Suspect’s Looking for a New High: a Drug-Dealing Lawyer to Defend Him

The February issue of California Lawyer magazine contains some wacky legal transcripts, including one from Beverly Hills Municipal Court with a Perry Mason-like twist:

Judge: Do you have money to hire your own lawyer if you desired?

Defendant: No, I don’t.

Judge: Do you desire to have a public defender?

Defendant: No, I don’t.

Judge: Do you want to represent yourself?

Defendant: No, I will hire the attorney that got me high.

Judge: Say it again?

Defendant: I will hire the attorney that got me high on the drugs that I was on that night. I think he owes me the courtesy.

*

Hold that question: Richard Showstack of Newport Beach saw a driver who apparently was weary of people asking if he had any Grey Poupon. The license plate on his Rolls Royce said: NO MSTRD.

*

Not another Florida voting debacle ... Is Secretary of State Bill Jones, one of the hopefuls for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, living in the past?

Tim Oder, a government teacher at Fallbrook High, received some mailers from Jones that indicated that the March 5 primary has already been held (see accompanying).

*

Maybe it’s an area for employee breaks: After spotting a “customer pickup” spot outside a store, Deborah Wolen of Studio City quipped: “I think I’d opt for home delivery” (see photo). (Could the pickup area really be inside the fence?)

*

Well, the Beach Boys weren’t into surfing: Brad Polt-Jones, who lives in downtown L.A. in a converted warehouse-studio saw some young men with skateboards being photographed and videotaped amid the industrial digs.

A passerby asked one of the guys if they were making a skateboarding movie.

Obviously, the questioners forgot that this is L.A., the land of illusion. The subjects were actually rock musicians posing for promotional shots.

“None of us know how to skate,” admitted one of the guys.

*

Liking the odds: In closing, here is a transcript that California Lawyer reprinted from the newsletter of the California Judge’s Assn:

Prosecutor: I’m sitting here, and I looked at the jury. Eleven women around you.

Prospective male juror: Hey, happy days.

Prosecutor: We don’t know how the jury will be after this right now. But if you were in a jury such as right now, eleven to one, can you still work with all eleven of them?

Prospective male juror: Could we be sequestered?

*

miscelLAny: Several readers thought they had caught me in a spell-check boo-boo in an item about a taxi customer who was arrested soon after robbing the driver. I said the assailant, who pulled the job outside his residence, was no “road scholar.” Some accused me of misspelling “Rhodes scholar.” Of course, I was making a joke about a dumb roadside crime. Can’t decide whether it’s worse to commit a misspelling or a bad pun.