Commentary on "Physiognomy"

An assortment of people have posted commentaries on my earlier post purporting to describe the physiognomy of the hard-ass judge. One particularly Honourable fellow over at "Have Opinion, Will Travel" found my omission of a passage on the dishonesty of the un-able prosecutor particularly amiss. While the dishonesty (legally speaking) was apparent and the rage from the bench "palpable," I would remind readers that the point of physiognomy is to allow for quick characterizations of ball-park accuracy, not immutable judgments of character. For the sake of many a well-coiffed colleague, I hope my description of the prosecutor as "fresh-faced...with a brit-pop haircut" does not encourage the judicial audience to assume the worst from anyone with more than a passing concern for appearances. See generally, Insouciant Highlights, infra (revealing the author's stance with regard to this issue).

Nevertheless, following is the rest of the story of The Un-able Prosecutor and the Hard-assed Judges: Our last observation saw the fresh-faced prosecutor in fearful colloquy with the panel, Prada loafer firmly planted in mouth. Mr. Prosecutor had just made a feeble showing of flipping through various appendices, apparently with an eye towards suggesting that he actually believed that the basis for his assertions (which were admittedly tangential to the issue under discussion: something about whether defendant had taken sufficiently obvious steps towards abandonment of some earlier infraction) lay somewhere within. The lead jurist told the feckless lad to cease and desist, that the panel was well aware of what he was trying to do and the collective mind of the bench didn't like it, not one little bit. There followed some brainstorming as to how to handle the situation with one panel member suggesting a complaint to the State Bar; "I wonder if that was a lie," mused one judge to his brethren. Did I really think they would have him clapped in irons? No, but I don't doubt that the thought crossed his mind. There was no bite, but the barking was loud and sustained. At length, the harshest sanction appeared to take the form of a promised phone call: "The folks upstairs will be hearing about this," said the head judge, clearly in reference to the DA's headquarters housed in the same building. The incident drew to a close when the prosecutor, finally removing the loafer from his mouth but still choking on the polish, stammered something about most sincere apologies...no intention to suggest the court base its ruling on matters not in the record...just describing the earlier case from memory and in passing...please don't tell my mother...et cetera, ad nauseam.

Were the panel members really “hard-asses” in the colloquial sense of exercising capricious severity? Probably not. But it might be useful to assess at a glance the attitude a judge might take towards shoddy lawyer-ing. For those anxiously awaiting the next installment of the Physiognomy series, please be patient. I’m sure we’ll have some great stories and more photos from the upcoming three-month field trip to New York.