Police officers and defense lawyers have a bit of a never-ending rivalry going on. Police officers are responsible for catching people who are accused of committing crimes, and defense lawyers are the ones who represent those people in court, often trying to prove their innocence.
These police officers were able to catch a defense lawyer off-guard during a court case. I'm sure there are just as many stories of this happening the other way around!
[Source listed at the end of the article.]
He Took A Gamble
“After retiring as Law Enforcement Officer from the Midwest I moved to Reno. I took a job at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Security.
One winter evening the ‘cage supervisor’ called me and informed me that a person had brought up a bucket of ‘cold’ change for redemption. (Any coins brought from a machine will be ‘warm’). Knowing that there had been a local problem with parking meter thefts lately, I was suspicious and approached the subject and queried him as to what area he had been gaming in and why his bucket had nickels, dimes and quarters in it (we had no dime slots). His answers led me to detain him, call the Reno Police Department, and he was arrested for parking meter burglary.
Some weeks later I received a subpoena to appear in court to testify regarding my police call and detention. On the witness stand the defense attorney smugly asked me how long I had been a Security Officer, and how long in my position. I stated that at the time, approx. 5 months. With great sarcasm he then asked something to the effect of, So with your great experience and training, you decided my client was a criminal, had broken into all these meters, and then came into the casino where only you knew he had committed all these crimes? What kind of wonderful training do you have to have led you to this foolish conclusion that MY client is a criminal? Smugly he turned to the jury, the Judge, then me again, smirked, and then restated?
I calmly testified that I had been through basic and advanced police training academies, had a Criminal Justice degree, numerous in-service training seminars, two decades of street experience, and some interrogation knowledge.
He actually choked, turned red, said ‘no further questions’ and sat down. His client was convicted of 4 counts of felony burglary and sentenced to 7 years prison.
The moral is that a ‘good’ attorney will know the answers to his questions before asking. He was ill-prepared, overconfident, and unprofessional…”
He ‘Appeared’ To Be A Prick
“Most defense attorneys, as with most attorneys generally, are reasonably courteous to police officers, in court and elsewhere. They know they will be working with us again, and building up bad blood is in no one’s best interests. They have their job to do, we have ours, and everyone can perform their functions without getting snippy or personal about it.
Still, as with any other occupation, there are good and bad people, and the legal profession is no exception. I dealt with a couple of attorneys who were generally unpopular with cops, prosecutors, judges, and just about everyone else, mainly because they were so abrasive.
I was testifying in a case where the defendant had stolen several items from a record store (that sold only vinyl records, so that tells you something about how long ago this was), entering several times and taking something each time. This elevated the case from shoplifting to the far more serious charge of burglary. In addition, he had some items of stolen property in his vehicle that were from other thefts he had committed.
Part of my probable cause to search his vehicle was that I saw, in plain view from outside the car, the cover of a record album. It happened to be the 1981 Foreigner album ‘Foreigner 4.’
I wasn’t an especially big fan of Foreigner, but the album was brand-new at the time, and one entire wall of the record store was plastered with these album covers, so I recognized it immediately.
The defense attorney had been jerking me and the prosecutor around for a couple of hours, making frivolous and trivial objections. Now he had me on cross-examination:
Defense: ‘Officer, when you looked inside my client’s car, what did you see?’
Me: ‘I saw a record album.’
Defense: ‘Now, officer – didn’t you see what appeared to be a record album?’
Me: ‘Well, I’m looking at what appears to be a defense attorney.’
Defense: ‘Objection, your honor! Non-responsive! I shouldn’t have to take this kind of abuse from the witness!’
Judge: ‘Well, the witness has taken considerable abuse from you, counselor. Officer, please answer the question more specifically.’
The hearing went on for two more days. I had worn a suit to the first two sessions, but for the third, I had to go to work immediately after leaving court, and I wore my uniform. The defense attorney wore the same tan suit, every day. It was not well-cared for. On seeing me on the third day outside the courtroom, the defense attorney took a little shot at me:
Defense: ‘Well, I see you wore your war suit today! You gonna shoot me or something?’
Me: ‘Counselor, you and I are alike, and then we are different. We are alike in the respect that we each own only one suit. We are different in the respect that I don’t sleep in mine.’
A No-Brainer Case
“In the late 1970s, I was working in a brand-new Narcotics unit. One Saturday, we got a call from security at a truck stop outside town about someone trying to sell illegal substances to truckers in the drivers’ lounge. I volunteered to go undercover and see if he’d sell to me.
I went up to the guy and started talking to him, letting him think I was a driver. After a bit of a dance, he agreed to sell me an eight-ball of the stuff. Before he’d show me the goods, he asked,
‘Are you a cop?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a deputy sheriff?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a state narc?’
‘No.’
‘Are you FBI?’
‘No.’
‘Are you CIA?’
‘What makes you think the CIA cares about this stuff? Are we doing this, or not?’
We made the exchange, I gave the bust signal, and my cover team arrested him. I interviewed him a few times in the jail and he seemed genuinely offended that I’d lied to him.
At trial, his defense attorney, on cross-examination, asked,
‘Did my client ask you if you were a police officer?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Well, what did you tell him?’
He was clearly wanting me to equivocate, to the effect of ‘Well, no, I didn’t really lie to him…’ When I instead said, ‘Of course, I lied to him,’ the attorney (fairly new at the Public Defenders’ Office) sputtered,
‘Why did you do that?’
‘He really didn’t look stupid enough to sell me the stuff if I told him I was a cop.’
I went out to dinner, and by the time I got back the jury had reached a ‘guilty’ verdict.”
Read It And Weep
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“I embarrassed a defense lawyer in court, but I did not do it on purpose.
I rather liked the guy, having known him for a few years on a professional basis.
That said, it was his own fault.
I was on the witness stand. The defendant had caused a traffic crash that injured other people, and I was the first officer on the scene.
Once the ambulances arrived my attention turned toward the defendant, who was not injured in the crash. Before I even asked him a question he blurted out an unsolicited statement, which I dutifully noted along with the time and the names of others present.
He refused to perform field sobriety tests, and he refused the breath/blood/urine tests. (This was in the days when Illinois did not have the mandatory testing in the case of personal injury accidents.)
So, many months later, there I was, on the witness stand, answering questions in front of the jury. I testified for about 40 minutes.
The defense attorney asked me if the defendant took the field sobriety tests, and I responded that he did not because they were refused.
He asked me if there were any chemical tests performed (blood/breath/urine) to test his sobriety (at the time it was a .10 presumption).
I responded that there were not.
He then said, ‘So, Officer Bruno, the only evidence you have that the defendant was impaired was your own personal observations, is that correct?’ Then he turned his back on me and took a step away.
I said, ‘No, counsel, that is not correct.’
He spun around. He then asked, ‘What other evidence do you have?’
I said, ‘The defendant made an unsolicited, spontaneous statement that he felt he was too inebriated to drive.’
‘Well, that is nowhere in your report, officer.’
‘It most certainly is, counsel.’
With that, he throws my 5 page driving under the influence report in my lap, and says, ‘You try to find it in that report, officer, and read it aloud, because that statement does not exist.’
I turned to page 3 of my report and said, ‘Page three, line 8, quote: ‘Thank goodness I didn’t kill anyone. I have had way too many drinks to be driving.” End quote. The statement made at the accident scene at 23:41 hours in the presence of myself, and Officers.’
I handed the report back to him. He stared at page 3, then suddenly realized he had mixed up this driving under the influence case with another one. He looked at the ceiling, then turned cherry red. The jury snickered. The judge snickered. The defendant’s jaw hit the table.
The defense rested. The prosecution rested.
After court, he came up to me and said, ‘You wrote a very good report, Officer Bruno.’
I said, ‘Thank you.’
I thought, ‘You should read it sometime.’
He was a good attorney. He just had a bad day.
All The Signs Were There
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“I am not a police office, but a sign language interpreter who basically did a defense lawyer’s job for him.
I was in court interpreting for a Deaf man who was charged with some minor offenses including resisting arrest.
The police officers wanted to have a word with him about him pulling stunts with his car. He had a V8 souped-up car and liked to skid his wheels, etc. as he took off from his home.
So they stopped him at a gas station and after an initial conversation (interpreted by his brother) he turned around and walked off (both to pay for the fuel and because he wanted to stop the conversation).
As he walked away the female constable said: ‘If you don’t stop, we will arrest you,’ and subsequently went to him (from behind), grabbed him, hand-cuffed him, and took him away. He was struggling and tried to get away… thus resisting arrest.
After I interpreted all this, and there was a pause, I quickly whispered to the lawyer representing him, ‘He couldn’t hear the constable!’
The lawyer stood up and asked for the charges to be dismissed for precisely this reason.
Which, after some further proof of this, is exactly what happened.”
Just Like Sitting Ducks
I was testifying in a trial where the defendant was charged with a driving while under the influence. I had arrested the defendant on a street that had at least a dozen lively bars on it. The defense attorney was trying to get me to admit that I stopped every car I saw on that street, whether I had reasonable suspicion for the stop or not. He asked me several variations on, ‘You didn’t have any probable cause for the stop, did you?’ several times. Finally, he got exasperated, and asked, ‘Officer, isn’t the only reason that you patrol up and down Wells Avenue because there are so many bars there?’
I replied, ‘Counselor, when you go duck hunting, you have to go where the ducks are. They won’t line up on your front porch and wait to be shot.’
He Saw It Differently
“There is a fairly infamous story that occurred in London a few years ago.
The officer was being cross-examined about what he had seen during the incident, whatever it was. The defense barrister was trying to imply that the officer was too far away to see it clearly.
This led to one of those questions that you ask, then instantly wish you could reel it back in before anyone hears.
Barrister: ‘So officer, you say you could clearly see the incident from your location.’
Officer: ‘Yes, that’s right.’
Barrister: ‘Officer, can you tell the court how far you can see then?’
Officer: (Not missing a beat) ‘Well, on a clear night I can see all the way to the Moon.’
It’s Hard To Find A Parking Spot
“While testifying in a court case, I derailed what was probably going to be the lawyer’s attempt at a ‘defense.’ His plan was to attack my credibility.
I stopped a car one night and arrested the driver for his 7th driving under the influence charge in 10 years. When the driver stopped his car, he was blocking one of two entrances into a certain parking lot (C3, if you’re keeping track). There is also a second C3 parking lot (a row of trees had apparently been planted across the original C3, splitting the large lot in two) with its own entrance on the same street as the other C3’s entrances.
After my direct testimony, the defense attorney’s cross-examination began. He made a particular point of asking where the stop occurred, noting I had testified that the stopped car blocked ‘one of the two entrances to C3.’ I repeated my testimony.
The defense attorney then pulled out a large photo of the street, taken from the nearby corner. In the photo, he had circled the three clearly marked entrances to C3. He asked why there were apparently three entrances, when I had just testified (twice!) that there were only two entrances? I answered that the third entrance belonged to the second C3 lot (not the one where the driver had parked, i.e. not the one that mattered) and that there was no access between the two lots. I added that anyone who knew the area would know which lot I was referring to because only one of the lots had two entrances to that street.
‘No further questions.’
His entire defense was apparently based on making it look like I couldn’t count to three.”
He Stole The Show
“I had a colleague who was testifying in a narcotics-related case. He was a narcotics expert and the defense were trying to downplay the amount of substances found.
Barrister: ‘Officer, you say that the amount of product was substantial.’
Officer: ‘It would be seen as substantial, yes.’
Barrister: ‘What would you say if I told you that I had the same quantity of product in my pocket right now?’
Officer: ‘I’d say you’ve been pick-pocketed.’
Oh how I dream of the opportunity to match that beauty of a reply.
His Career Wasn’t Just Ancient History
“This is not my story, but the man who told it to me died some years ago, and I don’t think he’d mind my repeating it here.
He was a professor of history and editor of a scholarly journal in the department where I was a graduate assistant. If you heard him talk and didn’t know what he did for a living, it wouldn’t take you long to narrow it down to college professor. He really played the part.
One evening, he sees a car speeding down the quiet residential street where he lived. After the car passes him, the driver loses control and crashes into a tree.
The driver is arrested for reckless driving and the professor is called as a witness for the prosecution. He testifies that the car was traveling, in his best estimate, at 55 to 60 miles an hour.
The defense attorney attacks him on cross-examination:
What do you do for a living?
“I’m a history professor at the University of X.”
What training and education have you had as a history professor?
“I completed a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at Y University, then I passed my general and subject exams in American History and prepared a dissertation for the doctorate granted by the University of Z.”
What do you do as a history professor?
“I’ve published two books, I’ve taught survey and upper-level courses in American history, and I’ve been the editor-in-chief of an academic journal for ten years.”
Is estimating the speed of traffic part of your job as a history professor?
“No, sir.”
As a history professor, have you been trained to estimate the speed of traffic?
“No, sir.”
What makes you think you are qualified to give an estimate of the speed of my client’s vehicle?
“My law-enforcement training and experience as a military policeman for two years of active duty and four years in the reserves, including assignments as an on-post traffic patrol officer at Fort X.”
Uh… no more questions for this witness.
I’m now in the legal profession, and the lesson has stayed with me. Lawyers are taught not to ask questions to which they do not know the answer. The problem here is that the lawyer thought he knew the answer — that the prosecution’s witness was just a college professor.
In preparing for the trial, the defense attorney only dug far enough to find out what he wanted to hear. _If he had done his homework, he would have found out what he _needed to know.
There’s a world of difference between the two, and not just in the field of law.”
He Thought He Had It Locked Down
“I was asked while on the stand if I trusted my fellow officer.
I replied, ‘Yes sir, I trust him with my life, every single day.’
The defense asked, ‘If you trust them with your life, officer, why do you have locks on your locker?’
I smiled: ‘Well because sometimes there are attorneys roaming around the building.’
The judge and jury burst out into laughter and the defense had no further questions.”