Monday, March 9, 2009

Bored stiff

The ongoing trial of the judge who crashed his car while allegedly driving drunk has been dragging on for 18 months. So it was with immense anticipation and excitement that the usual clan of journalists arrived in court this morning. We had been told that today the defence was going to lodge an appeal to have the entire case chucked out.
So, after covering numerous long hearings, we were ready for a new development. Something was going to happen. At last.
And then we were told that the matter was delayed for an hour. Disappointed but not crushed, we stuck to our seats and waited. The TV reporters competed to see who had the worst working conditions. SABC, we heard, had undergone so many cut backs that they no longer even got coffee at work. At e-TV the editors were so controlling that reporters were reduced to little more than robots reading completely rewritten scripts. A news agency journo sat quietly and read her book: "10 stupid things married women say and do". Fabulous Shoes (red spiky heels so sharp and high they hurt my eyes) crunched on Nik Naks. I took a crack at a fiendish Sudoko puzzle.
After almost three hours the action started, and then fizzled out almost as quickly. Defence advocate said he wasn't going to present his application to have the whole case chucked out anymore. He wasn't going to do anything and he was not prepared to say why.
The magistrate bristled. He looked annoyed and asked for a further explanation. Defence guy said he was using attorney client privilege as his reason for not making his reasons known. Magistrate asked the prosecutor if he was cool with this. Prosecutor said he had been kept in the loop, did not plan to oppose the request for another week's delay, and that he too was not going to tell the magistrate the big secret why.
And so it got postponed. Again. Til next week Monday. Talk about Groundhog Day!!
Speculation is that the judge has not been paying his lawyers and they are now fed up and ready to withdraw. I don't know if it's true, but its the only thing that makes sense to me.

2 comments:

  1. he's never going to actually go to trial and found guilty or innocent is he!!?!?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not paying his attorneys - very likely!

    ReplyDelete

 
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