Five Terrible Defenses in Court Rooms

R. Kelly may have entertained the legal world with his recent zen minimalism approach to legal defense, but these five criminals show there are even worse tactics than gesturing to the prosecution and going “What he said?”

1. “No one ever told me I couldn’t”

A Massachusetts man wrecked a friendly baseball game by driving his dirtbike around the bases, kicking up dirt over players and fans. This isn’t just criminal, it’s the stupidly pathetic kind of criminal you get at the start of a Disney movie about learning kung fu and believing in yourself. Joseph Riviera didn’t have to wait eighty minutes and three musical montages for justice though - he was arrested almost immediately.

His cunning defense was that he had never been specifically told he couldn’t drive a stolen bike with a suspended license with complete disregard for the safety of others. You could see how that never came up in regular conversation. If there was any true justice this idiot would be locked in a cell with a computer voice randomly telling him other things common sense should prevent him doing:

“YOU SHALL NOT:
- SURF A KILLER WHALE INTO AN OPERATING THEATER
- ATTEMPT TO BUNGEE JUMP WHILE DONATING BLOOD
- RIDE A DIRT BIKE THROUGH PEOPLE PLAYING BASEBALL, WHEN THIRTY DAMN YEARS OLD, IN FULL VIEW OF POLICE OFFICERS, DUMBASS.”

2. “God made me do it”, snipers behind ambulance, beheading two

Ah, the classic, used by psychos worldwide dating back to Archer J. Maggott, World War II (fictional version) and beyond. God got particularly inventive in the case of Antonie Dixon, though, commanding him to kill and sending snipers, a horned man, an ambulance and making it all in self defense. At least, according to Antonie.

There are a couple of minor issues with this testimony (apart from the obvious sheer bullshit of it, which we will leave aside for now). For one, no one has used a samurai sword in self-defense since Feudal Japan - if you’re arrested for attacking someone with one, give up on any claim of innocence and just ride that “sad man and obvious psycho who’s just been itching to lash out about not having known the touch of a woman” ticket for all its worth. For another, failing to mention half your “evidence” in the previous trial, when arrested, or at any point in the last five years does not help your credibility.

3. The Extremely Fake Heart Attack

Keison Wilkons defended himself. The lawyers among you are laughing already, and the fact he got himself 42 years is a great advertisement for your profession. But that’s only the start of his idiocy - when the trial started going against him he looked at the list

a) Challenge testimony
b) Change tack
c) Go for a plea bargain or
d) Fake a heart attack

and chose the exact wrong option. Note that in the Wilkons household, the symptoms of a heart attack are clutching your chest, falling over, and breathing normally. Clearly he attended the pantomime school of medicine before embarking on his stellar legal career.

You can check out the video here, but you may want to prepare yourself with a couple of Keanu Reeves movies to work up to this level of spectacularly bad acting.

4. The Made-For-Jack-Thompson defense

In a case custom-made for Jack Thompson, school shooter Evan Ramsey claims that video games trained him to believe that shooting people with a gun had no consequences. Of course, the fact he’s had over ten years in jail to come up with the best possible media-friendly plea may be a factor. His claims are about as believable as an apology note from an earthquake - he claims he didn’t know guns hurt people. but that he was driven to shoot his victims by his rage and anger.

If guns don’t hurt people, why did he want to shoot people he hates? Did he think he was just going to ruin their nice clothes, or to miss classes until they respawned? Anyone who tries to play the victim card after fatally shotgunning two better people with “I wouldn’t have done it if anyone had told me it was wrong.” Listen, pal, everyone from God on down to the A-Team has told you that killing was wrong. You ignored that, you committed crimes, and now you’ve got a real high-score sounding 210 year sentence to think about it.

5. “Gas money is really expensive”

Everybody is feeling the price of oil - none more than a Pennsylvania man who bought alcohol for minors to fuel his desperate “making the car move” habit. Legal genius Todd Corman attempted to defend himself by admitting he did it (always a great start) but only because gas was so expensive. A police officer is not a stand-up comedy audience, Todd. You don’t get automatic agreement by going “Man, the price of gas, am I right?” Were you expecting the police to agree? “Hell yeah, man, you’re right - hey, lets go knock over a gas station and fill our tanks right up!”

It’s not like he could claim he didn’t know they were underage:

a) They were asking strange men to buy their alcohol for them
b) They were about fifteen
c) They ordered six packs of Raspberry Smirnoff, and anybody who drinks that is an underage little girl no matter what they look like.

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