Slow Motion for me

I just realized that I drafted the wrong side of a motion. And I have thirty minutes until class. There is no chance I will be able to rewrite it, so I intend to play dumb and make believe that I was given no notice whatsoever that I was supposed to write for the prosecution.

On the other hand, I just found a case on point for my 4, 5, 6 motion. This professor usually has a "magic bullet" that goes into her motion assignments and I think it's safe to say that I'll be able to kill the werewolf on this one. Even when the case is a "fake" one, it's a rush when you find a case on point. It's like living in the O.C., or delivering a vicious roundhouse kick, or having a full house when your opponent has the nut flush. Actually, it's not better than any of those things, but it is kind of satisfying. Now the real pain is going to be spending hours in the library writing the damn thing.

Earlier this week I received notice that a brief I slapped together for an appeal had apparently succeeded and got a defendant out of a felony OWI. The premise of my argument was complete crap and I felt embarassed even submitting it, but I guess the Court of Appeals takes subject-matter jurisdiction seriously. In Wisconsin, the first OWI is a civil offense, and in my case, a prosecutor had taken mercy on (or didn't check the convictions record of) my client and charged him twice in a row with an OWI first. I argued that his second offense should have been charged criminally instead of just a fine, because he had the right to a public defender if that would have been the case (Hence this OWI would only be a fourth instead of a fifth). Never mind the fact that had the offense been charged as an OWI second, he would have spent a minimum of four days in jail upon conviction, and that it would have been universally stupid to demand criminal penalties instead of a civil forfeiture. Sometimes justice is in the details.

Here's to abusing the system whenever you can.