Friday, May 23, 2008

in the biblical sense

Flipping through a case just now, I was rather confused about a threat the defendant made to his neighbor. "Wait a minute," I thought, "this inner-city drug dealer's neighbor owned a donkey? And why would the drug dealer threaten to kick the donkey? It seems like kicking a donkey is . . . .Oh, I think he wasn't referring to a donkey after all."

Apparently I lead a sheltered life.

5 comments:

Cindy said...

On the other hand, I wasn't confused by the reference to cookies in the testimony about crack. I guess I'm more conversant in drug slang than in mild profanities.

Crutches said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Crutches said...

Oops! That deleted comment was mine. I didn't mean to delete it. The comment was essentially this...

Before I read your own comment I was thinking, "With all the crazy drug cases she works with I would figure she'd be pretty well informed in the ways of the world by now." I guess, however, the drug world and the profanity world don't go together as much hand in hand as I previously thought.

kathy said...

thanks for the laugh cindy! (it actually took me a minute to get it.)

Cindy said...

Appellate records tend to be rather sanitized. We mostly just see documents filed in the district court -- and even pro se litigants usually have enough sense to realize that profanity won't help them win their case -- and transciprts from hearings and trials. Again, about the only time you see profanity in trial transcripts is when someone quotes something said out of court, like the neighbor in this case.

Trial exhibits often include gruesome autopsy pictures, tape recordings of profanity-ridden conversations, images taken from people's computers, etc, but that stuff rarely becomes part of the record on appeal.