CoronaRules

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The criminal courts, like most every place outside the intensive care units and emergency rooms, are peaceful these days.

Trials are suspended, as are, I suppose until challenged, the constitutional and statutory rights to speedy ones.

No point in calling or emailing anyone: calls and emails won’t be returned. Judges are working at home, and rather hard, no assistants or clerks to help them.

COVID-19, immune to Presidential blather and bluster, has forced the courts to relax the rules.

Some people would say, relax them too much.

Like the Florida judge who noticed that Zoom hearings are being treated differently by the lawyers who used to appear at the courthouse in five-thousand-dollar suits. Some now come close to showing up wearing inexpensive birthday suits.

The judge specifically complains of lawyers social-distancing from hygiene and grooming, of lawyers in even-less-than Friday casual shirts and blouses. More than a few have looked back through their cameras with bedroom eyes — not because the judge is such a hunk, but because they are literally in their bedrooms, the master beds beckoning over their shoulders. One lawyer was actually still in her bed, under the covers.

Then there was the lawyer, the judge said, who entered his appearance sans chemise — and maybe, just maybe, the judge feared a suddenly tilted angle might reveal — sans pantalon aussi.

Judge Dennis Bailey of the Broward Circuit Court warned his lawyers that “putting on a beach cover-up won’t cover up you’re poolside in a bathing suit.”

Here in Colorado I can’t remember the last time a lawyer appeared poolside in a bathing suit. I’ve appeared in unlaced snow boots and massive parka, but not yet in a bathing suit.

If the coronavirus doesn’t get me, maybe I will.