This one came to me from a former colleague who was a court reporter. Zild has this lovely group of agents for social betterment called The Mongrel Mob. Monday morning always saw a fairly large number of these delightful people gracing the dock in the Magistrates Court on various charges falling mostly within the range of attempted murder up to drunken driving, the offences having been committed during the previous 48 hours. Some of them had spent two nights and a day in the police cells, although I'm not sure whether this materially added to their general stench. Washing wasn't high on their daily agendas.

The Mob members were such frequent customers that it was more like a social club than a courtroom, and the magistrates had long since given up trying to control events beyond the bare minimum on Mondays. Lawyers on legal aid (free representation) duty hated it. Junior lawyers were easily intimidated by the Mob members, but then they were also scared silly of the judge, the court officials, the prosecuting police sergeant, the press and anyone who happened to be in the public gallery. It was a real madhouse.

Anyway, one Monday morning, a rather heavily-tattooed, greasy-haired, leather-jacket-with-patch wearing Mongrel was in the dock on a charge of assault with intent. He'd bottled someone in the pub next door to the Magistrates Court, and which was coincidentally in the same city block as the police station, the prison and the newspaper. The was best known, affectionately, as the "The Flying Jug". It was mostly patronised (at different times of the day) by court workers, police, newspaper journalists and printers, and the Mob.

The legal aid oik had been thoroughly intimidated by his client, who was insisting on pleading innocent in spite of the fact that the cops had basically caught him with the bottle in his opponent's face. You will understand that the police sergeant had just read a summary of the charge, including the fact that a constable removed the bottle from the defendant's hand with blood dripping from it.

The lawyer had trouble finding his voice, so the unconvicted felon answered for him, "Not guilty, sir, he deserved it!".

The magistrate rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, I understand that to some people it is perfectly acceptable behaviour to smash the bottom out of a bottle and then proceed to carry out bar-room surgery on one's enemies' faces."

The Mob member smiled brightly and winked at his unwilling counsel. "See?" he said, "Told you it'd be all right if you said I was innocent!"*

He got six months.

*Can't swear, after all this time, to the exact wording.





The idiot also known as Capfka ...