15 ms·

Zoom court hearing postponed after accused found in same location as witness

232 points by georgecmu 5y ago

vnchr 5y ago
Either zoom has an opportunity to add a location-verification privacy nightmare of a feature, or a startup can make a zoom replacement for the unique needs of a remote justice system.
- inetknght 5y ago
  No. The court handled this quickly and appropriately. I don't see a reason to lose one's privacy.
  - regulation_d 5y ago
    obviously the question is, are there cases of witness intimidation that aren't being caught?
    - inetknght 5y ago
      Any information provided over Zoom can be falsified. Any future court which has concerns about witness intimidation should follow a similar procedure that this court already performed. There is no reason to lose your privacy over this.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      short answer, yes. as long as there are "bad guys" willing to do anything to stay out of jail, witness intimidation will occur as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    The court discovered the problem in this instance. Further, the parent provided an alternative suggestion. Another commenter elaborated on that "dedicated platform" idea: A dedicated device.
    - cameron_b 5y ago
      Zoom is new in courtrooms, but videoconferencing is not. it used to be done on dedicated devices and could in the future as well. Cisco and Poly ( formerly Polycom ) were loved for their security and management functions. Put a defendant in the "Video" room at the jail and have an arraignment with zero physical interaction, threat to court staff, or transport costs and risks [and the jail staff just need to make sure the thing is plugged in to the wall, the rest was automated]. This was the model when I installed the stuff 10 years ago ( in a mostly rural county in South Carolina, at that ) Zoom is blowing the doors off access, but there is appetite for specialization.
- dheera 5y ago
  There is no way to "verify location" on a device that I own. My device can always spoof its location, does spoof location by default, and my device can run Zoom's code in an altered way. IMO the best way to facilitate this is for the courthouse to deliver an officially-sanctioned device on the date of the trial to everyone involved (defendants, attackers, witnesses, jurors, judges, lawyers), that device come with its own LTE connection, and it be a federal violation to modify that device. In addition, the courts should NEVER divulge the location of the participants in a trial or put it into any document, as that might put violence victims at further risk.
  - robrenaud 5y ago
    Making courts cases slower, more expensive, and more cumbersome is probably not a net benefit to victims of violence. It is not as though the woman was was testifying against organized crime. Muting or pausing the recordings during testimony of private information, or redacting them from the recording might be a good compromise.
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Remote proctored exams have already put in place measures (both process and technical) to address a number of these issues.
jjulius 5y ago
This is the same judge who had a defendant join a Zoom hearing using the name, "Buttfucker 3000". https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng9g/judge-has-no-patience-for-buttfucker-3000-in-zoom-court https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng9g/judge-has-no-patience...
- Fezzik 5y ago
  and for those that think this is an anomaly (one judge getting these odd/crazy cases…) this is what trial court is actually like (nearly) all day every day.
- tobr 5y ago
  Genuinely, why does it matter? Why should the judge waste any attention on things like that, things that have zero significance to the matter at hand?
  - mmmBacon 5y ago
    It does matter. These are serious matters and judges need respect for the court and the proceedings.
    - tobr 5y ago
      The judge is the one who is obstructing the proceedings by needlessly scolding the defendant and bringing attention to an embarrassing mistake.
      - jjulius 5y ago
        Mistakes like this happen frequently whether the proceedings take place over Zoom, or in person in a courthouse. As multiple comments have pointed out, it's about showing a basic level of respect and awareness of your situation. This would be akin to accidentally showing up to a courtroom in a suit and forgetting that there's a decorative penis pin on your jacket because the last time you wore it you were at some sort of party. You clearly didn't care enough about your situation to dot your i's and cross your t's, and it suggests to the judge that you think this is a farce, mistake or not.
dheera 5y ago
> “Um, I’m at a house,” [NAME] said, with hesitation, giving a [STREET NAME] address in [CITY]. This should NOT have been publicized. There is enough information in the above sentence that I was able to Google for her exact address. This is a gross danger to violence victims.
- imglorp 5y ago
  This was an ok amount of anonymity under Old School journalism with paper phonebooks but not after the internet. Seems they need to update their standards.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  The other solution seems to be endangering the general public by opening the courts in a pandemic or to start having secret courts. Neither are particularly compelling. Far less people were assaulted in the US than died of coronavirus, and even fewer were assaulted for witness intimidation. And a secret court is obviously bad for a rules based democracy.
  - dheera 5y ago
    It needn't be one or the other. You can have remote trials but just don't put personal information in records, and prohibit unauthorized recording. Have one official recording that redacts personal addresses and contact information.
    - djbebs 5y ago
      No parr of the justice system should be hidden from view. If its too dangerous to be made public, its not important enough to be used.
      - dheera 5y ago
        I disagree. I strongly think the justice system should be first and foremost protecting victims and not exposing them to more harm. That would encourage victims to not bring wrongdoings to trial in fear of their personal info being exposed. If someone is convicted, then yeah, go ahead and put them on a sex offender registry with their address. Loss of privacy is a consequence of their actions. That's justice. But goddamn no don't put the victim's address in public view.
mabbo 5y ago
Two weeks later: > “I’d like to fire my attorney and represent myself for the rest of this case, please, because he hasn’t done anything that I’ve asked him,” Harris said. “I asked, I sent him a whole paper of questions to ask her and I asked him to come see me before this court date. He hasn’t. Paul Gipson’s a bum a* dude, and he should not practice this profession ‘cause he’s not doing anything for –” https://www.yahoo.com/now/defendant-viral-michigan-assault-hearing-173524779.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/defendant-viral-michigan-assault-h... I get the feeling this person is going to be spending an extended period of time in jail.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Relevant despite cartoon overlay. State of Georgia Vs. Denver Fenton Allen. The transcript is pretty bananas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0
sovietmudkipz 5y ago
I have seen this video before this HN post. There is a follow up video depicting our antagonist from a jail. He loses his temper and is put on mute. You can see from his body language how distressed he is. It disturbed me greatly. This young man appears to be able to go from 0 to 100 very quickly with little self control. I can only imagine the kind of environment that helps create a person like that… It is so sad.
- SamBam 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6q1q-r-Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6q1q-r-Sw The compilation starts briefly from the later jail incident. The part depicted in the article (edited) starts at 0:34.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > This young man appears to be able to go from 0 to 100 very quickly with little self control. Maybe this is Captain Obvious speaking, but poor impulse control seems like the single common denominator among a whole load of social ills that consistently land people in trouble (legal, financial, social, across lots of spectrums). From crimes of opportunity/passion, to short-tempers and "blowing up" on people in public or private, to impulse shopping, to road rage, to everything you see on r/PublicFreakout, and so on. Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives. EDIT: This thread took a wild turn. I guess I never considered there might be a genetic or environmental explanation. Much food for thought!
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    > Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives. ...and make things worse for the rest of us; but god forbid the state do anything about it with proactive evidence-based early-interventions or treat the perpetrators of crime with compassion and understanding too - otherwise it's called being soft-on-crime or worse: "liberal".
    - 5y ago
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago
Kudos to Davis for catching on that the witness was under duress and for getting the cops there pronto.
inportb 5y ago
The video is no longer available at the original link https://web.archive.org/web/20210311055900/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Mfk7Dg42k https://web.archive.org/web/20210311055900/https://www.youtu...
yreg 5y ago
There is a community around watching court cases at /r/zoomcourt Judge Middleton and Deborah Davis (the attorney) from this case are very popular over there. She is even a member of the subreddit IIRC.
- jedberg 5y ago
  My understanding is that only judges can share these recordings because it would be an ethical violation for the lawyers to do it, but I wonder, why isn't it an ethical issue for the Judge?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    It varies from court to court, but in general the judge has the responsibility of evaluating whether public interest outweighs rights to privacy for any given piece of recorded court information. I'd imagine it is an ethical issue, but the judge has the authority to evaluate the ethics and reach a decision.
    - isk517 5y ago
      I would imagine it is harder for the judge to benefit from sharing recordings, where a lawyer could use a release recording to promote their practice or attempt to sway public option in the event of a mistrial.
      - vincebowdren 5y ago
        Indeed. The adversarial court system means that every lawyer involved is on one side or the other; the judge is both neutral and in charge overall, so it makes sense for the judge to make that decision.
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    Well in ordinary circumstances it is often allowed for the public to be in the courtroom (not always, obviously), so I would think that the judge would apply the same criteria? IANAL.
mrlatinos 5y ago
This happened 5 months ago. HN looking like my YT recommendations
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  HN often hosts discussions on things that happened long enough ago that they wouldn't fit the usual definition of news. This fact isn't news, or a problem.
liquidise 5y ago
I found my way to court feeds (namely Judge Middleton's[1]) during Covid. Incidentally i'm listening to Aug 19's proceedings now. Seeing these specific clips go viral feels like a microcosm of modern consumption habits. There is so much to learn about the legal system and, more broadly, about the nature of people in trying circumstances watching court proceedings. The pureness of exchanges and the total lack of editorial bias is refreshing and too hard to find these days. I have a theory that if more people watched court proceedings (daily misdemeanor, not just OJ/Floyd cutups), political opinions might shift toward humanizing both the accused and the victims. 1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8gM5S889oBPyN6K07ZC6A/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8gM5S889oBPyN6K07ZC6A/vid...
- mct 5y ago
  Thanks for the link! Are there any other court feeds you've found interesting?
- nickff 5y ago
  >"I have a theory that if more people watched court proceedings (daily misdemeanor, not just OJ/Floyd cutups), political opinions might shift toward humanizing both the accused and the victims." There has been a lot of work on this, showing that people's reactions to newspaper stories about court cases are polarized, but similar people on juries generally find common ground. I don't have any citations handy, but I'm sure they're easy to find.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Thanks, that's quite interesting. Video conferencing does seem to hold a lot of potential for these kinds of proceedings. I imagine it would allow for a much more efficient use of the court's time. But Zoom seems like an absolutely terrible tool and the court has been abysmally trained on it's proper use. It looks like a big missed opportunity for Zoom and a big unmet need. The stream I watched was a landlord-tenant dispute hearing. It was sad to hear people's pretty desperate circumstances, but also fascinating to learn just how long a leash the court might give you on debt and eviction if you know how to work the system, as some tenants and the anti-homelessness orgs helping them seemed to understand. We have a pretty weird system all in all, patch after patch on this "Capitalism OS."
duxup 5y ago
I kinda wonder how zoom court cases could even dehumanize the folks involved too. There's something about everyone being remote that worries me about how flippant / careless people could be about every aspect of it.
georgecmu 5y ago
Several cuts of the video are available here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zoom+hearing+coby+harris https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zoom+hearing+co...
literallyaduck 5y ago
Anyone with a law license have insight as to Zoom and other teleconferencing violating habeas corpus? Without physically seeing the person, it is much easier to hand out punishments.
worker767424 5y ago
> [Judge] Middleton then asked Harris to divulge the address where he was. Harris gave a house number on East Lafayette Street. Is this bordering on a Fifth Amendment violation since the judge asked this or a future mistrial since the defense attorney didn't try to stop it?
- kevingadd 5y ago
  Harris could have refused
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  How is asking a question in a court proceeding a violation? That’s the point of the proceeding, no? Did the judge threaten to hold him in contempt for not answering?
Brian_K_White 5y ago
I saw a milder version of the same thing myself a few weeks ago in a zoom traffic court. While I was waiting for my turn one of the other cases had the same thing. A guy was being charged with something about a domestic dispute, doesn't speak English very well, they ask if he has anyone that can translate, yes my wife, she leans into view, someone from the court says she's the the victim. They abort everything and schedule for some other time with some other translator. Dude looked over 30, wife looked under 20. Traffic court sometimes makes you grateful.

232 points by georgecmu 5y ago

Either zoom has an opportunity to add a location-verification privacy nightmare of a feature, or a startup can make a zoom replacement for the unique needs of a remote justice system.

inetknght 5y ago
No. The court handled this quickly and appropriately. I don't see a reason to lose one's privacy.
- regulation_d 5y ago
  obviously the question is, are there cases of witness intimidation that aren't being caught?
  - inetknght 5y ago
    Any information provided over Zoom can be falsified. Any future court which has concerns about witness intimidation should follow a similar procedure that this court already performed. There is no reason to lose your privacy over this.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    short answer, yes. as long as there are "bad guys" willing to do anything to stay out of jail, witness intimidation will occur as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  The court discovered the problem in this instance. Further, the parent provided an alternative suggestion. Another commenter elaborated on that "dedicated platform" idea: A dedicated device.
  - cameron_b 5y ago
    Zoom is new in courtrooms, but videoconferencing is not. it used to be done on dedicated devices and could in the future as well. Cisco and Poly ( formerly Polycom ) were loved for their security and management functions. Put a defendant in the "Video" room at the jail and have an arraignment with zero physical interaction, threat to court staff, or transport costs and risks [and the jail staff just need to make sure the thing is plugged in to the wall, the rest was automated]. This was the model when I installed the stuff 10 years ago ( in a mostly rural county in South Carolina, at that ) Zoom is blowing the doors off access, but there is appetite for specialization.
dheera 5y ago
There is no way to "verify location" on a device that I own. My device can always spoof its location, does spoof location by default, and my device can run Zoom's code in an altered way. IMO the best way to facilitate this is for the courthouse to deliver an officially-sanctioned device on the date of the trial to everyone involved (defendants, attackers, witnesses, jurors, judges, lawyers), that device come with its own LTE connection, and it be a federal violation to modify that device. In addition, the courts should NEVER divulge the location of the participants in a trial or put it into any document, as that might put violence victims at further risk.
- robrenaud 5y ago
  Making courts cases slower, more expensive, and more cumbersome is probably not a net benefit to victims of violence. It is not as though the woman was was testifying against organized crime. Muting or pausing the recordings during testimony of private information, or redacting them from the recording might be a good compromise.
bdcravens 5y ago
Remote proctored exams have already put in place measures (both process and technical) to address a number of these issues.

jjulius 5y ago

This is the same judge who had a defendant join a Zoom hearing using the name, "Buttfucker 3000". https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng9g/judge-has-no-patience-for-buttfucker-3000-in-zoom-court https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng9g/judge-has-no-patience...

Fezzik 5y ago
and for those that think this is an anomaly (one judge getting these odd/crazy cases…) this is what trial court is actually like (nearly) all day every day.
tobr 5y ago
Genuinely, why does it matter? Why should the judge waste any attention on things like that, things that have zero significance to the matter at hand?
- mmmBacon 5y ago
  It does matter. These are serious matters and judges need respect for the court and the proceedings.
  - tobr 5y ago
    The judge is the one who is obstructing the proceedings by needlessly scolding the defendant and bringing attention to an embarrassing mistake.
    - jjulius 5y ago
      Mistakes like this happen frequently whether the proceedings take place over Zoom, or in person in a courthouse. As multiple comments have pointed out, it's about showing a basic level of respect and awareness of your situation. This would be akin to accidentally showing up to a courtroom in a suit and forgetting that there's a decorative penis pin on your jacket because the last time you wore it you were at some sort of party. You clearly didn't care enough about your situation to dot your i's and cross your t's, and it suggests to the judge that you think this is a farce, mistake or not.

dheera 5y ago

> “Um, I’m at a house,” [NAME] said, with hesitation, giving a [STREET NAME] address in [CITY]. This should NOT have been publicized. There is enough information in the above sentence that I was able to Google for her exact address. This is a gross danger to violence victims.

imglorp 5y ago
This was an ok amount of anonymity under Old School journalism with paper phonebooks but not after the internet. Seems they need to update their standards.
jdavis703 5y ago
The other solution seems to be endangering the general public by opening the courts in a pandemic or to start having secret courts. Neither are particularly compelling. Far less people were assaulted in the US than died of coronavirus, and even fewer were assaulted for witness intimidation. And a secret court is obviously bad for a rules based democracy.
- dheera 5y ago
  It needn't be one or the other. You can have remote trials but just don't put personal information in records, and prohibit unauthorized recording. Have one official recording that redacts personal addresses and contact information.
  - djbebs 5y ago
    No parr of the justice system should be hidden from view. If its too dangerous to be made public, its not important enough to be used.
    - dheera 5y ago
      I disagree. I strongly think the justice system should be first and foremost protecting victims and not exposing them to more harm. That would encourage victims to not bring wrongdoings to trial in fear of their personal info being exposed. If someone is convicted, then yeah, go ahead and put them on a sex offender registry with their address. Loss of privacy is a consequence of their actions. That's justice. But goddamn no don't put the victim's address in public view.

mabbo 5y ago

Two weeks later: > “I’d like to fire my attorney and represent myself for the rest of this case, please, because he hasn’t done anything that I’ve asked him,” Harris said. “I asked, I sent him a whole paper of questions to ask her and I asked him to come see me before this court date. He hasn’t. Paul Gipson’s a bum a* dude, and he should not practice this profession ‘cause he’s not doing anything for –” https://www.yahoo.com/now/defendant-viral-michigan-assault-hearing-173524779.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/defendant-viral-michigan-assault-h... I get the feeling this person is going to be spending an extended period of time in jail.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
Relevant despite cartoon overlay. State of Georgia Vs. Denver Fenton Allen. The transcript is pretty bananas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0

sovietmudkipz 5y ago

I have seen this video before this HN post. There is a follow up video depicting our antagonist from a jail. He loses his temper and is put on mute. You can see from his body language how distressed he is. It disturbed me greatly. This young man appears to be able to go from 0 to 100 very quickly with little self control. I can only imagine the kind of environment that helps create a person like that… It is so sad.

SamBam 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6q1q-r-Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6q1q-r-Sw The compilation starts briefly from the later jail incident. The part depicted in the article (edited) starts at 0:34.
ryandrake 5y ago
> This young man appears to be able to go from 0 to 100 very quickly with little self control. Maybe this is Captain Obvious speaking, but poor impulse control seems like the single common denominator among a whole load of social ills that consistently land people in trouble (legal, financial, social, across lots of spectrums). From crimes of opportunity/passion, to short-tempers and "blowing up" on people in public or private, to impulse shopping, to road rage, to everything you see on r/PublicFreakout, and so on. Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives. EDIT: This thread took a wild turn. I guess I never considered there might be a genetic or environmental explanation. Much food for thought!
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives. ...and make things worse for the rest of us; but god forbid the state do anything about it with proactive evidence-based early-interventions or treat the perpetrators of crime with compassion and understanding too - otherwise it's called being soft-on-crime or worse: "liberal".
  - 5y ago

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago

Kudos to Davis for catching on that the witness was under duress and for getting the cops there pronto.

inportb 5y ago

The video is no longer available at the original link https://web.archive.org/web/20210311055900/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Mfk7Dg42k https://web.archive.org/web/20210311055900/https://www.youtu...

yreg 5y ago

There is a community around watching court cases at /r/zoomcourt Judge Middleton and Deborah Davis (the attorney) from this case are very popular over there. She is even a member of the subreddit IIRC.

jedberg 5y ago
My understanding is that only judges can share these recordings because it would be an ethical violation for the lawyers to do it, but I wonder, why isn't it an ethical issue for the Judge?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It varies from court to court, but in general the judge has the responsibility of evaluating whether public interest outweighs rights to privacy for any given piece of recorded court information. I'd imagine it is an ethical issue, but the judge has the authority to evaluate the ethics and reach a decision.
  - isk517 5y ago
    I would imagine it is harder for the judge to benefit from sharing recordings, where a lawyer could use a release recording to promote their practice or attempt to sway public option in the event of a mistrial.
    - vincebowdren 5y ago
      Indeed. The adversarial court system means that every lawyer involved is on one side or the other; the judge is both neutral and in charge overall, so it makes sense for the judge to make that decision.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Well in ordinary circumstances it is often allowed for the public to be in the courtroom (not always, obviously), so I would think that the judge would apply the same criteria? IANAL.

mrlatinos 5y ago

This happened 5 months ago. HN looking like my YT recommendations

mkr-hn 5y ago
HN often hosts discussions on things that happened long enough ago that they wouldn't fit the usual definition of news. This fact isn't news, or a problem.

liquidise 5y ago

I found my way to court feeds (namely Judge Middleton's[1]) during Covid. Incidentally i'm listening to Aug 19's proceedings now. Seeing these specific clips go viral feels like a microcosm of modern consumption habits. There is so much to learn about the legal system and, more broadly, about the nature of people in trying circumstances watching court proceedings. The pureness of exchanges and the total lack of editorial bias is refreshing and too hard to find these days. I have a theory that if more people watched court proceedings (daily misdemeanor, not just OJ/Floyd cutups), political opinions might shift toward humanizing both the accused and the victims. 1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8gM5S889oBPyN6K07ZC6A/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS8gM5S889oBPyN6K07ZC6A/vid...

mct 5y ago
Thanks for the link! Are there any other court feeds you've found interesting?
nickff 5y ago
>"I have a theory that if more people watched court proceedings (daily misdemeanor, not just OJ/Floyd cutups), political opinions might shift toward humanizing both the accused and the victims." There has been a lot of work on this, showing that people's reactions to newspaper stories about court cases are polarized, but similar people on juries generally find common ground. I don't have any citations handy, but I'm sure they're easy to find.
dougmwne 5y ago
Thanks, that's quite interesting. Video conferencing does seem to hold a lot of potential for these kinds of proceedings. I imagine it would allow for a much more efficient use of the court's time. But Zoom seems like an absolutely terrible tool and the court has been abysmally trained on it's proper use. It looks like a big missed opportunity for Zoom and a big unmet need. The stream I watched was a landlord-tenant dispute hearing. It was sad to hear people's pretty desperate circumstances, but also fascinating to learn just how long a leash the court might give you on debt and eviction if you know how to work the system, as some tenants and the anti-homelessness orgs helping them seemed to understand. We have a pretty weird system all in all, patch after patch on this "Capitalism OS."

duxup 5y ago

I kinda wonder how zoom court cases could even dehumanize the folks involved too. There's something about everyone being remote that worries me about how flippant / careless people could be about every aspect of it.

georgecmu 5y ago

Several cuts of the video are available here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zoom+hearing+coby+harris https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zoom+hearing+co...

literallyaduck 5y ago

Anyone with a law license have insight as to Zoom and other teleconferencing violating habeas corpus? Without physically seeing the person, it is much easier to hand out punishments.

worker767424 5y ago

> [Judge] Middleton then asked Harris to divulge the address where he was. Harris gave a house number on East Lafayette Street. Is this bordering on a Fifth Amendment violation since the judge asked this or a future mistrial since the defense attorney didn't try to stop it?

kevingadd 5y ago
Harris could have refused
ViViDboarder 5y ago
How is asking a question in a court proceeding a violation? That’s the point of the proceeding, no? Did the judge threaten to hold him in contempt for not answering?

Brian_K_White 5y ago

I saw a milder version of the same thing myself a few weeks ago in a zoom traffic court. While I was waiting for my turn one of the other cases had the same thing. A guy was being charged with something about a domestic dispute, doesn't speak English very well, they ask if he has anyone that can translate, yes my wife, she leans into view, someone from the court says she's the the victim. They abort everything and schedule for some other time with some other translator. Dude looked over 30, wife looked under 20. Traffic court sometimes makes you grateful.