Azastan wrote: ↑Sun May 08, 2022 4:03 pm
That was good, but I wonder if Mr 'I'ma get this overturned before my Florida anyway' realizes that his character witness, Ms Thomas, is what really convinced the judge to impose a consecutive sentence instead of a concurrent one?
My money's on "nope."
(Disclaimer: I'm not an attorney of any sort. I just enjoy the law, and I find myself reading 80% of the appellate opinions from my state's courts and from the US federal circuits. You know. For fun.)
This seems to be an occupational hazard among some types of fraudsters. They deeply, sincerely believe that they can talk their way out of any situation. There's a strong argument to be made that this personality trait is what led them to commit the fraud to begin with, and in many cases, what made them as successful in the fraud as they were.
And once they're caught and facing trial, this same personality trait causes them to fail spectacularly. They 'know', with every fiber of their being, that if they can just talk to the jury and the judge, the whole thing will go away. Occasionally they will go full-tilt and represent themselves. More usually, they'll have an attorney's representation, but they'll ignore that attorney's pleas and insist on taking the stand... and get absolutely destroyed on cross-examination. Because they've never had to deal with being questioned by someone who has the training and the experience to counter exactly this sort of bullshit. And because they just can't process the fact that their instinctive patter -- 'I want to help everyone succeed', 'I would never take advantage of anyone' -- is opening up door after door after door for a devastating rebuttal.
And even after they've been convicted, they still hold onto the 'I can talk their way out of this' mantra. And they do exactly what happened in this case: they submit mounds of "character evidence" that just plays into the prosecution's hands. And their allocutions turn into utter shitshows.