Quote from: Sardondi on November 03, 2013, 12:47:08 PM
A quick detour for a short war story about cattle prods. Once upon a time, years ago, I was involved in the prosecution of three smalltown cops who occasionally tortured suspects by using cattle prods to extract confessions. The FBI even recovered two of the prods which had been thrown into a creek by one of the officers in an attempt to hide the evidence. One of the cops was represented at trial by a big, blustering ex-football jock named "Big Al." Big Al was an asshole and a bully. He was also essentially stupid, although he had a certain low animal cunning that made him a dangerous enough trial opponent. But he would make these tremendous assumptions, not realizing he was doing it.
One assumption he made was that these cattle prods were essentially harmless. After all, his clients had told him so. And they were powered by just 4 D-cell batteries. How painful could it be to get shocked by that? It's just some little sissy nigrah convicts making a big deal out of nothing and trying to get our brave po-lice in trouble, right?
And truth to tell the testimony of the victims hadn't been all that effective. They were for the most part jailbirds, and their stories did tend to change some. It was looking dicey for a conviction, particularly since cops were the defendants.
So Al is cross examining the FBI agent who recovered the cattle prods. He's holding a new and undamaged identical model of cattle prod which has been admitted as an exhibit to show the jury what the things looked like before they were bent and thrown into the creek. Al is getting the FBI agent to admit certain things which make it appear the prods are little buzzers which work more on the theory of surprise or noise than on an actual shock. And somehow Big Al gets the bright idea that he's going to demonstrate the prod in open court, and show the jury how there's nothing to these little buzzing doohickeys. It'll be a Clarence Darrow moment, and Al will be a legend in the courthouse.
Except he's never tried it out before. He had no idea what the cattle prods could do. No idea. And he asks the question, "Why, these things don't even really hurt, do they Mr. FBI man?" And in open court he jams the cattle prod into his own thigh.
And it was like someone kicked him in the balls. He immediately leans forward and lets out a big "OOOOOFFFFF!" like someone punched him in the gut, staggering, almost falling down. He looks up totally dumbfounded, clearly never having considered that those battery-powered things could do something like this. So he turns to the prosecution table and, before he could catch himself, in a stage whisper everyone could hear, he says, "Damn, that hurts!"
He recovered himself enough to get a few more questions out, but he finally had to sit down. It was obvious that one shot from the prod had taken a real toll on him. We couldn't have asked for better testimony. And so it was Big Al became a legend in the courthouse - but for how his idiocy convicted his client, not for his Clarence Darrow genius. Ah, good days, good days.
Okay, back to the thread.
Best Sardondi story yet.
