RUMPOLE FOIBLES

Talking, for a moment, about being willing to represent clients who were not firing on all six.

One of my more notorious cases had to do with strong arm robbery. Very serious charge, indeed.

All kinds of serious things go through your mind when you hear those words nowadays.

I kid you not. My client went into a pharmacy, something like a Walgreens, something like that.

He was not firing on all six. I knew it. The state knew it. God knew it. 

He probably resided at an adult congregate living facility in the neighborhood, but they are usually allowed out for most of the day to roam free as a bird, messing up the lives of anyone they come into contact with.

He went into the pharmacy and took a baseball cap, put it on and walked out. That was it. That was all he wanted or needed at the time, hot Florida sun, etc. 

Did he forget to pay? He may well have done so. Did he have money? Many of these folks are actually rich, but they end up in places like that with mental illness, rather than a state mental hospital. I have heard of millionaires in such circumstances.

That is what he did. There was a physical altercation outside the store.

I got a wild hair that maybe I should put this guy on the stand and ask him some questions about what he recalled happened. 

I thought that somehow maybe the jury, too, might realize that this whole thing was an overblown fiasco involving a harmless old crazy man.

The whole courtroom, including the Court, but especially the state, was literally dumbfounded when, without any prior warning, at the close of the State's case, highly unexpected under these circumstances, I suddenly rose and called my client as a witness for the defense, a thing, trust me, I seldom, ever, did! 

I asked him some open ended questions, and his answers were, as I had anticipated, completely off the wall this way and that, incriminating and exonerating himself and amply showing that he was completely psychotically mentally ill as well, and possibly dangerous, right there on the stand in front of the jury. 

It would not at all surprise me if one or more of them were actually afraid of him at that moment. 

If it had been the courthouse at the Old Bailey as seen on Rumpole, my client might have suddenly jumped into the jury box itself and wrought havoc!

It seems to me that I had that sense at the time myself, but was not worried that he would attack me, even though we sat right next to each other at counsel table. 

I am certain that he had not been given medications he may have needed while in the jail, and so was even more psychotic than he otherwise might have been.

Then came closing arguments.

He was found not guilty by a jury, in about 10 minutes of deliberation.

The courthouse went into another uproar, given the circumstances.