In the half-light watching the shadows of the swordsmen dancing on the bedroom curtains. Thrusting. Parrying. Ducking. Advancing. Withdrawing. The ghosts of men who once fought and are doomed to fight forevermore. So I close my eyes. Hide under the bedclothes. But they will never be gone..
I was shocked at the hounding of taxi driver Ryan Barney who did his public duty by racing to ferry people away from the scene of a London terrorist attack. Yes – he went through a red light. So what? It was an emergency.
But it’s too easy to feel pressured into pleading guilty to a bad prosecution when you should fight to clear your name. Yes there are risks in contesting. It is expensive and you may get a heavier sentence if you are convicted after a trial. But pleading guilty is never the easy way out – whatever your lawyer tells you. You’re still saddled with the conviction and no-way of appealing it.
It is from the tiniest snippets information that the greatest works are born. The sentence in the newspaper which gave rise to the book. What trial-reports generated Mario Puzo’s masterpiece ‘The Godfather’? What real-life tales of hardship gave rise to Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’?
Every State has its own laws. But the human attributes of a great lawyer are universal. Here are a couple:
BRUCE AND HOLLY 