Defendant’s weird behavior didn’t preclude his right to a fair trial
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The image many people have of a courtroom proceeding comes straight from Judge Judy and Law and Order. One is real and entertaining, the other surreal and dramatic. A lot of people draw their conclusions on the law mostly from their living room sofas.
Nielsen TV ratings aside, that’s not how it works.
Last week’s case involving a man facing charges on theft, deceptive practices and tampering with records was a stark yet salient reminder of just how important our justice system is in this country.
It was a wakeup call that illustrated how, despite all the reverence we rightly afford our court system, every so often comes along someone who doesn’t get it.
Brent Arthur Wilson didn’t get it.
Wilson was on trial before Judge Kim Christopher in the Montana Twentieth District Court in Polson. He faced three very serious felony charges, one each for theft, deceptive practices and tampering with records. He was also charged with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. A Lake County jury took an hour to convict Wilson on all four counts. He will be sentenced next month.
As prospective jurors were being questioned by Deputy County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson, they were asked a list of questions, mostly about their preconceived notions concerning legal matters and whether someone can “accept the benefits of the law but not the responsibility.”
Cole-Hodgkinson’s questions were intriguing, if for no other reason the trial itself was immersed in intrigue, mostly about how one man tried to beat the system by taking vacant properties belonging to someone else and claiming them to be his own.
In essence, that was what befell Wilson, who sat during the trial with a stoic look on his face, clad in blue jeans, a green shirt and orange thongs. He was also carrying a ready response to every instruction from the judge, specifically, “Thank you for the question but I am the beneficiary and that question should be directed to the trustee.”
To which the judge responded, “The court will not make your decisions for you, sir. There is no trustee. There is no beneficiary.”
There were times it appeared that had Wilson accepted the court’s offer - and his constitutional right - to have legal representation, he just may have been able to pull off a defense that would have at least made the jury think longer than an hour. The outcome may have been the same but he could have said he was doing a public service by taking the properties and putting them in his name, the “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure” approach.
The only problem was Wilson wasn’t snatching junk. He was snatching someone else’s legally owned property. So it still may have been a slam-dunk for the prosecution.
One prospective juror told the court he was a clinical psychologist who had dealt with people who were quite convincing. But in the end, he said, they were lying.
We’ll never know if Wilson was lying, since he never took the stand in his own defense. We do know he was not convincing, as the jury didn’t buy his prepared answer. In fact, Wilson never fully came to terms with the fact that it was he who was on trial before Judge Christopher, not the so-called “trustee” Wilson kept deferring all questions to.
Considering the brevity of the deliberations, Wilson’s deflections didn’t sway the jury.
Despite that, Wilson was within his right to defer, deflect and re-direct all the charges. Even as some may consider his courtroom demeanor weird, our system of laws and justice equally pertains to those who would take such a strange position.
Wilson failed in his own defense but he still received the same opportunity for justice other defendants expect.
In that regard, Wilson was indeed the beneficiary - of a system that he chose not to place trust in but one that still works.
