After drafting this letter, I come back to the courthouse on 1-11-13. As I enter the courthouse, I see the admin judge round the security check point and make his way to court #3 where my case had been held on 1-8. He smiled when he saw me, and I --knowing he had probably already gotten my motion--followed him and peaked inside the courtroom. Therein he was standing at the bench, laughing and talking with the same security officer who had tried to dupe me with the other judge on 1-8. I couldnt help but think that he and the security officer were laughing because of my 1-9 motion I filed and how--because it didnt say anything about a witness not being present--they knew the judge could interpret the motion however he wanted (as the courts would show later on), instead of doing the right thing and owning up to the wrong they had done and interpret the motion in the spirit of the actual facts of the trial setting as they occured on 1-8-13. I make my way to the clerks office. I present my deferred letter to the court. This clerk file-stamps a copy of this letter, unlike my motion on 1-9, and gives me a copy which had NOT been done by the supervisor when I submitted my 1-9 motion. The clerk says that the letter requesting deferred will be viewable by everyone once scanned into the system. However, to be sure that it gets to a judge, I send another copy of my deferred letter in the mail from the post office the same day. The copy of the deferred letter I sent by mail included monies of what I thought was owed for deferred, $97, and the appropriate deferred adjudication paperwork, printed from online, for the ticket I received on 12-04-13. The post office says that the court services had received my paperwork 1 business day later on Mon. 1-14-13. So much for the judge’s claim that people don’t get paperwork around here that fast, I thought. As a result of mine mailing in my letter, I get a call on 1-15-13, at 11:15 a.m. A message is left which says that my letter (showing judges’ willingness to approve my deferred) was received, as well as my monies and paperwork for deferred. Rules of the court say that requests by mail for deferred must be made within 21 days of the date of the citation. However, even though my letter and deferred paperwork were postmarked 21 days after the alleged offense, the agent who received my letter requesting deferred does not mention this as a problem. Mine having a court date is also not mentioned as a problem. The agent says only, “This is…we received your letter and your paperwork for deferred ….but the required monies for deferred “is $160, not $97 dollars. “I’ll keep your letter on file, but ….I’m going to return your monies for $97”. “If you’re still interested in the program, send us back the right amount of money and…. we will be happy to get you set up.” I get no other calls from this agent. On 1-15-13 (the very same day I get this message from court services) a letter is written by the same agent that said he would keep my letter on file and get me set up when I sent the right amount of monies in. The note says nothing more than “your case is set for court. $97 is being returned”. Strangely, my letter, which the clerk had previously said he would keep on file (until I sent the right amount of money in) was also returned, as was my deferred paperwork form dated 1-11. I received this note on 1-22-13. I suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that the only reason the clerk would renege on what he had promised was if he had been instructed to take different action by a judge. Standard practice at the courts is that once deferred paperwork is submitted to the clerks, it will be presented to a reviewing judge, who will either grant or deny a person’s request for deferred at the judge’s discretion. Either of two things happened. It was likely that the clerk had taken the initiative on the 15th and called to let me know he would approve my paperwork on the basis of the letter I sent—even though he had not cleared it with a judge--and sometime after he called me he presented my paperwork to a judge who, after reviewing it declined it and instructed court services to draft a note on the 15th. Most likely, my letter and paperwork had been presented to a judge before the 15th whereupon court services first called to let me know I could get deferred after getting the judge’s approval, but then drafted the note eventually sent to me after the judge’s changed their minds and instructed court services to do this. Either way, the “pretext” for change in the judge’s decision from being willing to grant deferred in our encounters on 1-11 to not being willing to grant deferred on 1-15 was that I had a court date; hence, the clerk’s statement to this effect in his letter. The real reason for the judicial decline of my deferral, however, was due to my letter. Indeed, the judges hadn’t had a problem with granting me deferred previously because of any court date (as seen in my encounters with them on 1-11); the clerk, when he called, hadn’t said my deferred request (being more than 21 days from citation issuance) was a problem and he didn’t say having a court date was a problem either. Something about my letter caused the reviewing judge/judges pause and made them change their decision from being willing to grant deferred on the 1-11 date to not being willing on 1-15. But I try not to jump to conclusions. On 1-23, I send the right amount of monies to court services as the clerk had requested me to do—along with the deferred paperwork that had been mailed back to me. Although I had the copy of my deferred letter that the court services agent had sent back to me, I knew that the copy of my deferred letter submitted to the clerk’s office on 1-11 was by now in the prosecutor’s office. Since the prosecution had a copy and since the judges would not grant me deferred on the basis of my letter if they had already rejected it after reviewing it once before, I did not re- send the copy that had been returned to me by court services. The post office shows that on 1-24 my deferred paperwork was delivered to court services. After a few days of failing to hear back from the dept. that had previously said they would get me set up with deferred (if I sent the right amount of money) I decide to appear in court and do some research. Since jury trial court date had initially been set following my jury trial appearance on 1-8, to 1-29-13, I showed up on 1-29-13.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 04:46:32 +0000
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