And for all the tap dancing I’m doing to celebrate my line of work and encourage you not to go mano y gavel with the courts by yourself, I have to admit that it’s still great that we all live in a land built to let us go it alone if we have to. Just remember the example of Robert Kearns. I admit, he had advantages: he was a brilliant guy, had a great education, even had experience working in military intelligence—but you don’t need to have any of these things if you understand that handling your own case requires one thing above alclass="underline" hours upon hours of bona fide home-grown elbow grease.
I won’t say you’ll win your case if you put that kind of sweat equity into it, but it will damn sure help.
Still with me?
We’ve taken a good, hard look at different sides of the question, “Should I be my own attorney?” Hopefully by now you’re ready to call your own personal Saul.
Next, we’ll tackle some common situations that can require counsel. If the next part of our extended little chat—aren’t you glad I waived my usual fees for this?—does what I intend, it will ease the road through the legal system not only for you, but for your attorney, too.
I’ll get into the stuff us lawyers wish our love-’em-but-they’re-crazy clients would keep in mind before they speed-dial their weed dealers from the Dairy Queen parking lot, walk out of Kmart with a DVD player that “fell off the shelf,” or tell Mr. Officer what to suck—I feel a migraine coming on just thinking about it. I’ll also tell you what you can do to dodge the shit flying off the fan after you’ve ignored these soon-to-be-mentioned things to keep in mind before the shit hits the fan. Your dodging could mercifully spare me a stress-induced aneurism.
Life’s too short to spend all your time under the state’s flickering fluorescents, so the following is my gift to you, illustrating basic techniques and ways to look at certain situations, and how to—hopefully—safely get out of them.
If they work for you, feel free to recommend me to your friends, your family, your gastroenterologists. Like I said—word of mouth is worth a hundred billboards.
PART II
When You Need an Attorney
Here’s a potentially blood-pressure disrupting experience that hundreds, maybe thousands of our fellow citizens across America have every day. (Yes, I’m talking to you. The Justice Department says you have a one in ten chance of the following happening to you this year.) You’re out for a little Sunday drive, heading to the ice cream shop or grabbing a bite at the Taco Cabeza, doing those things enthusiastic citizens do on Sundays, when—BLURRP—is that an angry duck behind you? Nope, it’s a police cruiser’s loudspeaker. Your rearview is suddenly infested with the blue lights of your hard-working fellow Americans who just want to take a glance at your license and registration. They could be searching for a terrorist, they could have received a tip that a nearby Pottery Barn was just burglarized by someone wearing a green hat just like yours, they could even just be checking to make sure little Benny’s or precious June’s car seat has been properly installed. All perfectly normal stuff, “reasonable suspicion” and all that. In their words, a “routine traffic stop.”
The officer takes your license, strolls back to their Crown Vic to call it in. You’re okay there in your vehicle—you know you weren’t speeding, all your lights function, everything is gravy. Nothing to worry about.
Then BAM, next thing you know there’s a grim voice over your left shoulder ordering you to “step out of the vehicle and keep your hands where I can see them,” little Benny screaming in terror as Officer Friendly turns into Officer Unsympathetic. Your life has gone to hell in a hot second all because of one tiny little bench warrant.
A bench warrant is like an appendix—you could go most of your life not realizing yours was a ticking time bomb out to get you, until some kinda bad luck or imbalance or karma or wrath of whatever Higher Power you have comes along and suddenly it’s a huge pain in your side. Bench warrants are the bane of people who are either forgetful, avoidant, or just plain lazy.
Here’s how they’re different from plain old everyday arrest warrants: an arrest warrant is a statement of probable cause. Officer Frick or Frack gives a formal statement to a judge that lays out all the reasons they believe someone committed a criminal act. Provided that the judge thinks the warrant is better than the unforgiving one-ply tissue they use in the courthouse restrooms, he or she will sign it. An arrest warrant is a little jolt of triple espresso in a cop’s shitty vending machine coffee—they often run right out to make an arrest.
Bench warrants are issued by judges when the rules of the court are violated. Rules like showing up when you have a court date. Say it was a pretty day, and maybe you detoured through that nice little city park to better enjoy nature during your trip to the courthouse. Say you stopped by the pond there to enjoy the breeze and the sun. A friendly duck waddles up to you. Ducks with their crazy walks, right? You’re just finishing your turkey sandwich, you can spare some of the crust, so you start tossing it to the ducks. Soon, you’re surrounded by these ducks and fellow good folks enjoying the sunny park and what a day, right? Best ever.
While you are having that best day ever, there was a courtroom convened a quarter mile away ready to play “This is Your Life.” Only, you didn’t show up. In the eyes of the judge, you aren’t interested in mending fences with the law. BOOM. Instant bench warrant, because not obeying an order to show up is contempt of court. And it doesn’t even matter if you missed because of a flat tire or your niece’s bat mitzvah or because your poor old grandma had an emergency gastrointestinal procedure—in the law’s opinion, “No excuses!”
Unpaid child support can bring either an arrest or a bench warrant, depending on the state or the judge’s mood. Not showing up for traffic tickets that require a court visit can definitely result in a bench warrant. Bench warrants are surprisingly easy to get, and a lot of otherwise good, law-abiding people have one out for them.
Thing about bench warrants is this—in many places, they just aren’t a big priority to the police. They’re likely addressed on occasion, when a few cops are free to do service duty. Or in a database to be accessed by the police dispatcher if your license number’s called in during a minor traffic stop. Hell, if you’re lucky, maybe someone got proactive and sent you notice by certified mail that there’s one out for you—but you can’t put a decent wager on that last scenario.
Without wasting time flipping through every possible reason a bench warrant could be looming in a computer system right now, ready to screw you, I’m going to dole out a few free tips on handling the lurking bench warrant menace.
What follows are guidelines on how to see if there’s one out for you, what you can do if there is, and what to do if you end up riding out your sunny American Sunday afternoon in a holding cell that smells like it’s been sprayed down by a skunk with a gland deficiency.
This will seem kind of tricky—and if you have the cash available to hire a lawyer to do it for you, you should—but if you have a sneaking suspicion there might be a lonely little warrant sitting on a quiet bench just inside a judge’s chambers in your town, or in a city where you’ve lived in the past, you may be able to get ahead of it. Or slightly less behind it, because some might say you were behind when you didn’t do whatever it was that led the judge to sign the warrant in the first place.