This is the first draft of the speech I intend to give to the jury in my trial.
I am not a lawyer but I am not stupid. And you aren’t stupid either. The case is very simple, but the Justice system we are using is very complicated. Overly complicated, and in this case, kind of silly. I will get back to that.
The case is my word against the cop killer’s girlfriend. You will meet her, or else the case is over. Only she and I were in the room when the events took place that are in her statement which caused me to be charged with two crimes. Breach of Peace which is the more ridiculous of the two because there were only two people present when I supposedly breached, I guess, her peace, and nothing in her statement suggests I did anything that breach peace according to the law. But we will see what she says on the stand.
The other charge is Unlawful Restraint. And the reason this case is simple is that there was no intent to restrain the cop killer’s girlfriend. The law says I must intend to restrain. Obviously I just wanted her to leave and she refused to leave. I walked out the door twice and when I came back she still refused to leave. She finally left when I walked toward her car and she said “stay away from my BMW” and I beat her back into my shop and locked the door from the inside.
You will note I never said I locked the door while she was inside. When the police arrived she was at her own shop two blocks away and I was in Litchfield on my way to my birthday party. The only reason I returned is because the police wandered in unrestrained to the place where I am accused of restraining someone by locking a door that remained locked. So, maybe, she could have just left by a different door? Or is a janitor guilty of unlawful restraint when he or she tells you to take a different stairway?
So there is no way I am guilty of either charge, but we are here and who knows why? Well, it is our justice system that puts me here in front of a group of reasonable people following unreasonble rules for some very strange reasons. And that isn’t that half of it. To arrive at this point I had to go through many hoops. Motions, supoenas, discovery… I can write a book. In fact, I will write a book and you all will probably want to buy it because you will have a part in it. I won’t name names, of course, unless you give permission. But all the people whose job it is to be here, well, you all are fair game.
I have to continue to go through those hoops in front of you here now. We all know fr0m television shows the police catch scumbags and read them their rights. And we know those rights, the right to remain silent. Let me warn you not to use that right. More about that later as well. But here is a link to the evidence, motions and documents so far:
http://www.compx2.com/goliath/trialdocs
I have a right to a lawyer. But let’s think about that one as well. Can you imagine what it costs to keep this court house, this judge, this prosecutor, these marshalls… I mean, would you come here yourself if you didn’t have to? How much would a lawyer cost to do what I am doing right now? Who would walk in these doors if they weren’t getting paid? And these people work with each other all day every day. They know each other, they make deals. I was offered a deal, but I didn’t take it. And everyone, I mean everyone, probaly even you the jury, think I should hire a lawyer. They negotiate prison time, sentencing, guilty pleas, I mean, this is their job. But it is my life we are talking about, and I have not yet met a lawyer I would trust no to plead me down the river to save me money and time.
I also have the right not to incriminate myself. Also, the State has to prove my guilt and I don’t have to confess if I am guilty. Which is tricky here in front of you reasonable people because I am under oath, but I am not testifying. So I will be using a lot of conditional statements, like IF I locked the door then I might be guilty of unlawful restraint. That was the police view. That is what I was told. So IF I say I locked the door then would be confessing to a crime except for you the jury. You need to decide IF I locked the door, and if I did lock the door, if that is a crime. Like the janitor.
But I don’t think that way, and I don’t think any of you do either. But I am not going to say I locked the door even though I don’t think locking the door is a crime. Which is one reason I say our justice system is complicated. Also, you will be told that you have to find me guilty if da da da da da. You are reasonable people and you will act reasonably.
I was not informed of my rights until I was put in jail. You would think that police would tell people their Miranda rights automatically. But Sergeant Rouleau asked me, good humoredly, if I restrained the woman and of course I said “no”. Then he asked Officer Hogan if I had been advised of my rights. But it made little difference since I was never asked what happened. No officer took my statement to this day.
Another stupid part of our justice system is that you can’t ask questions. I will try to say everything that I think you want to know, but I know you are going to be left with questions unless you sleep through the whole thing. Yeah, this will probably be quite boring despite my best efforts to make it exciting and interesting. But I promise you no one wants to be here any less than me.
The silly system says I don’t have to say anything, but the truth is if I don’t say anything I will be arrested. It says I have a right to defend myself in front of a jury of my peers and I don’t have to incriminate myself. But I can’t say what happened straight out because I am not testifying and I need to veil things that I know are true by saying this might have happened or if it was this way would it still be a crime?
There are things I am directed NOT to tell you. I don’t know why, and I certainly thing you should know these things. But that is our system.
