a person on the couch and folds his arms.  He is my fat and fancy cat.  The last time we took him to the vet (YKW was with me, since we were also taking the other cat in, as well, and it's difficult to try to wrangle both the cats into their carriers all on your own.  Plus, YKW was paying for the vet bills, so he had to come with so he could pay), the vet told us, "Well, Ward's a little heavier than I'd like to see for a cat of his size.  He's thirteen pounds, which is a little on the heavy side."  Tell that to Fatty Cakes.  He never stops eating!


As lame as it is, I'm posting about my lovely kitty because Ward and the other one, Oscar (see photo below) have been my heroes lately.  They make me laugh when I'm sad, they cuddle me when I'm lonely, they greet me when I come home from work to my otherwise empty house, they listen to me when I talk, and they generally make me smile when I'm feeling cranky.  Sure, they are just cats--I know that.  But, they are loving, sweet, and funny and when I'm having one of those days where I just want to curl up into a ball and cry, seeing Ward sitting on the couch like he's a fancy gentleman is just the thing to crack me up.  


So, this is my tribute post to the males in my life who have been my constant companions and who always know how to make me smile--Ward and Oscar, my wonderfully awesome kitties. 

I'm totally in like Flynn

I survived the first week back, but just barely...  I was swamped when I got back and I spent several extra hours at work trying to play catch up.  Which is not exactly the most exciting way to come back from vacation, but whatever...


Next week is another massacre, especially at the beginning of the week.  Monday is MLK, Jr. day, so it's a holiday and I don't have to work/am not allowed to work w/o prior authorization from my boss.  So, that boots me to Tuesday as my first day next week and, like this last Tuesday, it's a damn disaster.  I have 6 hearings in the morning and 7 in the afternoon, for a 13 hearing day.  Slightly down from last Tuesday, which I suppose is an improvement.  But then on Wednesday, I've got 8 hearings, all scheduled at 1:30 p.m.  Well, that should certainly be interesting when I have 8 people all showing up at the same time wanting to talk to me...sigh.


So, work is back to being hellacious again.  It calmed down for awhile, which was nice.  It was still busy because it's never not busy.  But, it was manageable busy--occasionally I was running into jams where I felt like I wasn't going to be able to get something finished, but that wasn't nearly as common.  However, this last week, and my upcoming weeks, is back to being breakneck, rapid-fire, too-many-cases-on-at-the-same-time, grueling, exhausting hell.  It makes me wonder why I stick around sometimes.  Especially when this job is thankless, underpaid, has zero possibilities for raises because we're those scum-sucking, atrocious, awful government employees, and almost always has the threat of being laid off as a fun bonus. 

Yuck

This is what was waiting for me when I got back from vacation. Ew.

Overheard in Target

I almost forgot about this delightful conversation I overheard today while I was at Target: 


Mom: "Are you sure you're still going to want to use these notebooks and folders once he's not cool anymore?"
Youngish teenage girl: "Mo-om, he's Justin Bieber.  He's like THEE guy.  He's never not going to be cool."


Yeah...that's what I thought in 1997 about Hanson...but, like the saying goes, "In an mmmbop, they're gone...in an mmmbop, they're not there."

Welcome back to woooooork!!!!!

Well, starting tomorrow, my Christmas vacation is officially over.  Boooooo.  It was so relaxing to sit around and do nothing and watch marathons on TV.  Seriously, the holidays are the best time for TV marathons because the programmers must get lazy and just think, "Whatever, let's just play 36 hours straight of Law and Order: SVU.  No one's watching anyway..."  Except for me--I'm watching!  And I love it. 


Anywho (how's that for some Minnesota-speak?...you're welcome), I go back to work and back into court tomorrow.  However, tomorrow it's probably more appropriate to refer to it as The Gauntlet or The Seventh Circle of Hell.  Either of those would be accurate, I think. 

Things That Happen in Legal Dramas on TV/Movies That I've Never Actually Seen Happen in Real Life:

1. Prancing around the courtroom whenever the attorney wants.
2. Defense attorney present while the suspect rambles on and on and on.
3. Defense attorney asks for a three day continuance in the middle of trial and the judge just agrees to the continuance without batting an eye.
4. Just objecting without giving any reason for the objection.
5. The prosecutor using ridiculous and inflammatory arguments in the bail hearing, such as "the defendant is an accused baby killer." Even in the sticks, I've never seen anything close to that type of language fly in court out of a lawyer's mouth.
6. Prosecutor dismisses the case in the middle of trial.
7. Either attorney popping out evidence--in the middle of their line of questioning!--that the other side didn't know about because it wasn't disclosed.
8. Attorney pulls out a gun in the middle of trial.
9. Important legal discussions/decisions occurring in chambers and off the record and never in court or with a court reporter.
10. Judge asks the witness questions in the middle of a jury trial in front of the jury. (Ok I've actually seen this once and it was because the judge was curious how to pronounce the word "buccal" and asked the forensic examiner how to correctly say it after the attorneys were done with their questioning. But that wasn't related to the case and didn't prejudice one side or the other. And apparently, it's correct to say it as either "buckle" or "byoo-cull.")
I'll update this as I see more. There is a law and order marathon on right now, so I'm sure I'll see more.

Why not, right?

I only have to feed myself now, which is slightly depresso to grocery shop for one person, especially since I'm a non-perishable food-hoarder, thanks to growing up really, really poor and sometimes not having food in the house.  AND I have difficulty turning down a sale, since it's on sale!!  But, I only buy things on sale that I'd actually use, so I'm not like hoarding things unnecessarily.  I just always have this fear in my head that I'll starve to death if I don't stock up on non-perishable food items when I can afford to.  Given my childhood of not always having food, and the stint of time before I was employed at the PD's office when Hat (since I'm referring to a time in which he wasn't out of my life, I will call him Hat) and I were so poor that we could only afford to eat Ramen most days and sometimes that was too expensive and I hadn't had a vegetable in so long that I broke down crying, and my most recent problems with being able to afford things, including food, I'm always going to be somewhat of a food-hoarder, I suppose.  So, in my most recent trip to the grocery store, I went a little insane.  This was an actual photo of my grocery cart: 

In full vacation mode

Ok, so it's been a bit since I've been able to post anything, thanks to the fact that YKW came and took the computer out of the house.  That means I'm generally limited to posting from my phone, which gets a little tiring after awhile because the screen is so tiny.  But, occasionally, I can get in front of a real screen and a real computer, such as now.  So, I can finally blog on a normal sized keyboard!


So, it's 2012--whoooaaa!!  Crazy huh?  I can't believe that it's already 2012.  Clearly, 2011 sucked big time.  So, I'm hoping that 2012 will suck a whole lot less.  If not, I'm going to be pretty angry with 2012.  I might have to ground it if it doesn't deliver something awesome.