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15 lawyers and witnesses share the dumbest ways someone ruined their case in court.

On top of possessing a thorough knowledge of the law and its workings, lawyers also learn the art of when to speak and when to shut up.More precisely, lawyers are trained in how to manipulate language and information to their benefit. Clients, however, are often not as practiced at holding their tongue, and this can kill a case in court in a matter of minutes.In a popular Reddit thread, lawyers and witnesses shared the dumbest ways someone ruined their case in court, and it&#39;s truly incredible the ways humans self-sabotage.1. From Bluellan: &quot;He&#39;s been cheating on me! I found underwear that wasn&#39;t mine in his car.&quot; &quot;Hold on! There was no underwear!&quot; &quot;Yes, there was! And it was plus sized. As you can see, I&#39;m not a plus sized lady.&quot; &quot;First of all, they weren&#39;t plus sized and second-&quot;  Judge &quot;Wait. I thought you said there was no underwear&quot; &quot;Oh......umm...it flew in from the window?&quot; Divorce court is hilarious. 2. From swayzaur:  I&#39;m late to the party, but I have seen dozens of parties completely destroy any chance they had of winning a case with one stupid statement or action. Fortunately, most of them have been the opposing parties and not my clients, but not all.  The best was a Domestic Violence Restraining Order hearing I witnessed while I was waiting for my client&#39;s hearing to be called. A wife had filed a restraining order against her husband, and the wife had retained an attorney while the husband elected to represent himself. The wife testified first, and despite her attorney&#39;s best efforts, none of her testimony alleged that her husband had actually committed any real violence or abuse. Basically, she had filed the restraining order because he called her &quot;a f**king b**ch&quot; while they were having a heated argument. After he had finished asking her questions, the wife&#39;s attorney was clearly dejected, and it was obvious to everyone in the courtroom that the restraining order was about to be dismissed.  The judge&#39;s body language made it clear that she didn&#39;t believe there was anything to warrant a restraining order, but she asked the husband if he had any questions for the wife (meaning he was being given the opportunity to cross-examine her). The husband took this to mean could ask any question whatsoever that he wanted, so he immediately asked her if she had had an affair with some other guy.  The wife answered no before her attorney was able to object, and this sent the husband into a rage. He screamed that his wife was &quot;a lying b**ch&quot; and lunged toward the witness stand like he was going to attack her. Fortunately the bailiff tackled him before he could get there, and he was led away in handcuffs. Needless to say, the restraining order was granted. But if the husband had just shut the hell up and not asked a single question, the court would absolutely have ruled in his favor. 3. From _fbn_: Went to school with a guy who always carried a knuckle brass (illegal in Germany). Eventually he got pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt and was caught with the kb sitting next to the radio. Police confiscated it and he had to appear in court for possession of an illegal weapon. He then went on to completely deny everything he was accused of. Said the cops lied, he was being framed etc. To prove that the kb didn&#39;t belong to him, he (in court) pulled out another one and put it on, claiming that this one is barely fitting him and it was way bigger than the one they found in his car. Needless to say he got convicted for both of them and had to pay a 1200&euro; fine, plus 80 hours of community work. 4. From xLiquidx: I represented a girl in an aggravated assault case. Got her a really good deal where the lead charge was dropped and she&rsquo;d plead guilty to lesser charges and do six months on house arrest with electronic monitoring, and the ankle monitor also had to have an alcohol sensor.  One month into her sentence I get a call from her landlord saying she was arrested for a probation violation: her ankle monitor detected her away from her house and that she had alcohol in her system two separate times, and it alerted her probation officer. I talk to her at the jail and ask her what happened.  She acted like she had no idea why she was there. Her mom had just gotten out of the hospital from surgery and needed someone to watch her, so she emailed her PO and asked if she could go to her moms, and then just went. Few hours later the PO responded and said she couldn&rsquo;t go, so she went home. Also she had wine with dinner on two separate occasions so it&rsquo;s not like she went out drinking or anything. None of it was any big deal.  I was stunned by how nonchalant she was about it. I read her the riot act. THERE IS ONE RULE WHEN YOU&#39;RE ON HOUSE ARREST: DON&rsquo;T LEAVE YOUR HOUSE. YOU LEFT YOUR HOUSE! THERE IS ONE RULE WHEN YOU&rsquo;RE ON AN ALCOHOL MONITOR. DON&rsquo;T DRINK ALCOHOL. YOU DRANK ALCOHOL TWICE!  Her PO was recommending she be taken off house arrest and serve six months in jail. I told her the judge would probably accept that recommendation and there wasn&rsquo;t much I could do about it because her violations were major.  We go to court for her resentencing hearing and I BEG the judge to give her something less. I highlight all my clients&rsquo; positive qualities as reasons to grant leniency, along with the fact that she admitted her violations and was very forthcoming with her PO about it. The PO then piped up &ldquo;when I asked her about the alcohol violations she said she didn&rsquo;t know wine was alcohol.&rdquo;  The judge was considering giving her a minimal sentence until he heard that. Completely blew apart my argument she was open and honest. 5. From facesitti: The guy brought a joint with him and told a judge he has a joint in his pocket and doesn&#39;t give a damn what will happen. Case lost, have a nice day. 6. From questionable_post: &ldquo;Yeah I smacked her, but I didn&rsquo;t assault her!&rdquo; Sigh. 7. From dryshampooforyou: &ldquo;Judge, I&rsquo;m going to sue you once this is done.&rdquo; 8. From ghostdogtheconquerer: Not necessarily in the courtroom, but I had a client accused of some...rather aggressive behavior, is the nicest way to put it. During their deposition this client frequently, and despite my many attempts to calm them, resorted to this aggressive behavior. Client did not get the settlement they wanted. Many subsequent tantrums were thrown. 9. From AnathemaMaranatha: I watched a Public Defender stomp out of the courtroom after his client was dumb enough to insist on testifying in his own defense. I&#39;m sure he thought what the Defendant had done was dumb. I didn&#39;t agree. I may be the only one. Maybe not, too. Here&#39;s the story, written up on reddit two years ago:  I was a rural prosecutor. I had a DUI trial. Seemed cut and dried - nothing wrong with the BAC test, the People&#39;s evidence was sufficient in every way. The Defendant was represented by the Public Defender. When I finished my half of the trial, the PD stood up and said they had only one witness, the Defendant.  He got sworn in, and the PD said, &quot;Why don&#39;t you tell the jury your side of the story?&quot; then sat down. The jury didn&#39;t know what that meant, but the judge and I did. The Defendant was insisting on testifying in spite of his lawyer&#39;s advice. The PD wasn&#39;t going to assist him in hanging himself.  All the guy had to say was, &quot;I wasn&#39;t drunk when the cop stopped me. I can drink a lot and not get drunk.&quot; That was it. Time to cross-examine. I was kind of taken aback - our medical expert witnesses had already testified that there was no way a person with a BAC over 0.08 could safely operate a motor vehicle. I thought about just skipping cross.  Naw. The jury would be curious. So I abandoned my cross-ex technique, and turned into Mr. Nice Guy. I queried him on where he had been earlier that night. Moab. Okay any drinking there? Oh hell yes, beer and shooters (or something like that). Then he and his buddies had piled into the car and headed for Naturita, Colorado, maybe a two hour drive.  &quot;Any drinking in the car?&quot; I asked. Oh yeah, plenty. He was driving, so he held back, maybe only three or four beers. &quot;Any shots accompany that beer?&quot; Yeah, maybe four. I decided that there was no reason not to let him explain himself, after all of that. &quot;How is it that you weren&#39;t drunk?&quot;  The Defendant explained to the jury that he had heard all the expert testimony, but even with a BAC of 0.20, he was sober and could safely operate a motor vehicle. That&#39;s just the way he was. That&#39;s why he was driving. Everyone else in the car was drunk. Okay then. I think I&#39;m done. I thanked him for his testimony, congratulated him on his honestly (Never done that before or since) and sat down.  In summation I mentioned that the case was NOT about what the Defendant honestly thinks about his abilities. It was a test of evidence. On one side you have a BAC and medical expert testimony on BAC as it relates to the Defendant&#39;s ability to safely operate a motor vehicle. You can believe that the Defendant is an honest man - I do -but you don&#39;t have to believe his conclusions about how drunk he was.  Took the jury about ten minutes to convict. The PD just left in disgust. I talked to the Defendant, told him again that I appreciated his honesty. He said he knew he was likely to be convicted, but he wanted to tell his side of it, regardless of the outcome.  I dunno. He inconvenienced the jury and the court, but you know, he had a right to do that. I don&#39;t want to live in a nation whose legal code obliges you plead guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence. I think a citizen ought to be able to have his or her say, before the state lays hands upon them.  So no, it wasn&#39;t a breakdown on the stand. Just a man doing something he was entitled to do - tell his side. That wasn&#39;t a failure on his part. I think it was a success. I&#39;m a citizen too, and I want that right, if I ever come to trial.  Original. 10. From asoiahats: Client wouldn&rsquo;t stop whispering sh*t to me during his trial. Now it&rsquo;s common for clients to do that from time to time but this imbecile liked the sound of his own voice and would not shut up. It was usually him telling me to bring up stuff that had already been covered. He would do this while the judge was talking directly at me. It was extremely distracting and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried reasoning with him, I tried berating him, I once threatened to stab him with my pen, and I tried getting my boss who was a friend of his to talk to him, but he just liked telling me what to do.  For example the Judge mentioned the $3500 for concrete. It went thusly: Me: *writes on pad $3500 concrete Him: &ldquo;don&rsquo;t forget about the concrete&rdquo; Me: *nods Him: &ldquo;are you going to talk about the concrete?&rdquo; Me: yes  Him: &ldquo;tell him about the concrete &ldquo; Me: *taps the note I made about it Him: &ldquo;you need to talk about the concrete.&rdquo; Me: *underlines it Him: &ldquo;bring up the concrete.&rdquo; Me: *underlines it aggressively Him: &ldquo;don&rsquo;t forget the concrete.&rdquo;  Me: &ldquo;shut up and let me do my job!&rdquo; This was all whispered in the middle of the trial. What an idiot. Whenever I tried talking about it during breaks he&rsquo;d giggle. Eventually I said &ldquo;you are the stupidest person I&rsquo;ve ever met! I&rsquo;m here to help you and you&rsquo;re giggling while actively making it difficult for me.&rdquo; He just giggled more.  In end, the Judge denied part of his claim so the client got about $20,000 less than he should have. He was crying after he heard that. I told him that I thought the Judge erred and I could probably get his $20,000 on appeal, but I wouldn&rsquo;t do it because he&rsquo;s such a dumb**s. 11. From EmperorPenguinNJ: Years ago met a guy who worked for the DA in Massachusetts. Had a case come in front of the judge, a guy caught with an illegal handgun. The judge is talking about how serious a crime it is in MA, and the kids says &ldquo;but it wasn&rsquo;t loaded!&rdquo; He turns to see his attorney facepalm. 12. From prolixia: This isn&#39;t exactly a courtroom story, but it&#39;s the paperwork equivalent. I&#39;m a patent attorney in the UK. It&#39;s more complex in the US, but here as in most of the rest of the world you can&#39;t patent an invention after you&#39;ve disclosed your idea publicly. One of my clients wanted me to review an idea prior to preparing a patent application for it. He prepared a couple of pages for me that described in detail how it works, then for reasons that still utterly mystify me decided that rather than send that document to me he would host it on his website and e-mail me a link to it. He ran a popular tourist attraction that was utterly unrelated to the idea, but included a link to this document on the front page of the site meaning that anyone could access it.  The moment he decided to share his correspondence to me online, he immediately destroyed any prospect of patenting his idea. 13. From Hysterymystery: I&#39;m not a lawyer, but I wrote a book about the Casey Anthony trial and while there were multiple factors that led to the acquittal, the biggest one was the state&#39;s decision to use George Anthony as their key witness. He was such a nightmare on the stand. I actually think that the prosecution probably did a reasonable job for the most part in terms of trial strategy...except for when they tried to use her dad against her.  This case becomes a lot easier to understand when you accept that Casey didn&#39;t just randomly become a nut job. She&#39;s that way because her parents are extraordinarily dysfunctional. I don&#39;t have a formal diagnosis for George but it&#39;s my opinion that George is a compulsive liar like Casey is. Every time the guy says something, it&#39;s different than the last time he talked about it. So when the prosecution put him on the stand and had him testify to anything, the defense was able to come along behind them and say &quot;but what about the time you said the exact opposite?&quot; But George didn&#39;t like being challenged, so he would talk in circles and pretend like he couldn&#39;t understand the questions.  This is why the prosecution&#39;s case failed: Every time George testified about some evidence, his behavior overshadowed the evidence. For example: he told jurors this very vivid story about finding his daughter&#39;s car at the tow yard smelling like human decomp. But George&#39;s actions that day don&#39;t match what he testified to. He apparently &quot;smelled this smell you never forget&quot; then drove the car home, told his wife the smell was nothing to be concerned about, then drove to work and worked his entire shift without even calling Casey to check on her.  Now, it&#39;s entirely possible that he may have just exaggerated his reaction to the smell because the state asked him to, but it makes him look suspicious as hell that he did literally nothing about it and is now lying to put his daughter on death row. But George doesn&#39;t like to be confronted, so he became very agitated and talked in circles and acted like he didn&#39;t know what was being asked.  The reason why she was acquitted is because Cindy left for work that morning leaving Caylee home with Casey and George. She mysteriously died and now BOTH of them are being extremely weird. The jurors couldn&#39;t rule out George Anthony.  I&#39;m sure George&#39;s testimony haunts those prosecutors. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079WKF7J8/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_t1_vaxREb8JZRFM1_nodl 14. From Madyrenee92: Not a lawyer, but I will never forget that episode of Judge Judy. A man denied stealing someone&rsquo;s wallet with nearly $200 in it.  The man accidentally fessed up and said there was only 80 when he had it. 15. From Thirty_Helens_Agree: Here&rsquo;s another one: the mayor in my home town got caught in one of those stings where he thought he was meeting up with a teenaged girl but was really meeting an undercover cop. He was arrested and charged.  There&rsquo;s a plea deal and as part of making himself look good to the judge ahead of sentencing he had agreed to counseling/treatment, etc and to remain &ldquo;sexually sober,&rdquo; which I guess means no engaging in weird stuff.  Anyway, a couple days before sentencing while he&rsquo;s out on bail, he decides to go to the mall and buy a bunch of children&rsquo;s/girls underwear. He had been on the front page of the paper for months, so the clerks recognized him and called the cops after he left.  That information made it to the judge. At sentencing the judge said he had been prepared to give him a light sentence but this made it clear that he couldn&rsquo;t control himself and needed to be locked up. He imposed a substantial sentence. 