A few months back I noticed an “Unlicensed Practice of Dentistry” on a criminal docket in my home jurisdiction. Turns out nobody got hurt, she was doing good work out of her front parlor. I imagined that the local APA who got to review that warrant probably did not have it on his bingo card for the day.
Lawyers, jurists, police, other insiders, what very rare criminal charges have you either seen or been involved in processing?
“SDMBBA”? What does this mean?
SDMB Bar Association?
Its new!
And it means…?
Or maybe it’s our ABBA tribute band. I dunno.
Mangetout got it right away.
Also, first person to answer with “Aggravated Mopery,” loses.
I had a client charged with petting a horse. The actual charge was malicious mischief or something. She got off a party boat in downtown Seattle and went up to one of the horses that pull carriages around Pioneer Square. The halter fell off the horse and it went a bit of rampage around town causing damage. The owner didn’t want the responsibility, and alleged that my client intentionally removed the halter. She was booked into jail. We had a jury trial. She was acquitted.
tl/dr. The actual charge was commonplace, but the facts underlying the charge were a bit unusual.
For unusual charges, I’ll submit “transporting a Christmas Tree Without a Permit” in a small Washington town. I just looked and couldn’t find the ordinance on line, so perhaps it has been rescinded. We argued it was unconstitutionally vague and got the charges dropped. (court was in the back of the local fire station).
Mr. Wrekker was charged with littering once because of junk he was transporting to the dump fell off his trailer.
He claims he didn’t notice. I kinda doubted that.
He was instructed to go back and get it or be given a littering charge.
He turned around and followed the police back there. It was a chevy truck tail gate. It wasn’t there when they went back. No trash. No littering charge.
Mr. Wrekker says he bets that cop thinks about that tail gate everytime he passes that spot. Remembers digging thru high grass on the roadside and stepping in a fire ant bed.
I was arrested for advanced mopery at the Mornington Crescent station.
Not a member of the bar, but I had to go to court as the defendant because of a criminal complaint. My dachshund would sit on the back of the couch and look at the neighbors through the windows. They filed the complaint since he was “intimidating” them.
Mornington Crescent! I haven’t thought of that in years!
DooProcess Who is to say no one got hurt? Hurt could mean missing something such as cancer. I did dentistry for 38 years. Had a pt who chipped her tooth, thought it was rubbing her tongue and came in because she thought she needed a crown. Thing is the tooth wasn’t rubbing her tongue, the lesion was squamous cell carcinoma. Many people that practice dentistry are lab techs that work out of their garage. They can make great crowns and dentures but that doesn’t mean they have the pathology training to make those kinds of diagnosis. Don’t know the details in your stated case but what if she had gone to a non dentist who made her a crown and left the cancer in place?
It wasn’t my case, but my understanding is she was an immigrant who had practiced in her home country previously and that none of the “patients” had any complaints. As a fellow licensed professional, I certainly appreciate what you are saying.
New Hampshire had a man arrested for standing in the tank of woman’s outhouse in White Mountain National Forest back in 2005.
https://www.wmur.com/article/man-pulled-from-women-s-outhouse-tank/5142933
Edit: Earlier similar thread here: https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-unsolved-or-otherwise-infamous-true-crime-cases-from-your-state-country/847890
The facts there are of course very unusual, but Criminal Trespass is hardly an uncommon charge.
I once got objected to for being too persuasive.
That’s a pretty nice compliment from opposing counsel. Sustained?
I wish I had some good stories. In over 25 years never had to go fishing through the statute book. Everything was pretty normal.
Overruled!
Thing is, I’m not a lawyer in that story; I was a law firm’s clerk, or errand boy, or whatever. And I got asked to go down to the courthouse and read some testimony into the record; apparently the expert witness didn’t need to be there, as he’d already replied to the questions from the other side’s lawyer at the deposition. So that lawyer would recite those same questions in front of the jury, and I’d mechanically read off each reply, is all.
And I noticed one exchange where the expert gave a wordy and confusing reply that I didn’t understand — and I looked it over again, and still didn’t understand it — and then I read the lawyer’s regular-guy response, asking someone who maybe seemed to be evasively obfuscating to rephrase things so people could understand it; and the expert did, and I went back and realized what he’d been trying to say before.
In fact, I realized he’d said it right.
So I eventually got asked that question, and read the reply as amiably as possible. But I slowed down before emphasizing one key word, and then stopped talking and looked up as if the answer was complete as well as clear. And, as far as I could tell, the jury understood perfectly! And then, after waiting a moment — as if giving the lawyer a chance to ask about something else — I read the rest of that reply: again slowing down before emphasizing a key word, and again looking up as if I’d given a satisfactory answer and was finished. And the vibe of the jury was, uh, yeah; we got it the first time; you didn’t need to say it slightly differently.
Which is when the lawyer was, of course, required to ask me to phrase it more helpfully. Which, of course, earned him disapproving looks from the jury: what the heck? We understood him the first time, and the second time; why the fuck are you asking this not-at-all-evasive guy to spoonfeed this to us a third time? Do you think we’re not getting this? Are you not getting this?
And so, with an apologetic tone — as if to say, hey, folks, I’m just obliging the lawyer who’s requiring me to do this — I of course read the next reply to a jury that no longer needed an explanation and was now having their time wasted at his request.
When I finished, the lawyer spoke up. “Objection, your honor; this is not the man I interviewed,” he said. “He’s too persuasive,” he added, because, well, what else was he going to say?
And the judge overruled him, adding, look, as long as he sticks to what’s written, there’s nothing I can do…