See.. when I had my first court date-- I watched as everyone in front of me went up for various charges ranging from Class C to Class A misdemeanors. Every... single... one of them, was offered deferred adjudication with expungement. So, my original intent was to take that if offered simply to save myself the time and hassle of having to fight it in court. But.. when I went up... I was specifically told that I was not eligible for that. People with much higher charges were eligible, but me with my little assed Class C was not. So at that moment I was mentally like "Ok-- game on".. .and I demanded a jury trialOh. I remember when I went to my first court appearance. Prosecutor on his side, my lawyer with me. Both of them go to the Judge. Judge is looking at the paperwork. And the first words I hear the Judge say, "I don't know why this man was arrested." Right there I knew I was right. And I was pissed before than. I was willing to go along with whatever the DA wanted. Seeing as *I* voted for the guy. He was going to straighten out the Courthouse. Great. Well, he wanted to make me an example and when I saw everything they wanted me to do, that's when I said I was going to plead Not Guilty and fight it.
Had a couple more court dates after that-- finally the judge asked me what grounds I felt I had to plead innocence, I gave him the grounds... he looks at me dumbfounded... says "Well why didn't you tell the arresting officer this?". I look at him deadpan and said....
"They didn't ask".
Dismissed. Had my bail money back in about 2 weeks.
Yessir.. I will absolutely cost the City of Addison as much money as possible over this Class C Misdemeanor-- if for no other reason than you've pissed me off.
Probably could have saved some time had I retained an attorney... but felt it would be an unnecessary expense for what I had in mind. Originally Posted by Grace Preston
They saw I wasn't going to settle and tried their diversions. Nope. I stayed the course and the DA finally dropped the case.
God Bless Judge Timothy Johnson. I will never forget that man and still have sorrow for when his daughter died.