legal woes III: the trial

Today was the big day in court: I wore my suit, carried (something like) a briefcase and even fixed my hair. I had spent over six hours coming up with a comprehensive defense based on cannons of statutory construction, comparisons to the election code and a nice case from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 1926.

As I sat in the courtroom going over my case-in-chief, the prosecutor started calling up defendants and offering plea bargains. When he finally called me up, I told him I didn’t change my address because I am a student. He asked to see my student ID and, when he read the “South Texas College of Law” part, he almost fell over laughing. He hesitated, and told me he would dismiss the case. I think the law was in favor of his position, but he probably didn’t want to deal with a drawn out legal argument from a snot nosed little 1L.

Though I didn’t get to make my slick legal argument, I at least won. The moral of the story is that if you look annoying and persistent enough, people will rather let you win than bother arguing with you.