My case was advanced so that we could appear before the court to take a plea.  It was a good plea; my client wanted it and I agreed that it was the right thing to do.  We were there before the courtroom doors opened so that I could sign the case up right away.  In this court part, arriving late meant that you spent the better part of the morning waiting for your case to be called.  The early bird definitely got the worm, and I would be out of there as quickly as possible.

The case was called and the perquisite words were spoken.  There was a disposition. The calendar assistant added the necessary charge to the complaint and spelled out the details.  And the judge then turned to me, as it was my turn to speak the mantra of the plea.

Silence.  I totally blanked.  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the mantra.  There was a terrible silence.

Then, it came back me, and I mouthed the required words to withdraw the previously entered plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty to the new charge.  Everything went along as usual, and the deal was done.

As I left the courthouse, I was appalled that I had forgotten the mantra.  This is the second thing one learns in the trenches, right after the routine not guilty plea at an arraignment.  And then I realized the problem.  I hadn’t done a state court plea in years.  I suddenly felt a swell of pride, that I couldn’t actually remember the last state court plea I had done. 

It’s not that I’m “too good” to plead my clients guilty.  That would be a ridiculously foolish idea.  There are certainly times, and case, where a plea is the appropriate outcome and in the client’s best interest.  It’s just that guilty pleas are a last resort, a worst case scenario, most of the time, and something that I try very hard to avoid. 

To the young buck in the courtroom, I imagine that my silence when the mantra was supposed to come out of my mouth might be taken as a sign that I might not have known what I was doing.  After all, every young buck learns the mantra right away.  I hope that they instead might take my silence as a sign that the guilty plea mantra isn’t what being a criminal defense lawyer is all about.  Maybe they shouldn’t learn the mantra right away.  Maybe it shouldn’t be so ingrained in their heads that they could repeat the mantra in their sleep.

That’s my hope.  But I don’t think that’s what ran through their heads.  After all, it is the mantra.