I'll Have Another

I represented a lovely woman today. Her name was Flora Downing. Flora was charged with being intoxicated and disruptive. She is approximately fifty years old. She wore heavy makeup and was dressed fairly nice in a conservative way. Her hair looked rather nice, too. She looked like a fifty year old woman who is trying to look like she is thirty. It would be very difficult to guess her age if you didn't know it.

She also smells completely of alcohol. And she is stinking drunk. What exactly would be the thinking involved of showing up for your court date completely drunk? And wouldn't it be even worse if the offense you were charged with was an alcohol related offense? She apparently was asking random attorneys if they could represent her prior to my arrival. Once I got there and told her that I was representing her, she began to focus her attention on me.

She approached me the way drunk older women tend to: quickly, and way up close. I think I may have caught a contact buzz off of her. Her words were largely coherent, but she was slurring an incredible amount. I suggested that she might want to continue the case because the judge on the bench might not appreciate that she came to court drunk. She assured me she was not drunk and told me she wanted to dispose of her case today.

So what was this drunk but otherwise mildly elegant-appearing woman doing to get charged with being drunk and disorderly? Well, she was hanging out in the parking lot of a mini-mart and shouting "Fuck you!" to all passersby. Fun stuff.

I was able to convince the DA that she was an alcoholic and that alcoholism was a defense to being drunk and disorderly. He dismissed the case. I went to inform her that her case was dismissed, but she was nowhere to be found. A half hour or so she was asking deputies on another floor of the courthouse how to get to her courtroom. They were all getting a good chuckle over how drunk she was. She made it back to the courtroom, but before I could tell her that her case was dismissed she was already being arrested by the deputies who realized that she had an outstanding warrant for being drunk and disorderly. It was a totally different case. Perhaps I will be representing her for that one, too.