8:26 am - Sat 3.28.2009
Jim Goes To Court

(Up earlier than I need to be, so am watching last night's episode of Dollhouse before getting ready for work...)

I guess the big "news" from here is that I've been in court the past two mornings, as a witness in the hit-and-run I saw last year (The accident I saw was just one of three or four hit-and-runs, committed by the same guy, that happened in pretty quick order. But anyway...)

When I got a subpoena to appear for this case, I thought I'd go in, maybe wait an hour or two, tell the court what I saw, then go home.

It hasn't actually gone that way - Instead, I've been in court the past two mornings, seated in a hard plastic chair, while various and sundry court business was attended to, without my really needing to be there at all (Which was pretty annoying yesterday, since, as a result of cooling my heels in court, I lost my two Friday morning Weight Watchers meetings).

It seems like the main business of everyone in the system, from my casual observation of the past two days, is to try to have things not go to trial.

With the case in question, the defense was trying for a time to get everyone to agree to drop the criminal charges if the defendant agreed to pay their monetary damages, but that didn't work out - One reasons being, far as I could tell, that only one of the victims had any written record of their damages.

And "damages" are the big issue; the defense and the prosecution talked to the victims (A half-dozen people; apparently there were other victims who weren't there), laying out their options - the case could go to trial in criminal court, and if the guy was found guilty, the judge would order restitution. Or, they could drop the criminal trial, and deal individually with getting their money through civil court (i.e. suing the guy).

I guess they were also working on getting the guy to take a plea, which, for some reason, he wasn't doing.

Anyway - I'm starting to bore myself here, and I have to head to my WW meeting - things ended with someone form the prosecution talking to us, saying that we might not all be required back (Cause some testimony would be "redundant", for example), and that maybe the guy would take a plea in the interim.

And I'm hoping things work out so that I don't have to go back - I really don't want to miss an all-too-rare audition for this, or lose WW money I can ill-afford to be giving up.

(If I thought anyone actually needed my account, that might be one thing, but one of the victims actually has a document from the police saying "We've identified the guy who hit you", which seems a lot better than me saying, "Yeah...this red suv hit a brown car, then drove off...".)

Well, there's really a lot to write about - Nothing about acting work, sadly, but a lot of other things - but I've gotta hop on my bike and get outta here...!

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