Here are some first-hand accounts of Reddit posters that have been in jail. Really really sobering stuff:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7hqwx/ask_reddit_has_anyone_on_reddit_been_to_prison_if/
Worst thing is the guy in the first story seems to have went to prison because his GF stole his cell phone and made a drug deal on it.
I always trust convicted felons. I’ve one or two and their stories are always grand.
Convicts lie. You don’t go to prison for having your cell phone stolen. I’ve yet to meet a public defender that made $1500 per court appearance. Hell, if the pay was that good, I’d be doing it.
Now hand over your chicken.
Yeah I take the “I didn’t do it” stories with a very large grain of salt, but the inside experiences seem to be realistic. When you’re being transported they don’t seem to like feeding you or letting you go to the bathroom.
OJ didn’t do it, either.
What I take away from most of those stories is don’t do drugs and go out partying or you’ll do crazy shit that will get you thrown in jail.
Yeah, as a public defender, I can tell you that I have had clients lie through their teeth about what I have done for them, what information I have given them, and what I have told them. And no, I don’t file every stupid motion an imate asks me to file. I file motions that actually have some merit, and that are relevant to the case. There’s a reason they send us to law school instead of jail before we can be lawyers.
And, $1,500 per court appearance? That’s a crock. Let’s see, counting the court I had this morning, I have had 102 court appearances so far this year. I can assure you that I have not made $153,000, or anywhere close to it.
I’d vote for the guy being full of crap.
Bullshit.
Clients lie about everything, and what they’re not lying about, they simply don’t remember or didn’t understand.
In the last case - that they didn’t understand - isn’t that a failing of the lawyer and the Court?
Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?
I’ll allow that there are times when that’s true. But there are plenty of times when they simply don’t listen. They may even sit quietly while you talk, but they have closed their ears, and they’re really not hearing you.
“They can’t prove it was me!”
“Well, the three people that saw the fight are all going to testify that it was you.”
“Yeah, but it’s their word against mine!”
“Yes, that’s true. But in cases like that, the law says the jury can believe them if they want to.”
“But it’s their word against mine!”
“Yes, and the jury can choose to take their word.”
“That’s bullshit. It’s their word against mine. They can’t prove it was me.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
All I need to keep myself from the temptation of a felonious life is to watch a few episodes of Lockup.
My personal favorite- “A guy in my block was telling me that they can’t charge me with this”. Yep, they can, and they did. Don’t get me wrong- I really like my job- I’ve been a public defender for 21 years as of last month. I’ve had offers for easier jobs that pay more, but I like what I do, I’m very good at it, and I like to think that I’ve changed the attitude of at least a few people about public defenders.
That said, it is very difficult to deal with someone who, for whatever reason (mainly because of a prejudice against public defenders), does not trust you. Bricker is right on the money- lots of times, people hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest.
Case in point- I had a client who was charged with (among other things) kidnapping with bodily injury, which in Georgia, carries a mandatory life sentence. I explained that to him many, many times. He was offered a plea to something less for a term of years, but rejected the plea offer. I actually had him sign a written rejection (something I’ve learned to do to avoid the inevitable post-trial “I didn’t know I’d get so much time if I went to trial”) that spelled out the plea offer and the sentence he would receive if her were convicted of the KBI. We went to trial, and it actually went OK for us- but the state still had a pretty good shot at getting the KBI conviction.
While we were on a recess, the judge asked me, in my client’s presence, if my client was subject to life without parole if he got convicted, or just life. My client started shaking visibly, and said, “You mean I really can get life for this?” He begged me to see if the DA’s office would make him the original offer. They did, and he pled. But it took hearing it from the judge for him to accept how serious the case was.
I’d find it really hard to plead guilty to something I wasn’t guilty of.
I also feel from reading all those stories that I’d rather be a fugitive than go to jail. :eek:
[slight hijack] Same goes for recruiters, hence the ol’ my recruiter lied to me line. I used to halfway believe them until I became a recruiter. I never lied to an applicant but they sure as hell claimed I did when they gasp found out that the Army wasn’t going to coddle them like babies.[/slight hijack]
Sorry for the 'jack.
My mother served time in prison for money laundering/drug trafficking.
She actually made a lot of friends there. One was a Japanese girl who had the bad luck to be in her then-boyfriend’s apartment when the cops busted him. I’m not passing judgment on the validity of their stories. That’s what they told my mother and she believed them, and she knew them well and had her reasons for believing them.
Anyway, a lot of the women were there on drug-related charges: either buying, selling, using, or transporting. A lot were South/Central American. Mama told me the nastiest ones were Jamaican girls who would crap in the showers and everything else. One inmate (not one of my mother’s friends, just someone she met) was Pablo Escobar’s mother-in-law and another was a tiny little old lady who had chopped her husband up and tried to mail him back to his mother.
I think Mama mostly found it pretty boring.
Quadgop’s also got some pretty interesting stories. I liked his bageldog story especially.
So he’s probably got some good ones.
What, you have to be a lawyer before they send you to jail?
More likely a synaptic gap misfunction in the messed up mind of the miscreant.
But all I did was let my girlfriend use my cell phone and I got five whole months!
tells stories about five different prisons around the country
Some of my patients (incarcerated felons all) tell me heartbreaking stories about being victims of circumstance, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of being scapegoated and pre-judged.
Sometimes the stories are true, I expect.
But after about the 15th time it was definitively shown by court records, pre-sentence investigation, and even words out of the patient’s own mouth that such claims were not based in reality (which occurred during my first 2 weeks of work), I now just nod my head and say “let’s focus on getting your diabetes under control, shall we?”
Really, these guys try to sell such a bill of goods. One fellow insisted that since his last incarceration, he’d had a sex change operation where they’d implanted a working uterus into him, which is why he needed the sanitary pads he’d been requesting. But it wasn’t proper for me to examine him down there, since he was now a gal and I was a guy. And it wasn’t proper for my female nurse practitioner to examine him down there, because while he was now a gal, he was still attracted to women.
Hell, I can’t even get these guys to report their blood sugars accurately. 337 on their glucometer becomes 137. Tell me what really happened? Not often.