The endless turning of human behavior is so unusual, it’s sometimes unbelievable. For people who work in the criminal field, we know it’s not a TV show, so when something truly odd occurs, we’re amazed by it.

I was involved with a case of a large family who all lived together, although they lived in shifts, in a two-story home. Adults and children occupied the house and some of the adults worked real jobs to support the group. Others used government programs for support and others used criminal means to pay their share.

One uncle sold drugs to make ends meet. He’d often do the deals in the back porch while the family ate dinner, for instance.

A particular evening, he invited the buyer into the house. They moved into a bedroom upstairs to do their business. Family members who were home told police, they heard a loud “pop” from upstairs and a few minutes later, the buyer came down and left. No one seemed to notice that the uncle disappeared for the next three days.

They discovered him upstairs in the back bedroom, dead from a gunshot wound. Apparently, no one, including the children, ever thought to look for him or to see what happened in the bedroom.

True story.

Another case involved a father who had unusual ideas for disciplining his children. When they wouldn’t clean their bedrooms as instructed, he went into each one and removed their pet gerbils from the drawers where the children kept them.

In order to teach them a lesson, he took the little animals outside and called for the children to come out with him. When they stepped into the back yard, the father pulled out an air gun with a wide barrel. He loaded the gerbils into the air gun and shot them across the back fence into the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor, as you can imagine, became upset when two rat-like animals flew into his yard unexpectedly.

The neighbor returned the stunned critters. The father was so mad, he took the dazed gerbils and drowned each of them in a pail of water before the kids.

True story.

For a writer, it’s wonderful to transfer these stories into novels. My only problem is I’m afraid no one will believe they really happened!

Do you have weird or unusal stories that could make good plot lines in a book? Please let me know.

The post This is Why Lawyers Say the Courtroom is Too Real for Reality appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

After 30 years as a criminal defense lawyer, I’ve defended everyone you can imagine, charged with every kind of crime you can imagine.  Still, I have to say that sex offenders are in a category all their own when it comes to criminals.

I think the biggest difference comes from the fact that sexual assault is an “intimate” crime–not that the perpetrator wants “intimacy” with the victim as most of us would consider it.  Almost every other crime I can think of–robbery, theft of a car, assault, and even murder doesn’t involve such close contact with the victim.

Sexual assault is really “up close and personal.”  It takes a different type of criminal to commit this kind of crime.

I’m not a psychologist, but in my experience most sex offenders aren’t really turned on by the sexual act.  Instead, it’s the power and dominance they have for a brief time.  Around men, quite often, sex offenders are losers and unable to hang with men in easy relationships.  Most sex offenders I’ve worked with are loners, misfits, or outcasts.  By assaulting women, they “prove” to themselves they are studs and attractive.

One particularly dangerous offender I represented years ago, before his sentencing for several rape convictions, bragged to  the probation officer he’d had sex with 100 women.  That statement showed up in the pre-sentence report to the judge.  At his sentencing, the defendant corrected the report to say he really had sex with over 200 women!!  (If true, I hope they weren’t rapes…)

Almost every sex offender I’ve represented has denied the act and blamed everything on the woman.  Often, they use force.  When the victim fights back, the offender can accuse the woman of “starting it.”  Even after the victims come into court and testify against the offenders and juries find them guilty, many still deny their guilt.

Guys who are “kiddie twiddlers,” who sexually assault children, are the hardest to work with.  The usual reaction I get is, “I know I didn’t do it.”  Then, even after I confront them with evidence through statements of the victims, forensic proof, and other witness’ statements, the offenders still deny everything.

At first, I assumed this was simply the usual human response to deny or minimize our guilt for acts we’ve done.  Now, I realize something more subtle is at work.

These men who assault kids find the act inexcusable, like  normal people do.  They think it’s so horrible that they, the sex offenders, could never possibly have done it because…well, because  “I could never do anything so horrible and gross.”  They block any memory of the act from their conscious minds–which is why they think they’re being honest when they say, “I didn’t do it.”

Any thoughts from you?

The post Defending Sex Offenders appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

Technically, my job defending anyone is to force the State to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If I have personal doubts as to my client’s innocence, I never even breathe the word “innocent.” Instead, I remind the jury to evaluate the State’s case; the defendant is presumed innocent by the system. The funny part is that I’ve rarely had a client admit they were guilty. Even if it looked pretty obvious, they maintained their innocence. And the more you get into a case, the murkier facts often become. So many times, I’m not sure who’s an innocent or guilty person.

Maybe the best way to let you know how this feels is to tell you a story of a case I tried several years ago.

It involved a young man, 17 years old, who was married. They were both poor and struggled to make ends meet. One night when the boy–I’ll call him Jim–came home after looking for a job during the day, he found his wife having sex with another man on the couch of their apartment.

Jim erupted in anger and pain. First, he kicked the other man out then turned on the woman. A fight started and he strangled her to death by choking her with his hands. That was gruesome enough but afterward, to divert attention from him–the obvious culprit–he stripped her body, spray-painted it in gang graffiti, and left her in the middle of an intersection to make it look like a gang crime.

After having been charged with Murder in the 1st degree, he was certified and transferred to adult court where I met him. Because the crime was so heinous and the proseutor’s case was so strong, they didn’t offer Jim any kind of a plea bargain. Like any person looking at life imprisonment, Jim found it hard to plead guilty, even though he eventually admitted he killed her. We set the case for trial, which was his right to demand.

From my standpoint as his lawyer, sometimes the charging decision made by the prosecutor does not fit the crime. In other words, maybe the accused person is not guilty of Assault 1 but is guilty of Assault 3, a lesser crime with a shorter penalty. That was the strategy in Jim’s case. I had two goals: maybe the jury would have sympathy for the young guy and convict him of something less serious or the facts, as determined in a trial through the witnesses, wouldn’t warrant the full Murder 1 conviction. So, we launched into the trial with this crime of the heart.

When the Medical Examiner who’d performed the autopsy on the victim testified, he broke the case wide open–to Jim’s favor.

Since I hate to write lengthy blogs, I’ll pause for now and continue the story with my next one.

The post How can you defend a guilty person!? Part 1 appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

Or the boyfriend who was beating his “woman” and her son intervened to try and stop the violence.  As punishment for interrupting, the man put the boy in the oven and turned it on–the mother didn’t object.

In the past 20+ years, the efforts to protect kids has increased immensely.  Fifty to sixty years ago, suspected abuse of kids or dangerous home situations were pretty much ignored.  Since then, the attitude of legislatures and the community is radically different and the intervention of government into families is accept and even encouraged.

These kinds of cases typically began with a report to police alleging concerns about children in their homes.   After the police investigate, they can remove the kids for their safety and present the case to either criminal prosecutors or child protection investigators.

Child Protection will investigate the situation further and, if appropriate, the child protection social workers will try to work with the family to correct the problems that led to the police call.  If the situation can’t be corrected or the parents won’t cooperate a child protection attorney from the prosecutor’s office will file a petition alleging that the children are in need of protection and/or services.  (Called a CHIPS Petition)  In Minnesota, there are usually five categories alleged in these petitions that threaten the safety and welfare of kids:

1.  The mental illness of the parents threatens the kids

2.  The chemical dependency issues of the parents threatens the kids

3.  The parents have committed physical or sexual abuse of the kids

4.   The house the kids live in is a garbage house

5.  Education neglect  (The parents don’t force the kids to school)

Once the parents appear in court a judge will make a decision to either return the kids from shelter to the parents or not, depending on the safety of the home.  Parents have a right to a trial if they deny their kids need protection or services and a right to a lawyer to represent them in all proceedings.  They will also be offered a Case Plan to complete which contains a series of activities that are designed to correct the problems at home.  Typically, these may include:

–No use of chemicals and/or a chemical health assessment

–Anger Management programs

–Parenting education programs

–Psychological evaluations

–Family and/or individual therapy

–Visiting of the kids by the parents if they’ve been removed from the home.

The purpose of all these activities is to reunite the family but only if the parents can insure their children will return to a safe environment.

If the parents complete the case plan before trial, the judge will probably reunite the family.  If not, after a period of time, the prosecutor will file a permanency petition seeking to terminate their parental rights.  Once again, the parents will be offered the case plan and a trial.

The post Does Child Protection Protect Children? appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

I have worked in Juvenile Court, as a lawyer, for over 12 years and have represented many young girls who are probably involved in the sex trade.  For a variety of reasons, many girls run from their homes.  On the street they are easy prey for pimps.  Even if the girls are picked-up and sent temporarily to St. Joseph’s Shelter in south Minneapolis, it’s not a locked facility and the girls can run pretty easily.

It’s sad and difficult work for law enforcement to try and protect these girls.  It certainly doesn’t help that a web site advertises how to find them.  The web site defends itself by actually saying they are “providing a service” because law enforcement can track the johns through their emails and purchases on line!

When I started practicing law as a Public Defender, many of my cases involved representing young girls (over 18) charged with prostitution.  Most were lost, not too smart, and desperate.   The johns got off completely.

Since then, both federal and state law in Minnesota have changed all that.  Juvenile prostitutes are now considered victims by law and are not prosecuted.  This may not sound like much, but it’s a big deal because it changes the entire focus of law enforcement.  Many non-governmental groups operate to find these victims and offer them shelter and an escape from the life of a prostitute.

To give you an example of how sad these situations can be, I’ll relate the story of a young, female client I defended years ago.  She was 18, had just arrived in Minneapolis from a rural Minnesota area, and didn’t have much money.  She turned to prostitution.  At that time, they were arrested as “criminals.”  An undercover male cop picked her up in his unmarked car and, as he drove directly to the police station, asked what she was doing.  The girl immediately said she was looking for sex for money.  It took just about the same time to drive her to jail as it did to get the words out of her.

I represented her the next morning in court.  She plead guilty and the judge released her on probation.

The very next morning, the same girl was in court, arrested again for prostitution.  Not only that, she’d been on the same corner, the same undercover cop had picked her up, and he’d taken the same direct route to jail!!

Here’s the ending:  The judge gave her the maximum sentence over my strenuous objections and sent the young girl to the workhouse. Without telling me, he called the workhouse the next day and ordered her released after she’d had some food, a good night’s sleep, and, hopefully, learned something.

Thank goodness, vulnerable juvenile girls are no longer considered criminals.  It’s a huge step forward for everyone.

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