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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Lawyer: Size matters; Court: Nah |
| 2008-08-20 |
| The Wheels of Justice... A promise and a prediction. I will do my best not to insert bad puns into this column. I will fail. ...and for good reason. Houston's 14th Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a local doctor for indecent exposure. The court rejected the argument by high-profile attorney Dick DeGuerin and his associate Neal Davis that the doctor could not have exposed himself to an undercover cop because that which is alleged to have been exposed is too small to have been seen. Hey, counselor. Ya think we can go with another strategy here maybe? I'm not naming the doctor because his two innocent children don't deserve the playground abuse that would come both from their father's crime and the defense that he and his attorneys decided to pursue. Nyah, nyah! Ya dad's gotta a small... The story begins on a Monday afternoon nearly two years ago with two plainclothes vice officers in separate cars looking for perverts in Memorial Park. Geez, Muldoon. How come we never get the strip joints? One of the officers, Daniel Leal, testified that he noticed that a car was following him and pulled into a parking lot. He said the suspect pulled up next to him and, making eye contact, began fondling himself. Whadda you doing? My Larry Craig imitation. Leal said the man, wearing a dress shirt, tie and dress pants, got out of his car and approached him. He said the man asked him if he wanted to come sit in his car, but Leal said he'd rather go over to a wooded area. Leal said that, in the woods, the man pulled up his T-shirt and massaged his abdomen, then the suspect started undoing his own pants but stopped when two men walked nearby. Ah...decorum. At Leal's suggestion, they moved to a spot behind a nearby men's room, where the doctor asked Leal to "Let me see." Leal says he declined but said, "You let me see." No. You let me see. No. You let me see. No. You let me see. No. You let.... Leal says the doctor did, whereupon Leal put him under arrest and was joined by his partner. Slap the braclets on him, Muldoon! At trial the doctor gave a considerably different version. He said he went to the park during a 20-minute work break and just wanted to talk to someone. I'm soooooo lonely... He said Leal was the first one to make eye contact, they both got out of their cars at the same time and he neither fondled nor exposed himself. He said he agreed to go into the woods at Leal's suggestion just to continue a conversation in which they talked about "usual stuff" such as marriage and family. Yeah...marriage. And...family! That's the ticket! He said Leal lifted his own shirt to show off his stomach muscles and ordered him to do the same. Behold my washboard abs... Even though he was uncomfortable about it, the doctor said he began untucking his shirt, then they heard some people. He said at Leal's suggestion they moved behind the restroom, which was locked, and he did lift up his shirt, at which time he was arrested. Surprise! The jury found the doctor guilty, and the judge gave him six months in jail, but suspended the sentence to two years of community supervision. Should've said thanks and walked away... The doctor had not used DeGuerin and Davis for the trial but hired them for the appeal. What might be called the 2.8-inch issue (as measured by a urologist DeGuerin called as an expert witness during a subsequent hearing) did not come up at the trial. Nurse! My ruler! And microscope! STAT! Oh - and forceps! The original attorney testified at the hearing the doctor never told him about his physique. The doctor disagreed, testifying that he mentioned it at their first meeting, but the lawyer said it "would be demeaning to bring up in court" and "this case is about exposure, not about size." Bet this made med school all worth it, huh, doc? But DeGuerin and Davis argued that it was a key bit of evidence. For one thing, the doctor said he is so embarrassed that he avoids exposure to anyone but his wife. ...and his rest stop pals. Secondly, the urologist testified that given the officer's own description of how the doctor allegedly showed off, the illegal part of the alleged display would have been concealed by the doctor's palm, which the urologist measured as being more than half again as large as the subject at hand. Was there hair on his palm, doc? In a 30-page opinion clinically crafted to avoid double-entendres, Justice Wanda McFee Fowler (writing for a unanimous three-judge panel) rejected the defense argument. She said the trial judge could reasonably have believed the trial lawyer that he was unaware of his client's stature. She rejected DeGuerin's argument that it was the lawyer's duty to ask his client about it. Hey, Wanda? You want to handle this one? Ooops. Sorry, wrong choice of words... DeGuerin and Davis made other arguments, but the court rejected those as well. Baliff! Whack his tiny peepee! The bottom line: This is a case that could be described as de minimis, a legal term defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "1. Trifling, minimal. 2. (Of a fact or thing) so insignificant that a court may overlook it in deciding an issue or case." So how much did this crack legal assistance cost, buddy? |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #6 Seriously, Mike? How on earth did y'all get through law school without terminal hysteria? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-08-20 20:23 |
| #5 This isn't the first time. There was a case we read in law school in which a sex offender's lawyer asserted, in defense to a charge of statutory rape, that his client's, er, equipment was "rag-like, lifeless, and useful only for connecting his bladder to the outside world." |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-08-20 18:42 |
| #4 Would not jail be preferable to such a public humiliation? How does someone sit in a courtroom while their lawyer says this? |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-20 18:32 |
| #3 In-line made me laugh, weep and then hic-up. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-08-20 18:26 |
| #2 that which is alleged to have been exposed is too small to have been seen. That's about the silliest unrealistic excuse I've ever heard. Even I am not so naive as to go into the woods with a total stranger, just for a conversation easily continued on a park bench. For that matter, why did the good doctor drive all the way to the park for a 20-minute conversation with a random stranger, when conversation can as easily be found in a grocery checkout line? Why did he not sit in the sun or shade outside his office with a good book? Why didn't he call his wife, who know doubt doesn't see nearly enough of him? By the logic of Occam's Razor, I declare the man a pathetic example of unrequited exhibitionism. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-08-20 17:02 |
| #1 All that money for legal fees, and the best they could come up with is "my client is hung like a flea"? |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields 2008-08-20 16:57 |