The first court appearance

After getting out of the jail at 4:30am I walked back to my car to go kill some time before I could go pick up Gonzo. I had a 1:30pm court time for the arraignment. I arrived a little early for the hearing to checking and the lady at the window told me that my misdemeanor charge had been reduced to a violation and I would be going to Community Court. She was very happy to inform of this but she didn't say congratulations. I thought great, maybe this will make it easier. The courtroom was filling up with judge trying to get things in order. I learned real fast. Don't have your cell phone on in his courtroom. Several people did and he was not happy. One man mouthed off and he was literally thrown through the doors by three deputies. He came back in a few minutes later bleeding all over the place and got 48 hours of jail for his comment. He then muttered something else and got a bonus of 24 additional hours. Needless to say I practiced eyes down, mouth shut. I had Gonzo with me and the judge took note and made a comment so I held him up for him to see him. Thank god he did not have a problem with him. Gonzo behaved the whole time in there. I think he could feel the intensity of the situation. Most of the people in there where doing the second part of their process. The first trip if you plead guilty you get community service. When you come back you show you have completed your community service and the charge is dismissed. You also, in some cases, can get the charges expunged from your record. The judge was a bit interesting but I think he was genuinely interested in helping people. I saw him really trying to help some of the folks in there.

My turn came up an I had a choice of guilty or not guilty. The guilty plea would have been easier but I could not do it as what I did was not intentional. When the judge asked me how I wanted to plea I told him I was not sure. He told me that he could give me a week to think about it and I told him there was an issue with the dollar amount of items I was charged with stealing. He said something really fast I could not understand and entered me as not guilty and had the clerk schedule a trial date. That was it, I left but noticed after I left the courthouse the clerk had entered the court date as a Saturday. I had to go through the screening process and go back up the courtroom to get it fixed. What a pain, but interesting.