Don't Go to Jail!: Saul Goodman's Guide to Keeping the Cuffs Off
224
Don't Go to Jail!: Saul Goodman's Guide to Keeping the Cuffs Off
224eBook
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Overview
Lawyer Saul Goodman of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad offers his own particular brand of funny, down-to-earth legal advice.
Got the long arm of the law around your neck?
Does Lady Justice have her eye on you?
Were you set up at a lineup?
Saul Goodman can help!
There are some crazy laws out there. Did you know that in New Mexico there’s a law that says “idiots” can’t vote? Or that Massachusetts still has a ban on Quakers and witches? Or that in Georgia it’s illegal to put a donkey in a bathtub?
Even if you’re not bathing a donkey (and hey, if you are, no judgment from me!), you could be breaking the law right now and not even know it. That’s why you need Don't Go to Jail! You can carry the advice of a seasoned legal practitioner with you anywhere you go, helping you to stay out of the courts and in the good graces of the criminal justice system.
Want to be your own attorney? Want to avoid getting hauled in on a warrant? Want to keep the cops from discovering the baggie of “your friend’s” marijuana stashed under the passenger seat of your car? This is your chance to get those tips and many more savory bits of indispensable legal advice--all for much less than my usual hourly fee.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466891401 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/05/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 424 KB |
About the Author
STEVE HUFF is a writer for and contributing editor to Maxim Magazine. He’s written for the New York Observer, CBS News, the Daily Beast, Esquire.com and Complex Magazine, to name a few. One of the original true crime bloggers, Steve launched Village Voice Media’s True Crime Report in 2006. He’s appeared on NBC’s Dateline and CBS’s 48 Hours Mystery. Steve lives in New England with his wife, kids, and cat.
Read an Excerpt
Don't Go to Jail!
Saul Goodman's Guide to Keeping the Cuffs Off
By Saul Goodman
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 TM & Sony Pictures Television, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9140-1
CHAPTER 1
PART I
How to Be Your Own Attorney
Why You Shouldn't Be Your Own Attorney
A real, battle-tested, State Bar of New Mexico–certified attorney is about to tell you it's a bad idea to attempt self-representation in a court of law. Most of the time. I know, I know — you were expecting an honorary law degree on this page, I'm sure. Don't put the book down quite yet. I'm here to inform you that, contrary to what your dear sweet Mama Bear has been telling you since she made you fess up to Mr. Hill about who touched the classroom's eye-wash station and accidentally flooded Little Billy's terrarium: sometimes you cannot handle your problems by yourself. I'm sorry. Sometimes the mud doesn't turn back into nice, dry dirt.
Trust me when I say that what you're reading here isn't meant to make a statement about any reader's smarts — you're reading this, so you're obviously intelligent and have impeccable taste — it's just about having faith in a certified attorney's ability to guide clients through the system. And smarts aren't the only thing that separates a lousy lawyer from the cream of the crop! More often than not, the best lawyer out there is a B+ student with the work ethic of an ox yoked to flaming plow. We want to do our jobs right (for reasonable fees and relevant expenses), and we've got a fire lit under our asses!
I'm sure you are an upstanding citizen with two-point-five kids packed in the back of your minivan, a fine American Kennel Club–registered breed of pooch sticking its head out the passenger window, washing the side mirrors with its suburban saliva. Or maybe you're a confirmed bachelorette with a nomadic streak, moonlighting around the southwest selling hand-painted signs, a few buckets of acrylics, and some scraps of wood tucked away in your motorcycle's saddlebags. Either way: life is good, right? And for most, life will continue that way. Most people will never have to deal with anything more serious than a traffic ticket.
For that minor, piss-ant traffic ticket, you may be okay handling yourself in court. But the fact is, for just about everything else, you will probably need someone in your corner who knows what they're doing. A public defender, even. They get a bad rap, but I can tell you that most defense attorneys in the employ of a county or city office are just as passionate as private attorneys when it comes to helping defendants work their way through all the poisoned spike-filled traps hidden in the dark shadows of this treacherous jungle of a legal system. They just tend to have fewer windows in their sardine-can government offices.
Once you're in the system, you are a lost hiker, separated from your party in the Himalayan foothills. Think of us attorneys as your Sherpas. We are highly skilled mountaineers, and we've figured out when to swing our pickaxes into the ice to reach that next giant birch tree of dismissal or protective chasm of continuance. We know how to rescue you from the claws of the assistant DA and keep you from getting overwhelmed by altitude sickness. If you want to turn into Pro Se José and climb Everest alone, no helpful guide to point you in the right direction and carry your sleeping bag, I won't stop you! But I'd like to make sure you know what you're getting into, so here are some reasons to reconsider:
• The even money on people defending themselves is they will screw it up. Hell, you've probably even heard that dusty old line about actual trained attorneys representing themselves — that we'll never have a bigger fool for a client. The law is full of rules, subrules, clauses, and demands on plaintiffs and accusers. There are hard-and-fast requirements for submitting particular documents, which must be immaculately worded in keeping with, that's right, the law. Miss a court deadline for filing for an extension? Soon Oprah's shouting "YOU get a contempt citation! YOU get a bond revocation!" Think about it. You're facing, say, a DUI or a simple misdemeanor assault charge. Things are already stressful enough, don't you think? You don't want to spend all day studying up at the library computer terminals, wedged in between two public masturbators, just to realize when it's time to print that the government-funded copy machine is out of paper. There are folks who learned how the system works because we actually wanted to, and we could sure use your business. Not to mention the business of all those Johnny Jack-Offs who refuse to exercise their right to privacy in the comfort of their own homes.
• Opponents will treat you exactly as they treat the most expensive legal eagles in the state. No mercy, folks. Judges and prosecutors aren't your fairy godparents; they don't find their sole purpose protecting you and figuring out what will make you happy. They won't be like Great Aunt Ida at Christmas and applaud how cute you look in that holiday sweater, amidst all that objecting and demanding. No one serves juice and cookies in judges' chambers. Well, they may serve them to the judge. But lay legal warriors? Nope.
To their credit, judges frequently question defendants who want to act as their own counsel. They'll try to figure out if you're sane, then tell you what I'm telling you, if they're the thoughtful type. The guys at the other table? They are praying to the old gods who eat souls and command sacrifice of little baby bunny rabbits that the judge does not talk you out of doing this. Then, if you go ahead, you will find they will be delighted to show you no mercy. No one will have any patience with the way you keep sliding to the bottom of the legal learning curve. It's brutal, and it is what men and women like me passed the bar to brave on your behalf.
• Look at how long even the greenest attorneys take to get where you are. This varies from lawyer to lawyer, but some of us spend a decade or more receiving our education, only to perform what amounts to apprentice work. The point being, this is hard work — which is why some in the legal community might feel even more antagonistic than usual if you come striding in proclaiming to represent yourself. You wouldn't walk up to a zookeeper and say, "Hey, let me feed that ferocious lion today. How hard could it be?" That zookeeper is going to be laughing a lot harder than you are, pal, as he shovels your chewed-up biceps into the hyenas' food trough. Attorneys can be prickly — sometimes the emphasis is on "prick" — about the difference between what it actually takes to do this job and what people might think it takes as they march in without preparation and try to do it.
Would it help if I compared it to being a dentist? Sure, of course I can open an old toolbox right now and grab some vice grips. Absolutely, I could wipe 'em down, make sure they're reasonably clean, then stick them in my mouth and yank out this one molar that's been giving me fits. Then I could pack in some gauze or a wad of toilet paper and wait for the bleeding to stop, provided blinding pain hasn't laid me out already. I could do all that. But I could also go to Dr. Happy McPainFree on Novocaine Street, have him or her numb my screaming gums, then use what I hope are perfectly sterile instruments to take care of the problem. Still some pain, and it will cost me money, but it will get done right, and hopefully I won't bleed to death just because of a bad tooth. See, most people know it isn't wise to throw themselves on the mercy of the tooth fairy. In this case, the tooth fairy is a steel-eyed judge with a penchant for whack-a-mole and the gavel to prove it.
• Acting as your own attorney will probably cost more money than hiring an attorney. It will. I feel like I should repeat this about ten more times. Because acting as your own attorney almost definitely will cost you more money than just hiring counsel in the first place. The main reason? Chances are you will lose the case, be found guilty, and have to do some kind of time (or if you are super lucky, probation). Oh, and fines. The civil servants on the other side of that courtroom — if we're talking about criminal law — have salaries to fund, they have other budgets to make, and fellow prisoners in the county jail to feed cheeseburgers and grape juice. And those fines, especially if you've fumbled at the law like you're a pair of tenth-graders in the backseat of a Subaru, could be steeper than if you'd had a professional in court negotiate on your behalf. And civil court? Holy cats. Represent yourself civilly and you could end up on the hook for court costs and attorney fees on the other side. Those guys have the finest suits and biggest offices in the slickest buildings, and they will not hesitate to put you on the hook for everything if you are the losing party.
* * *
Let's pause, take a breath, and hope I've made my point before I go on. I admit that there will always be a few special souls who are convinced they can go it alone. And if you're one of them, I applaud your moxie. Because to face a court of law with your wits and whatever legal training you picked up from the Google school of law — and that one cousin who's been to jail so much he really knows stuff, man — takes courage.
So you're ready, you say. Stand at the courtroom doors. Take a deep breath. Kick open the gates to your salvation, and pray you've done some of the things I'll list below.
And remember, this is just a skeleton guide. I'm offering you the bare bones strategy of representing yourself in a court of law. It's up to you to put the skin on, by way of involved, intense, in-depth research on your own. (Don't even try to fake the guts and organs; it won't work and you don't have enough time to try.)
IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, LIVE INSIDE A COURTROOM
No, don't set up a tent and a Coleman stove and sing campfire songs with the bailiffs. What I mean is: head to your local courthouse and sit in on a few proceedings. Many courthouses have hearings open to spectators and believe me, there will be spectators. Journalists, cops with an interest in a particular case, families of the people involved, you name it. My favorites are the people who just like to hang out because it's interesting to them. Some of them are kind of weird, sure, and probably attend strangers' funerals, too. But if you were to set up camp in a courtroom, they'd be the ones to join along in campfire songs, not the bailiffs. Anyway, get in there and get a feeling for how things work. And forget what I said about campfires in the courtroom, that's the first thing they advise against in "Arson for Dummies."
FIGURE OUT THE BASICS
By basics, I mean rules and procedures. Every court has a set of them and they can be incredibly, ridiculously detailed. Get them from the court clerk and learn them like you're converting to a new religion and they comprise the holy book. If the Word of the Judge is that anyone born in the month of May must air guitar for two minutes to "Purple Haze" before addressing the court, then you'd better channel Hendrix and set that invisible Strat on fire. Judges won't have rules that whimsical, but you can see where I'm going with this.
Most remaining bookstores, the ones that haven't lost the fight against the Internet, will have shelves upon shelves packed with books chockfull of helpful information about the law. Buy those books. Keep reading this book, obviously, but also buy them. Dust off those number 2 pencils and grab every legal pad you can find — they're called legal pads for a reason! — and that will bring us to ...
BREAK THE CASE INTO PARTS
Step one: you gotta pay close attention to the trees in order to understand the forest. I'm not referring to the massive quantities of paper consumed by even the smallest practices as we diligently pursue our clients' best interests — I'm encouraging you to examine the elements of the case you're embarking to defend. This is probably good news for you, because the job ahead can look like a big brown avalanche of crap, and it's your job to strap on the ol' flood pants, wade into that fetid pile, and parse each individual bowel movement. Maybe I'm not helping with that comparison. I'm just saying: take the case apart, piece by piece, and figure out how to prove each part. Real quick, here's a look at the usual elements of something civil, like negligence.
Let's say a retail business in a wintry city has a duty to customers to keep the sidewalk in front of the store clear of snow and ice. One hard winter, the manager feels a little shoulder strain while shoveling and looks around, figuring half-done is done enough. But wait! There's still ice on that walk! And along comes a young man in his prime, not wearing cleats or spikes or whatever, because he's not a soccer player and he's pretty used to trusting that businesses have their customers' safety in mind and are going to shovel their walks. Whooosh! This young man takes a header on the slick sidewalk, gets a concussion, or throws out his back. He gets hurt, this poor kid. How will he ever be able to cheer on his dear mother at her weekly pinochle tournament? All because the man in charge of the store, in a moment of weakness, breached his duty to his customers.
If the young man doesn't work out something with the store owner on the spot — some baseline fee just to keep the courts out of it — and he decides to sue, he has to prove that but for the icy sidewalk, he would never have cracked his skull or slipped a disc or wound up with whatever injury it was that he suffered. Also, he's got to prove that the defendant here, Mr. Rushy St. Businessman, could have easily predicted what was going to happen. In this case, I can guarantee for a fact the business owner knew the potential consequences. So those are the first parts: the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
The last piece of the puzzle is determining what the damages are. That ties everything together, as we add up the young man's medical bills and all his traumatic pain and suffering. Once we can put a number on that, we've tied the knot on this cherry stem of a negligence case.
LEARN RULES OF EVIDENCE
Evidence is everything, and there are rules for dealing with it. They can be pretty complicated, so turn into that obnoxious kid in class who raises her hand after every sentence her teacher says when it comes to asking questions about rules of evidence. You might be able to fumble some other details and survive, but without the admissible documents or whatever other evidence you've got to support your case? Might as well give the bailiff your jumpsuit measurements and bid farewell to your grandma — it's over the river and through the wood to the state penitentiary you go. You're screwed unless you get the evidence situation on lockdown.
I'm not going to sugar-coat this point: rules of evidence can be a bear. Not a cuddly Teddy Bear with button eyes — a ferocious hiker-eating grizzly type bear. Here's just one example of the way that bear can eat up precious brain-space: in the Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 401 tells how to figure out whether evidence is actually relevant to the case or not. It says evidence is relevant if it "has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence" and also "is of consequence in determining the action." Almost as simple as legal language ever gets. But — then there are paragraphs of notes below those points that go deeper and deeper into what makes a relevant piece of evidence and why. If your eyes aren't crossing by the end of paragraph two, it will be a minor miracle. If you don't want to walk into court and slop folders and boxes full of documents and transcripts in front of the judge only to have him or her rule it's all completely useless regarding your case, you will want to have a nodding acquaintance with those notes as well.
And that's just Rule 401. There are hundreds of Federal Rules of Evidence.
DEPORTMENT ISN'T ABOUT LEAVING THE COUNTRY
What's the first rule of topless beach volleyball? Don't be an asshole. This applies in court, too. Being polite and learning the right way to address the bench and the team on the other side can go a long way. I don't care if the judge looks like your estranged third cousin who ran off with your parents' only tractor — you call that woman "Your Honor." Also very important: dress well. The clothes make the lawyer! Or in this case, the citizen who is so bold that they think they don't need a lawyer. Get your hair done, throw some wax in your mustache, Polident your dentures to an ivory shine — clean up, but good.
It's vital that you play by these rules if you want to — at the very least — get through whatever you are doing in front of the court without looking like a complete schmuck.
So there it is — watch court happen, learn the rules, organize your arguments, get your evidence in order, be nice, and look snazzy. This whole law thing is a big ol' prickly patch of briars, and I could get all tangled up in need-to-know nuggets ... but there just might be a different way out of this snare.
Buyer beware: this "different way" could be forced upon you, depending on the seriousness of the case. If you're up on a mass murder charge and figure, "Hey, I know the perfect defense for killing all those people and I'm the ideal person to present it," then it's a good bet the judge will appoint standby counsel.
Now be cool, don't worry! Standby counsel isn't there to bogart all the fun. No, this is an attorney whose job it is to guide you through this rocky terrain we've been talking about, and be on tap if — for whatever reason — you can't continue representing yourself. Like if you call your former buddy to the stand to ask him questions about why he got on your nerves so much during pub trivia that you had to tackle him in the bathroom and stuff urinal cakes in his mouth, but the sight of him makes you so upset that you become, shall we say, disruptive? In a case like that, the judge will ask your standby attorney to step in. They're your legal understudy, ready to play the role after you've danced yourself right off the front of the stage and broken both legs.
* * *
You know what I'm going to say, right? The best way to sum this up is "Hey, hey, don't!" The system sucks, yes, and it's often stacked heavily in favor of the court — but that's why guys like me are out here boiling water and building emergency lean-tos in the frozen wilderness every day, for clients like you.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Don't Go to Jail! by Saul Goodman. Copyright © 2016 TM & Sony Pictures Television, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Introduction,
I How To Be Your Own Attorney,
II When You Need An Attorney,
III Good Ways To Not Make Things Worse,
IV Avoiding Temptation,
About The Author,
Copyright,