Wait for it…..!
I don’t think that guy is going to get his sentence suspended now…
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Wait for it…..!
I don’t think that guy is going to get his sentence suspended now…
Ethics Alarms 
I’m glad he’s in a better place, and not committing crimes now. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened?
Heh.
Apparently, he described himself as “a person who never stops trying to do the right thing no matter how hard it is.“
Pssst, almost immediately attacking a judge after you don’t get what you want is not the right thing.
But he was still trying…
Very trying
In the past, I used clips like this (there are a disturbing number of them online) in delivering courtroom security seminars to deputy sheriffs and other court officials. It always impresses the uninitiated just how quickly the defendants can go from zero to homicidal.
Really? Like that? That was a leap right out of a slapstick comedy!
Well, that one was certainly toward the high end of the leap scale. (That’s another good reason for the judge’s bench to be appreciably higher than the floor level.)
When I was involved in making court security policy, we always had at least two armed officers in each courtroom, plus supervisors roving from court to court, and more people assigned for higher-risk cases. We were initially trained in courtroom security by the US Marshal’s Service, some of the best in the business at that time (late 1990s). We sat down with our judges to design the courtrooms when our “new” court facility was begun in 2000. The judges adopted almost all of our security recommendations. We took good care of our judges.
It certainly impressed me. I know Jack would not have posted this as a gag, but was hard pressed not to think of this as a gag. People (as compared to this singular person) really do this? In court? With bailiffs and such looking on? Not to mention the lawyers, judge, and jury? How messed up do you have to be? In addition, does this get them another charge with another court date, or just a higher sentence?
I appreciate police officers for their impossible job, but all the more now.
Such attacks -heck, even just angry outbursts where the defendant moves toward the bench- will (in my county) get the defendant a criminal contempt charge in addition to any assaults that occur before the defendant is brought under control. The courts routinely deal with a lot of very messed-up people. Veteran court officers everywhere can recount numerous incidents of violent outbursts by defendants. Court officers have to constantly monitor defendants to gauge when they are growing agitated, and officers try to position themselves to intervene decisively if an assault occurs. Everyone present in the courtroom in an official capacity needs to maintain situational awareness at all times. The state Administrative Office of the Courts provides security training for the judges. My former agency invited judges, court clerks, prosecutors and public defenders to our annual in-house court security training. Even a few private attorneys were interested enough to attend.
Once a jailed defendant has had a violent outburst in the court, he or she may have future non-trial hearings conducted via videoconference from the security of the jail.
Back in 2000-2002, I worked with a great team of court officers to develop the security policies and procedures to operate the courts in our law enforcement/jail/courts complex then under construction. We fine-tuned our plans continuously for the first year the facility was in operation before being satisfied to step back to a twice-yearly review process. Very few members of the public attend any but the most high-profile court proceedings, so a lot of the good work court officers do daily goes largely unrecognized by most. Helping the courts run smoothly and safely is important work, whether it gets noticed or not.