Posted by Criminal Defense Attorney on 6/17/06

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I'm wondering if other attorneys could give an opinion if
I'm right or wrong on a recent incident I was involved
with.

I had a criminal case that was marked for trial.
Basically, my client's punk teenage son made a false
report to the police that he was assaulted by his father.
It was later well documented by youth services that the
kid (who has a long history of disciplinary problems) made
the story up so he could get rid of his father for the
night and have a party.

Anyway, the Assistant DA agreed to dismiss the case based
on the mountain of evidence that my client (a former
marine) was a victim of his lying son. Which brings me to
the incident in question. Just before the call of the list
first thing in the morning, the ADA I was dealing with
disappeared to another courtroom to try another case. Her
replacement (a two month veteran) told the judge that he
did not know what was going on with our case, and asked
for further call, after HIS bench trial. So I had to wait
around for over three hours until his trial was done, at
which time he discovered that, yes, the case was to be
dismissed (it took him about one minute to ascertain
this). The dismissal hearing took all of thirty seconds.

I politely complained to the supervising ADA that this was
very disrespectful of my time. I felt that the ADA should
have told her replacement to dismiss the case and allow me
to leave. Before dismissing me, she informed me that since
my client commited a crime, it was our problem that we had
too wait.

Solos know how valuable our time is. To me, for an ADA to
nonchalantly make me hang around for three hours is
arrogance at its highest. Am I overreacting? I know
there's nothing that can be done, the incident is in the
past, but I guess I'm looking to either be validated or
told I'm taking this too seriously.

Opinions are appreciated.

Re: Am I right or wrong? - Response to Carol, 6/21/06, by Carol.

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