𤯠INCRĂVEL: âSome People Are Barely Humanâ: 57 Horrifying Moments When Lawyers Realized Their Client Was A Monster đ˛
I’m on the other side, but I’ve got a defendant who went to prison for starving three adopted children to the point that they needed weeks of hospitalization, then got out of prison and married a guy with children so that she could start starving them, too. Listening to her interview where she attempts to justify what she did to both sets of kids disturbed me more than any of the murder cases I’ve worked on.
**Don’t read this unless you have a strong stomach.**
Attorney’s wife here. I used to help him file away evidence and reports.
Came across a file with video. Curiosity got the better of me, especially when husband told me NOT to watch it.
File gives this story: Woman was at boyfriend’s trailer out in the middle of nowhere, got pissed off at boyfriend, so smacked him in the head with a metal bat and went on her merry way home.
Boyfriend is apparently not a pleasant person and nobody really misses him or looks for him. He is fired from work in absentia.
On day 7 boyfriend’s neighbor finally stops by, hears hoarse screaming and calls police.
That’s where the video came from. Day 7. One of the cops was wearing a camera on his uniform. It shows him and his partner going through the house, finding dog [feces] all over the floor. Boyfriend’s two Rotweillers, who were also in the house, went without food for about 6 days before they started eating bits and pieces of him. The camera shows the moment the cop found the body on its side, rolled it over… AND HE’S BLINKING. Eyes open. With most of his face gone.
The woman didn’t even bother to let the dogs out before she left.
I do not help file cases anymore.
I have a family member who used to work in the court system (Lawyer)Once he told me that a kid pushed their grandma down the stairs and left her there to d**. Laughing and taunting her when she screamed in pain.
To clarify when I say young I mean under 13 years of age.Yeah…..
I guess demon children really do exist.
Also not sure how this case ended since I donât think they were tried as an adult. But hey thatâs the courts for ya.
In my hometown a guy drove to the tallest bridge in the middle of the night and threw his 4 kids off of it.
He confessed saying it was all out of revenge to his wife.
Heâs on d**h row now.
Basically he was watching his neighbor through the window in various stages of undress, got worked up. Minutes later the victim showed up at his shop to purchase some food, she was alone, he closed the door behind her and yeah, well that’s it. Got 25 years for that. That girl was 7!!! 7 years old!!! You have no idea how often in our country the mentality of “Well if I’m worked up and there is a possibility of release close by, regardless of whom or what or what age or consenting or not that possibility is or might be, I’m in titled to take it” – surfaces.
EDIT: Very disturbing content warning.
Even though Iâve made a throwaway Iâm going to be a bit vague because I still take my ethical duties to former clients seriously and canât breach privilege or the NDA I signed. This is a story from a long time ago, during the summer after my first year of law school when I was briefly working at a well-known criminal defense firm.
The client whose case I was working was one of several defendants charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Three individuals had committed the murders, and several others had either helped plan it, abducted the victims, came along to watch, or ***filmed*** it.
In order to see whether our client was one of the individuals present at the scene, I had to watch multiple videos of the murders. I watched multiple people brutally killedd in about the worst possible way you can imagine – they were chopped into pieces while they were alive and had their skulls stomped in. It wasnât some grainy security footage. It was HD video taken by bystanders just a few feet away. The videos showed someoneâs brain squirting out of their head and another person screaming as their hands and arms were hacked off. I also had to listen to the audio to see if our clientâs voice could be heard. The screams were bad. The laughter was worse. It has stuck with me for years and years, and I donât see it going away any time soon.
Thankfully my internship at that firm ended a few weeks later at the end of the summer. I never looked up the sentence from the case, and have no desire to. In our case there was no presumption of innocence – the individuals involved had all taken pleas in hope that the prosecutors wouldnât seek the death penalty. The only thing that would change was whether our client would get the death penalty (if he was present/filming) or life in prison (if we showed that he played a more minimal role). Working in criminal defense meant setting my judgement for people aside so that they could be afforded the rights guaranteed to them by the constitution. I still did my job to the best of my ability, but I found myself lying awake at night for several weeks in a row, praying to every god that I knew that each of those [monsters] involved would fry in the electric chair, and that someone would laugh at their screams too.
After that internship, I never returned to criminal law. I now practice civil law where I help people recover for wrongs done to them.
I listened to a 911 call where the victim’s throat was slit while on the call by our client. I will never forget her gurgling and sounding like she was dying (somehow she ultimately lived through this) saying, “He killed me, he killed me.”
I had a client who was accused of domestic violence. Essentially he threw his girlfriend out of a second story window. Now heâs got a terrible history but so do a lot of my clients and his attitude is a little entitled (also typical). But he also knows the deal and wants a plea deal. So Iâm not really prepared when he absolutely refuses the no jail offer from the state (keep in mind there were like 5 witnesses). Why? Because they wanted him to pay for her medical bills. Ok, a [jerk] but whatever not the worst.
What did it was his counteroffer.
âI ainât paying [her] bills. Tell them Iâll pay for the window.â
Prosecutor was not happy.
Criminal defense lawyer. I can name a few instances where I was just absolutely disgusted with my client. Caveat, these are mostly years ago when I was taking just any old case. I most practice white collar and federal now.
1. I won a DUI case because the government messed up on something right before trial was to begin. My client gives me a hug and COMPLETELY reeks of alcohol. He has driven to court. I took his keys and called his mother.
2. Client who was accused of [abusing] a 12 year old. He was mid 40s at the time and I had to shut him down real quick when he tried to tell me how the 12 year old was coming on to him.
3. I represented a woman for a grand theft charge. Left her in my office to get some things copied before she left. After she left, I realized my sunglasses and car keys were stolen. I tracked her down in the lobby and told her I was not going to represent her anymore and I would call the police if she didnât empty her pockets in front of me and give me my things
4. I had a client who was released after 25 years in prison for MURDER and then the SAME day he beats up his prospective new landlord. He ended up getting another 10 years. He was unrepentant and laughed about how he hit the guy so hard his eye ball popped out. I thought, âthis guy deserves to be in prison.â Took the case to trial anyway and (shocker) lost and he got 10 (the max).
5. Client who pretended to be a doctor so he could sell steroids. According to the Gov, he had numerous clients who were made to believe that his steroids would cure their cancer. They paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars and some of them died. I just thought that was pure evil.
I’ve done a lot of prison legal aid, and I could tell stories about child [abusers] that would turn you green, but instead I’ll turn you green a different way.
I had a kid (17) who was mildly cognitively disabled, due to brain trauma he sustained at the hands of his birth parents, who ended up with a really wonderful foster care family and thrived.
He was a popular kid in school, good athlete, got a girlfriend and invited her to meet up and be teenagers one night in a corn silo – which I guess is a thing that country kids do? I don’t know, this all comes from the pre-sentence investigation report I read before taking his case, but this girl met him at the silo and they were hanging out inside.
By his account, they were having a nice time and he was really enjoying himself, then for no particular reason, he picked up a 2×4 and bashed her skull in. He then used a combination of very crude farm implements (shovels, hoes) to chop her body up and bury it in the corn and went home like nothing had happened.
Hey, you asked.
My general psychology professor worked for the state of Arkansas assessing criminals to see if they would qualify as criminally insane. He told us a story one time about a guy who would get glass shards and hide them underneath his skin-presumably to use at a more opportune time. He said his interview with the guy made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
My mom is one and she told me a story. She was defending a man that was accused of killing his whole family with a axe and burned their bodies… yeah. He had 3 children, ages 3, 4 and 7 and a wife. My mom said she was afraid to talk to him because he just did not seem normal at all. She said that he was very freaky and that he would just stare at her for no reason for a long time. It still haunts her to this day. He got the death penalty and she was very happy, she didn’t even care about the money.
My mom is a lawyer. This is the story about how she quit being a public defender.
When you are a public defender you don’t get to choose your cases. She got assigned a young man who, with the help of his gifriend, had gotten a kitten from a “free to a good home” ad in the paper. They then brought it home and gave it to their dog as a chew toy. I think they also filmed it.
So yeah.
She said she needed a shower after every meeting with him. Canceled her PD contract after the case concluded.
When he told me that both of his biological teenaged daughters were lying about him [exploiting] them because he refused to let them go to prom so they were mad at him.
When this person (an executive) said she was firing any employee who had a serious illness or injury. While promoting fundraisers at a local church for cancer sufferers, no less (in part because employees, thinking she’d be sympathetic, would reveal their confidential health info to her).
The first and last family law case was assigned to me as a first year associate. My client broke his wifeâs jaw, and said if they were home in Russia he would have k****d her because he could pay his way out of prison there.
Late to the party but anyways.. my first internship in law school was at a matrimonial law firm in a very wealthy area, think millionaires and billionaires getting divorced.
One of the first cases I worked on involved the parents of a victim of a high-profile school shooting. The parents were divorced and had been prior to the death of the child, and were now battling over who would get the victim’s compensation fund money and the funds they received from a fundraiser they set up themselves on a GoFundMe-type site!
These were *incredibly* wealthy people fighting over what was literal chump change to them and asking the public to donate to them as if they needed it. They were so clearly exploiting the death of their child for money and to piss off the other parent, it was honestly one of the most disturbing things I have encountered, ever..
I’m a retired Correction Officer from NYC (Rikers Island). I once had an inmate ask me to look at his case. I had once gotten a 100% innocent guy out of jail, when I had just started and I was considered one of the ‘smarter’ CO’s. This guy shot another man to death at an ATM in midtown Manhattan during a robbery attempt. It was all caught on videotape. The FBI had computer enhanced one frame from the video in which the suspects head was in full profile. His right ear was clearly seen and had a very distinctive characteristic. It was sort of square at the top and not rounded at all. His crooked, broken nose was all I needed to say to myself he’s guilty. What [messed] my mind up was this POS was telling me he had every right to shoot the victim. He looked at himself as a professional robber. If you resisted than he felt justified to [mess] you up.
In this case he shot and killed the ATM customer because he tried to fight back. I couldn’t believe how this guy was behaving, smiling when he told me he “was a professional”. I went and got a book called ‘Inside the Criminal Mind’. It helped answer some questions I had about my new line of work. I have since retired from the NYCDOC and I’m soooo happy to put all that negative [stuff] behind me. [Edit: POS got 25 years to life].
Court reporter here:
Couple weeks ago a guy got sentenced to 90 years for killing his four year old. He was an abusive father, beat the kid often. Finally he beat him so badly he realize he was going to get caught. So he boiled water and dumped it all over the kid to try and hide the bruises. Then just left the kid. Two days later the kid is walking down the hallway and his body just quits. Loses control of his bowels. Falls over and dies. The father than left him there for four hours before calling 911.
When police got there he said he was clumsy and the burns were from the shower. They found he had 59 blunt force injuries, 16 to the head. The whole time the prosecutor was telling this to the judge during sentencing the guy just sat there shaking his head like was denying it.
I asked the public defender after, “how do you try to get someone like this off?” Basically he told me he tried to get him to have a lesser charge, not murder. And that he believes everyone has a right to a good defense. And he believes to guy has mental problems. But then he admitted to me it was the hardest case he has done because he has a 3-year-old daughter.
That was a hard day at work. I can’t imagine what that poor little boy went through before dying. I would have hated to had to cover the trial.
I only hope the prison population hears what he did and give him some good old prison justice.
Not me but my uncle. His client was a child [abuser] and when my uncle asked him why he did it, the guy said “man, she was asking for it”. The victim was an 8 year old girl.
During a mediation conference my client bragged about continuing to physically discipline her pregnant teenage daughter justifying it because âher face ainât pregnantâ.
LEO- my worst is those who target the most vulnerable. Thereâs a particular thought process that goes into that. Itâs dark and predatory on another level.
A well known burglar would sneak into houses at night, tie up, and subsequently beat old people. He didnât even need to. They were no threat and most never woke up. But heâd wake them up and then tie them up.
Or another guy we got recently who only [abused] children with disabilities. He had access to loads of kids. But he only targeted kids with disabilities.
The worst though was the guy who [abused] his 12 week old. I cried after that shift it was that tough, dealing with both him and the baby was super tough. He was a real monster, really horrible. You could tell he got off on the whole thing and smiled the whole time. He also loved that it clearly had annoyed us and made us mad. Some people are barely human.
My brother was a Public Defender (the free lawyer issued by the court). The case that made him go private practice was one where a guy beat his infant son to death with a claw hammer because the kid wouldn’t be quite. He said the guy just seemed to feel it was a proper response. He didn’t want to work the case for obvious reasons plus he just had a kid if his own. I think the guy got the death penalty (shocker).
Had a client who engaged in a major corruption and bid rigging agreement in my country. All of this regarding bids of the public health care system.
The companies which entered the agreement were overpricing medical equipaments to the point where public hospitals could not afford basic proceedings to the population. Seeing people affected by the companies in local news after this became public made me realize how harmful this was to the poor, who could not afford a private treatment.
Passed the case to a coworker.
When I had to go to the US Attorneys office to view the evidence in his case. There they were, the hundreds of images of child he had traded; the close-up images of his babyâs genitals that he had taken and sent around the internet; the pictures of his neighborâs daughters playing in their kiddie pool. Realized he just could not help himself. But he also never once claimed responsibility or showed remorse, so I donât feel too badly for him.
Oh, I can share a good story. I had a teacher in high school who was a former lawyer. We always asked him why gave up his practice to start teaching. He finally caved and explained that his last case was the defense of three people. Apparently there had been a fourth. It was two couples, who in the act of a drunken decided to kill, partially eat, and dismember one of the women. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. As a lawyer, he said it was pretty open and shut, but he had to get his clients the best result possible, and he was exposed to all the horrid details, the pictures, and their reasoning. My teacher had such a far off look when he explained it that we could see it really got to him.
The first week I started at my current criminal defense firm I was tasked with cataloging discovery from our client’s phone.
The phone had multiple (talking around 4,000) videos, photos, text exchanges with women under 16 (though not all of the girls’ ages were confirmed most, if not all, were under the legal age of consent and many were barely pubescent) [bare] and being [exploited] over 1 year. He would lure these girls in exchange for [illegal substances].
Nothing felt totally bizarre until I came across one video where he was clearly forcing himself upon a literal child who was so high on benzodiazepines (not willingly but rather forced) and choking her in the process. When our firm confronted him, he said he was in love with her and that’s why he did it.
He would also take these girls to hotels and make them [sleep] with one another while he taped, but nothing beat what I said above.
Pretty horrifying stuff for my first week on the job.
A lot of years ago I used to work as a solicitors representative (cases go to crown court, barrister deals and I am there for paperwork, additional stuff with client etc).
70 something year old man had been in jail for 15 years for an assault on a child.
Solicitor and barrister working on getting him released due to him getting clean reports from just about everyone.
Guards took him out of jail to a dentist and as he entered the waiting room he saw two children and ran straight at them. Guards stopped him.
3 weeks later at court I was the one that sat him down in a room to explain that no, this isn’t a hearing to release you. It is so you can be commited to a mental health secure facility for the rest of your life.
He didn’t take that well, I shed no tears.
Not a lawyer but my dad is. He has told me the story of why he stopped being a criminal defense lawyer. He got a case with a couple young Russian guys who were charged with securities fraud. My dad worked super hard on the case and got the guys a great deal with some probation a fine and some community service. That night the guys treated my dad to dinner and on the tv in the bar was a news story about insurance fraud and one of the guys said âHey guys security fraud is old news letâs try that nextâ and pointed at the tv. That night my dad came home to my mom and said âI canât do criminal defense anymoreâ because he realized the people he was defending were truly bad people.
Oh man, I’m always late when I have a good one.
Not a defendant, but a divorce. Client is a late 30s woman, two kids, idyllic suburban life with her [incredibly lucrative medical profession] husband. He caught her cheating. He wanted to patch things up, she decided on a divorce. So far – nothing out of the ordinary, unfortunately.
Then I start getting the details. He caught her on his birthday. In their bed. While the kids were downstairs. Dude decided to come home early as a surprise, and his wife was [with] a 19 year old. But wait… There’s more.
Really fun stuff from the husband. Guy had been treated for gonorrhea twice, and both times he had caught it from his wife. The second kid wasn’t his, it was obvious because the child was 100% [some race] and the ‘dad’ was [not that race].
Bad stuff, right? Well, enter the texts, e-mails, etc. She was carrying on like a dozen affairs at any given time. Spanning years. She would bring them home, and tell the kids they were electricians, plumbers, etc. She’d [sleep with] other guys within minutes of dropping her kids off at school.
I’ve met some awful people in my time, but this woman straight up told me how much this guy loved her and how she manipulated the [hell] out of him. He knew about a lot of the stuff, and each time he found something new he just tried to ‘win’ her back. I don’t want to go into the details of what happened, but some money that you get you don’t really want.
When I got the psychology report AFTER I met the dead-eyed kid that tried to stab his mother.
Civil defense here so maybe not as juicy as the crim defense folks. Some of the work I do is employment defense, particularly sexual/age harassment/discrimination cases. Iâm pretty cynical and see a lot of cases where plaintiffs are full of [it], particularly in harassment/discrimination cases. In one case I was defending a company and that companyâs manager, jointly. The manager seemed like a straight up guy and I pride myself in being a good judge of character. I was pretty convinced the case was just payback from a disgruntled employee. To my credit, the plaintiff, a 38 yo female, was a really poor employee by all accounts. Still, it didnât prepare me from what I found doing a review of every email the company had stored on their servers. Not only did this guy stick his hand down this womanâs shirt without consent, when she threatened to go to HR he said heâd get her fired and make sure she never got a job again. The lady was a single mother with 3 kids. He also propositioned her for [intimacy] in exchange for a day off.
He thought the email had been wiped because the company had a one year retention policy. Apparently, some of the companyâs older emails remained on a sever before the policy was put in place because of the migration of the emails from an older outsourced IT company (not sure if my terminology is right here).
I had to substitute out of the case thereafter for conflict reasons since my two clientsâ interests were no longer aligned.
This one isn’t as horrific as the murders and CP stories on here but –
As a law intern, I had to prepare a defense for a huge govt corporation who had denied employment to a man who applied on compassionate grounds (it’s a govt policy where if an employee dies during their term then their nearest relative (parent/spouse/child) ) is entitled to get employment in the same company. This man’s father had passed away aged ~60 after working there all his life, and the corporation was rejecting it on a mere technical issue that there was a spelling error in some of his ID documents.
Not me, my dad. After he got client out of a double murder charge by Insanity Plea, he visited the client in the Mental Hospital and the client laughed that he had fooled them all and HAD murdered his intended victims. This was the 80s, there wasnt any recording and so try as he might, my dad could do nothing due to there being no new facts in the case (double jeopardy). That was in the early 80s, he never took on another Criminal Defense case again, ended up having a 30 year career in Real Estate and Estate Law then became a Judge.
Life long criminal defense lawyer here. To be completely honest, itâs not about the offense but about the person. Iâve had people accused of merder that I really kind of liked and thought well of. Iâve had people accused of shoplifting who have given me the heebie jeebies and seemed like psychopaths. Speaking from purely a criminal standpoint, having a client who is a monster doesnât matter in terms of your duty to them. But it does make the job less pleasant.
My worst clients have been people who are comfortable scamming others of their money.
Murder, robbery, and most crimes involve regular people who did or may have done something stupid due to alcohol or situations.
But the client you keep an eye out are the ones charged with fraud and the like. Liars, cheats and all around shady people generally speaking.
Even the gangs operate on a code of conduct. An old fashion war like code of conduct. Honor and courage are important to them even though they commit crimes.
22 years threatened twice. So not that bad.
The real danger? Not in criminal law. It’s family law. That’s where people get really heated. It’s personal.
Had a divorce client, husband and father, who disowned his autistic son, tried to argue that he should get all of his wife’s retirement having not worked for 12 years, contacted me during the height of hurricane Sandy (he was in the Bronx and me in Manhattan) saying he wanted to hold his wife in contempt for not paying him that day while the storm slammed NYC, told me I was making a huge mistake getting married (my wedding date was November 3rd, 4 days after Sandy) saying that I was going to be miserable and regret it…. I could go on.
But, the worst was when, several months later, since his divorce was taking a long time, he sent death threat letters to myself and my wife saying that he had hired an “executor” to kill the two of us if his divorce wasn’t finalized in 60 days. Called the police and they said he left his premises one day earlier. I heard nothing from him until February 2014 when he emailed me saying he needed a winter coat from his wife and could I help get it for him. Ironically, the divorce didn’t have to be completed because he killed himself before the judge signed the judgment of divorce.
tl;dr: Miserable guy who wanted to spread his misery, and crossed the line when he threatened to kill my wife.
Not a lawyer, but was a paralegal for many years. I worked mainly in family law.
As I am sure other posters are doing in order to preserve confidentiality, I am going to be vague and also not include genders or locations.
I had a client who was getting divorced. The client and soon to be ex spouse had a 12 year old son with Autism. The two of them sat this poor child down at the table one day and made him choose which parent he wanted to live with. Our client called me to gloat that the child had chosen in their favour and to direct that paperwork be prepared. This client was a prominent member of the business community and earned quite a high salary, and was treating this child like a commodity. I was disgusted.
I no longer work in law, but this one will always stick with me.
EDIT: For those asking what’s wrong with allowing the child to choose. The answer is nothing, so long as the child has the maturity and mental capacity to do so, and WANTS to choose. This child had none of those things, and was forced to choose right then and there between two people the child loved very much. Also, I’m not making any commentary on which spouse was better; they both did this, ergo, they’re both terrible.
Defended my client in a lawsuit who defrauded his business partners. Evidence was already overwhelming that my client was liable. Client made matters worse by fabricating evidence and presenting it in court. He got called out on it by his dadâs attorney who had the *same evidence*. It tanked my clientâs case.
My client continued lying to me despite the overwhelming evidence showing he fabricated evidence. He lost, big. In addition to a large judgment, he got hit with several felonies for fabricating evidence. Also, the business partners my client screwed over were his dad and brother.
Not a lawyer, but work for a law firm as an Investigator.
One of our clients stabbed an ex-lover multiple times over $100. Perp then ran out of the house all bloody. Neighbor and her teenage daughter see him covered in blood and rush inside to see if they can help while they call 9/11. Victim is still alive. On the 911 call the daughter made, you can hear the mom singing amazing grace while she tried to stop the bleeding. You can also hear the victim, with a stab wound in her neck, gurgling on blood while she tries to sing along.
The EMTs arrived in under 3 minutes, but it took the police 19 minutes from the call to show up to clear the scene for them. She lived for 17 minutes. I saw the photos of the scene with the body still in place. It looked like a scene straight from Dexter.
This was after I left practice in the UK and temporarily went back to my home country to work for a bit. Client was a mobster. Threw 2 grenades under the car of a rival mobster. Police storm his place with no evidence/warrant/reasonable suspicion. Cops didn’t think to go through formalities before making arrest.
Client calls me. I show up at station. Client’s walking out a free man to have a smoke with me in about 15-20mins. Says he heard through the grapevine that the rival mobster’s (who wasn’t in the car when it blew up) adult son decided to be smart and give the cops an anonymous tip as opposed to letting his father deal with it.
3 days later I see in the headlines “*RIVAL MOBSTER*’S HOUSE EXPLODES IN MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. FORENSICS SAY EVIDENCE AT SCENE INCONCLUSIVE”. Forward it to my Client and he just replies “;)”.
When I saw the stateâs discovery file â the video of the SWAT teams entering the residence, blood on the wall, wifeâs arm cut so deeply you could see all the insides. Photos of the bloody blade in the street. Then reading their infant had been in her arms when it happened. yikes.
I had this client who used to beat his kids with jumper cables.
Former Juvenile Court Attorney and was listening to this case, I was not involved so no RPC issue. Two minors, both male, had decided to rob a pizza delivery guy, so they called for a delivery pizza to an empty apartment building, the delivery guy arrived and was subsequently robbed, something like a large pie his phone and a two liter.
The minors then decide they want to take the delivery guys car, so they take his keys, while one is trying to start the car, the other decides to s******y a*****t the delivery guy.
Turns out the delivery guys car was a manual/stick shift and the minors have no idea how to drive it. Instead of ending their crime spree, they then kidnap the driver and force him to drive them to their other friends house across town.
Once there the same minor from earlier s******y a*****t the pizza delivery driver again, then they beat up the delivery driver and run off. Driver makes it into a local shop down the road where he calls police.
Adult offenders donât really bother me, but minors, their brains are not fully developed enough to understand the weight of their actions.
Kids can be monsters.
Not a lawyer but I worked in a federal prison. Several inmates come to mind but the one I’ll tell about is a former Catholic priest. He’d given up his vocation years before but he got caught up in a child sting. At that time sentencing was based on how many images a suspect had. He had thousands and was facing a maximum of 40 years. The guy was in his 50’s so that would have been essentially a genuine life sentence, since federal inmates can only earn 15% good time. At his sentencing hearing, and I read this transcript so I know this as a fact, he told the judge when he was a priest he’d [abused] hundreds of young boys. Despite treatment and his own remorse he felt completely incapable of stopping his obsession. He had not ever been even charged with these crimes but he felt guilty enough to admit them and then ask the judge to impose the full penalty so he’d be locked up for the rest of his life.
Not clients, but I’ve done human rights work around the world and come across a lot of monsters.
Three of the things that have stuck with me the most are below. These were videos/photos that I needed to review for work I was doing:
The 4 year old hog-tied and shot in the head next to her similarly situated mother. Mom pissed off the wrong traffickers.
The screams of a man being decapitated on video.
Equally monstrous are the governments who allow all of the above to happen because they’ve been bought, see the victims as less than human, etc.
A former teacher told the story of an instance where he was assigned by the court to defend a woman accused of child abuse.
When he saw the cigarette burns all over the kids arms he knew she was clearly guilty but he still had to defend her. He said heâs never been so relived to hear a client found guilty.
Not for a defendant, but as a prosecutor at the state attorneys office in miami. There was this 15 year old Haitian kid when i was working in the juvenile division that still haunts me. I remember his face even now because he had two distinct tattoos on it, with very bloodshot eyes. He was arrested after he ran into police chasing after a teenage girl with a gatorade bottle. Turns out the girl worked at a gas station and had called the police a week earlier because the boy was sitting outside staring at her. He had came back a week later, walked into the store and stole a gatorade in front of her without a word, dumped it outside, pushed a patron away and poured gasoline in the bottle, then starting walking back towards the attendant. She freaks out and starts running out the store, he comes in, gets a lighter and starts chasing after her. He runs right into two patrol officers and gets arrested. Just looking at him in court freaked me out, which was unusual to say the least. He seemed completely dead inside, showed absolutely zero emotions and didnât say a single word at any stage, even after sentencing. 5 years later, i was watching the First 48 and saw the Haitian kidâs mugshot at the end, with the same tattoos, arrested for home invasion and triple murder without motive in Miami.
I’ve spent my career in property law. By and large, I would say that in civil law you don’t meet monsters so much as realise that the real monster is often the whole way the law, or even society in general works.
Very early on, as a trainee doing a stint in employment law, I remember attending a meeting with a senior guy at some company that ran nursing homes that was a client of the firm.
Naturally, they employed loads of poorly paid, often female staff, and the main thing they were interested in was making sure that the workforce didn’t get unionised and that the company didn’t have to recognise unions. They did not want to have to pay their staff more or improve their conditions.
Not illegal, of course, and the people involved weren’t personally evil, but it was a classic case of “come see the violence inherent in the system.” To do what they were doing required them to be bad guys.
When the murderer told me the victim got what he deserved and he’d do it again.
Once had a guy who was in trouble for crimes against children for the 3d or 4th time. When I told him that the prosecutor wanted to strike him out he basically said “Well, I obviously can’t control myself, so that’s probably a good idea.” I had to struggle a lot with the idea of letting him plead and take life without parole. In the end I convinced the prosecutor that it wasn’t actually a strike out, so he got something like 15 years instead.
I still wonder what to make of that. By most standards he was a monster, but he realized it and asked to be locked up where he couldn’t do it again. Some humanity in everyone, I guess.
Criminal defense lawyer here. Case relating to communal violence. Various witness testimonies clearly identifying my client butchering various victims. And by butchering, I mean some really gruesome and cruel stuff. The moment I realised this guy was a monster was, when he came to thank us for getting him out on bail, and he not only admitted to committing the crime, but was really proud of it.
I represented a client who was arrested and charged with unlawful solicitation of funds. He targeted mostly elderly people, and had a meticulous, long-haul scheme of scamming small amounts of money at a time -always the same amount of money, little more than pocket change- but his list of victims was so long he actually made a fair amount of money.
It wasn’t until he started trying his con on ME that I realized that he was, in fact, a scaly-skinned crustacean from the Paleozoic era.
I immediately dropped him as a client and told him to get his tree fiddy somewhere else.
Ianal but a legal assistant. We got a client off of a murderr charge.
2 weeks later she was caught with a similar weapon and situation, except this time the guy didn’t die.
Not a lawyer but a client of one I overheard a case of. This woman wanting her U.S. citizenship married an older man who was never ‘hands on’. Basically when the man went to file taxes he had someone do it for him, she made a deal with this person. They transferred his entire estate and accounts to her. But her citizenship hadn’t been fully established as this was roughly a week into the false marriage. All of the older gentleman’s money and assets were frozen because a foreign citizen ‘owned’ them. The case is still stuck in legal hell and I dont know what happened later.
My worst client was a woman who was rude, aggressive, argumentative, paranoid, she thought everyone was out to get her. She had a terminal illness and still acted like a total [jerk]. I represented her in 3 separate civil cases. She had gone thru 2 lawyers already who dropped her. At one point even the judge had talked to me in his chambers after a hearing to advise me on how to deal with her (opposing counsel was present). I realised she was a monster when I had to present her for direct testimony and cross exam (before a different judge in a separate case) and she was probably one of the best witnesses I had ever presented. I had been dreading presenting her because her demeanour could subconsciously influence the judgeâs mind. Surprisingly, she answered all the questions briefly and directly, she was empathic, and she handled the cross examination like a pro. I almost felt sorry for her. It was like she was a totally different person on the witness stand. The way she was able to act convincingly like a decent human being, knowing she was a bad person irl, showed me how much of a psycho she was.
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