Thursday, October 18, 2007

Mitigation

Every magistrate will have heard a lot of mitigation, as lawyers attempt, with varying degrees of conviction, to persuade the court that their client's offence was, you know, not all that bad really. The good ones are pretty good. The bad ones can be embarrassing. The commonest by far is that the illness and/or death of a parent/sibling/granny/pet/fellow druggy has so devastated their client that they were compelled to steal a car/drive on a ban/go back to drugs/beat up a stranger/whatever.
The latest, delivered with a straight face, was that Mr. Defendant is in the pub having a quiet beer or three when his wife calls to say that someone is in their garden breaking things. Mr. D. leaps into his car and rushes home, arriving at the same time as the police - who nick him for drink drive. Would we be so kind as to find special reasons not to ban him?
So if his wife had not had these problems, how was he planning to get home?

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