“Your honor, I plead the Fifth. If I start talking, I might say something incredibly stupid that my lawyer won’t like.”Manycountriesaround the world grantsuspectsthe “right to remain silent” when they’ve been accused of a crime. And sometimes, keeping your mouth shut is the smartest move you can make.Lawyerson Reddit have recently beensharingstories of the wildest things their clients have done incourtrooms. From making facepalm-worthy mistakes that ruined cases to getting themselves convicted of entirely new crimes, we’ve gathered their juiciest stories below. So enjoy reading through, and be sure to upvote the tales you wish you could have witnessed from the jury box!This post may includeaffiliate links.
“Your honor, I plead the Fifth. If I start talking, I might say something incredibly stupid that my lawyer won’t like.”
Manycountriesaround the world grantsuspectsthe “right to remain silent” when they’ve been accused of a crime. And sometimes, keeping your mouth shut is the smartest move you can make.
Lawyerson Reddit have recently beensharingstories of the wildest things their clients have done incourtrooms. From making facepalm-worthy mistakes that ruined cases to getting themselves convicted of entirely new crimes, we’ve gathered their juiciest stories below. So enjoy reading through, and be sure to upvote the tales you wish you could have witnessed from the jury box!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
IANAL, but I used to review disability claims so I often worked with clients who had lawyers.A man whose attorney had instructed him to not speak with us directly (a very smart, very basic recommendation) called me up to rant, angrily, that his lawyer was wrong. He COULD shop for groceries and mow the lawn and do all sorts of house work JUST FINE, thank you.Now I had seen this man’s medical records. There’s no way he was doing all of this without difficulty. So I probed a little further. He could shop for groceries… as long as he used a mobility scooter and had his wife carry things in the house. He could mow the lawn… if he used a riding mower and took a lengthy break every 10 minutes or so. He could do house work… which was limited to wiping down counters and folding (but not carrying) laundry. I called his attorney and gave them a quick update as soon as he and I hung up.I approved his claim, but that man is so damn lucky he got someone who was willing to take an extra 15 minutes with him.
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Not my client but the petitioner attorney’s client. The man claimed Workers’ Compensation and threw the kitchen sink at us, meaning, he basically listed just over half of his body parts on the claim petition stating that he injured each one. He was full of st and my firm knew it. Anyways, we were going to trial and the day before we ran one more social media search. This absolute f***g moron posted a video of him winning a break dance competition that was only a few months after the alleged work incident. Never saw a quicker dismissal in my life.
With the utmost certainty in his voice, he yelled at the arresting officer that “It’s not domestic violence; I’m on public property!”You could tell from his face he really thought he had the cop over a barrel on this one but….
I had a case where a guy was charged for running a red light. The thing is, he had been sitting at the lights for five minutes, and it hadn’t changed. The wording of the specific section under which he was charged related to stop signs and traffic lights and referred to them as ‘traffic regulation devices.’ I successfully argued that as the traffic light wasn’t changing, it wasn’t regulating traffic, and he got off. I couldn’t believe it when the judge ruled in my favour, neither could the police prosecutor!
I’m in a Zoom mediation. The mediator gave a long speech, saying that no one else was supposed to be on the call other than the parties. My client is sitting in the passenger seat of his car. I knew his GF was in the car, on the driver’s side, and I texted him and told him she couldn’t be there. He sends me a text that she’s not there. A good 90 minutes into the mediation his car starts driving on the freeway. The mediator tells him he can’t be driving [while] on the phone and to pull over. Mind you, he’s still in the passenger seat.Finally opposing counsel says, ‘Is he in England or in the passenger seat?’ The mediator asked my client if he was driving or [if] someone else [was]. He tells her he [is] driving and he’s in the driver’s seat. The mediator tells him to move the camera to his left.The client proceeds to throw the phone on the ground. You hear nothing but people moving around and he says, ‘Get down in the back.’ He then picks up the phone and is clearly now in another seat, the driver’s seat and he proves he’s in the driver’s seat.Needless to say, mediation was canceled and he got charged attorney fees. In the same mediation, he thought he was in a breakout room with just me and called the mediator a ‘f**g bh
A year out of law school, I once had a potential client who wanted me to sue Canada. Apparently, he could not get into the country due to his felony record. I tried to reason with him that it was up to the sovereign nation to set its own rules regarding entry to the country, but he insisted that we could make a lot of money suing Canada. I didn’t take the case but I told him I might be able to get him a letter that said ‘sorry’ from Canada.
Around 1990 there was a guy on trial for armed robbery. He pled not guilty. A witness on the stand identified the defendant. The defendant jumped to his feet and roared, “I should have blown your head off when I had the chance…..” pause, thinks, adds, “if I had been the one who robbed you…”.
Anyone see the video of a guy doing an online court hearing for driving without a license, he answers the call while he’s driving. Without a license.
It was a credit card fraud case in the early part of my career. He actually wore the stolen clothes to court and a clerk at the defrauded store identified them in front of the jury. I felt like the guy in the commercial that asks “want to be somewhere else?”.
My wife’s lawyer bans all clients from using social media after he lost a big case.Wrongful death lawsuit where a man’s wife was killed. Easy money. They were about to settle until the other side found his pictures online from a club a week after his wife died getting a lap dance wearing a shirt that said ‘I love milfs’.Apparently they didn’t think he had much pain and suffering anymore.
Not me, but a colleague. A wealthy client’s son got picked up for d**g dealing at a local music festival. The client bailed him out, and then had his whole fancy law firm defend his son.The son shambled into the courtroom sd off his as, and loudly attempted to buy ds off the bailiff.There wasn’t a lot the lawyers could do after that.
NAL - my dad’s psychotic ex-girlfriend was trying to press bogus charges on my dad, in general trying to ruin his life and career. And his family - she attempted to make some things up about me, too. Had to go through interviews, detective’s office talks, APS visits. My dad and I filed protective orders. Her response to the POs, and I was afraid it would happen, was to vandalize a part of his property in a very gross and obscene way. She also went back to the detective to make another claim on me, saying I stole her non-prescribed ds, so basically admitting she had illegal d**s. So she got a bit more than just protective orders against her; she had jail time, now, too. Good riddance!
Law student working at law firm. We have a fax machine that gets tons of spam faxes.Our chief partner has a vendetta against spam, and he uses it to give us practice in researching and writing petitions. So we catalog each fax, send replies to take us off the list, document everything, and wait for them to fax us again. Then we follow up with a FCC complaint and demand letter. A couple of times, this has ended up with the person getting mad and sending us retaliatory faxes (black sheets of paper).If they stop sending we don’t do anything, but we’ve gone to small claims a couple of times, and gotten $500 per page a couple of times.We also got someone trying to sell d***s through fax, but we just turned that over to the police.
I was on a jury where the defendant showed up in court day 1 wearing the same exact outfit as the “unknown suspect” in the video of the crime. It took only a few seconds before the judge immediately called a stoppage. All lawyers went into the back with the judge and they came out like 7 minutes later as announced the defendant had taken the plea deal. Wild.
Client was being sued and didn’t like the opposing counsel or the judge so he left the court a bunch of voicemails so profane that he was subject to a criminal contempt of court hearing.
Not a lawyer, heard this story from a guy I used to work with. His brother in law got injured at work and was suing for a hefty sum. Case was pretty much open and shut, all the evidence was in the BIL’s favor… Until the BIL started talking. They ask him to tell them about the day of the accident. BIL started out fine until he gets to the where he approached the piece of equipment that injured him. He tell everyone that there was a note on it stating that it was out of order. BIL then says that he discarded the note and started up the piece of malfunctioning equipment as he had a job to get done…That easy win was discarded faster than that out of order sign.
NAL, but my uncle used to be a prison manager at the local prison in the area of NZ where I grew up. They had ‘court’ hearings when the prisoners had done something against the rules etc, they’d go before a couple of the prison workers and explain, kinda like an internal hearing I guess. Uncle was the ‘judge’ for a lot of these.One dude had been found with a cellphone. Denied up and down that it was his, didn’t know where it came from, blah blah blah. Uncle asked him several times if he wanted to own up, guy absolutely INSISTED it wasn’t his.Uncle “well, someone’s wasted a hundred bucks on a phone then"Prisoner “F**k off, I paid $600 for that!“Uncle “………….“hahahahhaa miss his work stories.
Not a lawyer, but I was in a courtroom watching injunctions (restraining orders) play out.One case the woman was there, but the man was in prison so he was calling in. After deciding on an agreement, the guy asked if he could make a statement. At the end of his statement, he said “and tell {the woman} to go fk herself.“He got an additional 6 months of prison. The guy asked to make another statement after getting a tongue lashing from the judge.And he did it again - telling her to go fk herself. And got another 6 months.Imagine losing a year of your life because you couldn’t shut up for 5 minutes.
The client called me to the hospital to write his will. (He called me himself – he knew he was terminal, but nobody got anything over on this guy. He was completely cognizant of absolutely everything until the very end).He left token amounts to the older sons and the bulk of his modest but comfortable estate to the youngest. The youngest son, of course, was positively gleeful to learn he was getting what he thought to be a lot of money, but at the same time was confused as to why Dad would leave things that way since he was actually closer to the older sons. The older sons, who had always been respectful of Dad and responsible, were hurt and confused, especially since they knew how angry their Dad had been at the youngest. They asked what they could do to make the division of things more fair.I recommended initially that they make a Family Settlement that could be presented to the probate court for approval. Dad’s instructions to me and to the cousin he had named administrator were that if any of the older sons challenged his will, paternity tests were to be done on them. He did not believe that any of the sons but the youngest were actually his. I would lay money on the oldest being his just because they looked so much alike. The other three, though? I didn’t think they had a prayer. The youngest was not subject to the paternity test.The whole family was devastated at the paternity test condition. The two sons who owned the garage sat in my conference room and cried. They had no idea. The eldest was angry but didn’t hesitate. He knew that whatever his father’s suspicions were, he was actually his natural son. The fourth son was rocked. He had a heart attack that night (but survived, fortunately.) The youngest was stunned, too. It never dawned on him that his older brothers might not actually be his brothers.I was very grateful when they decided to enter into a Family Settlement and divide the estate more equitably.
Client added 9 years to a short sentence. He got like a year or 2 for being involved in a drag race that the other guy crashed and severely injured someone else. Then towards the end of his short prison term he tried to escape, got 9 more years for prison escape! He became friends with John Lennon’s killer in NY prison, which was interesting.
Friend of mine used to be a latent print analyst. Going to get prints of a suspect arrested for breaking into a home to rob it. While she’s getting the ink and paper set up, suspect shouts, “whaddya need the prints for? She looked right at me when I kicked in the door!”.
NAL - I was a legal clerk for a couple years in college. Still baffles me how this one made it all the way to trial. Lady slipped & fell at a chain restaurant, “hurt” her back irreparably, wanted a huge payout. Said she slipped on butter that was on the floor. On cross exam she was asked what type of butter, answer “the little pats of butter they put out in the buffet.” Defense immediately re-called the store manager…. The store had never used that type of butter. Case ended pretty quickly. Lol.
I was working on a $15 million M&A deal and my client called the buyer’s attorney “Barney Fife, country hillbilly.” That attorney was the brother of the CEO of the buyer. They got so pissed they dropped the deal.
NAL but watched as a girl in her early 20’s giggled her way through sentencing on a petty theft charge.Instead of the same 30-day suspended sentence her remorseful looking co-defendant received, she got 90 days in county jail.She wasn’t giggling after that.
Criminal prosecutor here. A patrol officer pulled over a driver for some traffic violation, I think failure to signal. After a heated roadside exchange where the driver initially refused to turn over her license, she ultimately relented and ‘thrust the license with undue force’ into the officer’s outstretched hand. The cop charged her with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer.When asked to justify his actions, he stated that ‘people need to learn to respect the police.’ We dismissed the charge, apologized to the defendant, and told the cop to never bring us something like that again. I can’t recall if internal affairs was notified.I work with the police every day, and the majority of them are good people. This guy was a sh*t.
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I’m pretty sure losing a 5 million dollar defamation case and then immediately then immediately making MORE statements and having it raised to 90 million is pretty far up the list.
Not an attorney, but one client of ours baffles me to this day. He had multiple cases, including aggravated battery and d**g possession, At the insistence of dude’s family, we moved heaven and earth getting him a bond, so that he could get out of jail and live with said family until the case was over. The whole process took weeks.Less than a day after getting out, he was caught stealing $16 worth of batteries from Target. Bond revoked. To be fair, the line between stupidity and compulsion is blurred with this one.EDIT: For anyone who’s curious, we immediately ordered a psych eval for him. He was found competent, but it also confirmed what he had mental health issues. The Agg. Batt. charge ended up being dropped, and he took a plea for time served.
Commit robbery in order to hire an expensive attorney with minimal experience in criminal law rather than accept a seasoned public defender.
Not my client, but defendant posted a Facebook status along the lines of that he had “taken care of business and the world is a better place because of it”. He was charged with battery after putting someone in the hospital that had attacked his 14 year old daughter. The person didn’t have a clear memory of the incident and other testimony later revealed the person beat up had an alibi for the attack in question. Most likely the girl had made up the story to avoid trouble from being out drinking underage, though we never got the full story. Anyways the dad was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison.
Paralegal. Once had a convicted criminal explain to me how their murder charge should be overturned because the victim didn’t die at the scene of the crime. The victim died at the hospital, therefore the defendant couldn’t be charged with anything more than attempted murder.
Am criminal defense lawyer. Client arrested on DUI. Client lived in small town. He and his wife would drive to the one bar in town, drink, then walk to their houseboat after a night at the bar (1/4 mile away). He and wife know everyone in the bar, another patron they know gets blasted, bar owner says she can’t stay, client and wife walk her to his car to stay there until ride comes.Client gets her in backseat of the suv. Client is drunk, drops keys on the way to front seat, opens now unlocked front door, turns on car lights to see (he walked around the front from rear passenger), cops are waiting to see if people leave bar drunk, sees lights, says he saw driving, immediately rolled up arrests client.Client has prior dui from 12ish years before. Judge agreed that it wouldn’t come in, jury wouldn’t hear it unless he “opened the door.” Can’t win the case unless dude testifies. I prep him, continue to prep him, keep prepping him, but tell him under NO CIRCUMSTANCES can he say he would never drive drunk, never do anything like that. Basically anything about the past = no.Direct is going well, gave him a beautiful, easy, last question where he could explain the night, explain why he was upset he got arrested (because he wasn’t driving and was doing everything right).“I would never do something like that.” Door open, judge lets da in rebuttal bring in old dui. Jury took about 25 minutes to convict.And that’s about one of a hundred stories. Life is never dull in the criminal defense world.
Not in the US, but the judge asked if the defendant was remorseful (if you show regrets, you can have some leniency).“No”.The guy didn’t understand the question, and when he doesn’t, he just usually says “no”.
I tried a sexual harassment case in a conservative county. Young female victim, gross old male perpetrator. We had really good evidence, including admissions. The jury voted defense. After the verdict, my client and I were sitting out in front of the courthouse. She was crying. The jury foreman, who had just voted for the defense, came up to me and said, ‘If that son of a bitch had done that to my daughter, I would’ve gone down to that store and kicked his ass.
Client returns to court drunk after luncheon adjournment. Falls asleep, and his head drops right into the side of the witness box, whereupon he proceeds to snore. Loudly.
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What a question! How much time do you have? I have hundreds of stories of clients making dumb decisions!One particular client that comes to mind is a guy who committed a spree of burglaries… while on electronic monitoring for another case. The State brought a list of his coordinates to his bond hearing. I actually made the argument that he is clearly not a flight risk, since he actually kept his monitor on, and that the Court should release him on the same terms as his other case. The Judge looked at me like a crazy person and held my client without bond.
Used to work at a workman’s comp firm, and… hurting themselves again.Oftentimes doing stuff around the house. Falling off a ladder, using tools, going horseback riding, etc. Then they get hurt again and insurance company is off the hook.And many get their doctors to write notes saying they’re fine, so they can work (because they’re bored at home with a huge injury), then are baffled that they don’t get workman’s comp anymore. Then they overexert themselves because of the injury that isn’t better… sigh.
I’m not a lawyer but the local news ran a clip over and over from a murder trial where the defendant took the stand against their lawyers advice, the defense was claiming self defense. As the prosecution read transcripts from damning jail phone calls the guy on trial (not his lawyer) called for an objection. It through everyone for a loop, the judge asked him why he called for an objection dude was honest and said I didn’t know they’d actually listen to my calls. A recess was granted and dude took a plea deal when court resumed .
I am a lawyer. I was cross examining a slip and fall plaintiff on the stand in trial after like two years of litigation. We were going over some pictures he took when he let slip that the “picture of the two signs” was missing. I grilled him on what he meant until the judge chastised me for trying to conduct discovery during trial, which is supposedly not allowed (he had clearly concealed evidence though).We took a break for the day, and the next day he came back with the photo in question, which showed that he had walked squarely between two wet floor signs to go down the Kroger aisle that he immediately slipped and fell in.He did not recover any money in that one, despite the horrific defense venue. The judge who jumped all over me for exploring obvious evidence tampering was later appointed to the federal bench here in Atlanta. .
I was representing a woman in an eviction where her husband had signed the house over to his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was trying to evict the wife (husband was in jail, and wife had a restraining order against him). Girlfriend shows up to court drunk. The judge stops the hearing, orders a breathalyzer and when she fails, throws her in jail for contempt of court. Opposing counsel tried to tell me she was self-medicating after falling in a hole in the backyard
Client in the interview with police:Police officer: “I don’t care how angry you are- you can’t go around threatening to kill a 5 year old!”Client: “I didn’t threaten to kill her!!! I threatened her mother!!!”He thought there was some sort of distinction there. We took a plea deal.
I was at court once fighting a traffic ticket and a guys lawyer was pleading no contest to a charge he got for having a fire arm on probation. It sounded like he was getting more probation and it would be done with that, then the judge says “do you have anything to say before we move forward” and the guy says “I didn’t know having a gun was against the rules. And I had a gun so I guess that makes me GUILTY”. Smiled like he just stuck it to the man, the look on the lawyer and judges face were of so much disappointment.
Had a domestic violence case. For months we went to preparatory hearings and gathering evidence, and got restraining orders. By the time the trial was finaly happening, on the same morning of the hearing, the person I represented let me know she had gone on holidays with the defendant for a couple of weeks, and had grand old time. At that point, the opposing counsel approached me and told me he had lots of evidence of both the parites having a great time together.This of course doesn’t mean abuse didn’t happen in the past, but it really undermined our case, where we had little evidence other than some testimonials. At that point I had to explain to her how even beyond strict legal rules, the judge would potentially change her mind once she saw the claimant was out partying with the defendant, for whom a restraining order was requested.We settled and avoided the trial.
“Is my client a perfect man? No.”-“I mean, I killed him, yeah”.
A friend was doing the workman’s comp as well as suing the company for a few million. Could not bend over, raise his arms, plus everything he could think of.Taking the stand, using a cane. Lawyer ask him to read the highlighted parts from the local paper. A week before he had won a Marshall arts tournament.Can you explain that? Next fifteen minutes he explained each kick, punch etc with a big smile. I rest my case. Jury Forman ask the judge if they had to leave the room or could they just announce the verdict.
Briefly: he had to testify that doing X thing would not cost him a lot of moneyThe judge asked him how much money would it cost for him and he said an amount which was not too much for him (because he was rich) but it was a lot compared to what everybody in the courtroom was making!Other case:The day before the court I tell him exactly what he is going to answer to certain questions. I specifically tell him to answer X when asked. Time comes, judge asks, he completely loses it, he gets a panic attack…he can’t even speak a single word! He just looks at the judge with the 1000 yard stare. Disaster.
Not a lawyer but I had jury duty once.Prosecutor: “Defendant, why did you and your friend video record yourselves [committing the crime]?“Defendant: “Well, I gotta answer to– I mean, uh… uh… there’s a good answer, which… uh…“Organized sex trafficking carries a sentence of 20 years, kids. Don’t do it! And if you do, don’t video it on your phone!
Family Law (child custody and visitation): Mother was married to Father, and they had three children. Father died. Mother married Father’s cousin. The new husband did not get along well with his teenage step-son.Here is the kicker. Mother, playing peace-maker, told new husband ‘[Teenage stepson] is your cousin, and now he is your son, so y’all need to learn to get along.’ TL;DR — I am from the South.
Pro bono VAWA case. Should have been a straightforward petition. Ran a FOIA search on the client before the final submission just in case. Turns out she had been deported from Guam and then while her immigration ban was still in place she entered the mainland US without status (= permanently ineligible for adjustment). When I asked why she had not disclosed this during intake, her response was: “Oh, I thought Guam was its own country and not part of the US, so it wouldn’t matter.” .
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