A Miami defense lawyer\u2019s pants burst into flames Wednesday afternoon as he began his closing arguments in front of a jury\u2014in an arson case.<\/p>\n
Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client\u2019s car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire, had been fiddling in his pocket as he was about to address jurors when smoke began billowing out [of] his right pocket, witnesses told the Miami Herald<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHe then rushed out of the courtroom.\u00a0When he\u00a0returned a few minutes later\u2014extinguished and \u201cunharmed, with a singed pocket\u201d\u2014he\u00a0told the judge that the problem was\u00a0a bad\u00a0battery in an e-cigarette. If he explained why<\/em> he had an e-cigarette in his pants during closing argument, or why he had been \u201cfiddling\u201d with (I assume) that e-cigarette at the time, the\u00a0Herald<\/em> didn\u2019t report it.<\/p>\nIt does say he\u00a0\u201cinsisted it wasn\u2019t a staged defense demonstration gone wrong,\u201d suggesting, of course, that the judge wondered\u00a0whether\u00a0the sudden\u00a0outbreak of a fire during closing\u00a0argument in\u00a0an arson\u00a0<\/em>case where the defense was based on\u00a0spontaneous combustion had been\u00a0entirely coincidental.<\/p>\nWe<\/i> don\u2019t care, because it\u2019s remarkable either way: either (1) it\u00a0was\u00a0<\/em>an astounding coincidence in which a lawyer\u2019s pants actually caught on fire during an argument<\/em>,\u00a0or (2) a lawyer\u00a0planned to set something on fire\u00a0in the courtroom, on purpose<\/em>, as a demonstration in support of a\u00a0spontaneous-combustion<\/em> theory. I\u2019m not sure I even want<\/em> to know the truth.<\/p>\nBut the truth will probably come out, because police\u00a0are looking into the matter and seized \u201cseveral frayed e-cigarette batteries\u201d as evidence.\u00a0That doesn\u2019t sound good for Mr. Gutierrez, who might face a contempt-of-court charge if this turns out to be shenanigans. Such a charge seems unlikely to me unless he floated the idea of a demonstration beforehand and was told not to try it, which is possible. Personally, I\u2019d say he\u2019s suffered enough anyway. The incident didn\u2019t do his client any good\u2014deliberations went forward and the\u00a0jury convicted him of second-degree arson. So his client may not be happy with him, plus now he needs a new pair of pants, and<\/em> he\u2019s in the news. Seems like enough to me.<\/p>\nIn 2009, a Kansas lawyer\u00a0pulled the pin on a hand grenade during his closing argument<\/a>, apparently for a somewhat similar purpose. It was a dud (and so was the grenade). That was also a bad idea, but at least it didn\u2019t involve any chance that the lawyer\u2019s pants might actually catch on fire during an argument<\/em>, which is sufficiently remarkable that I felt the need\u00a0to italicize it again.<\/p>\nYou need to be careful with courtroom demonstrations anyway, because they can easily backfire. Demonstrations\u00a0that involve (a) your pants or (b) fire seem like especially bad ideas, even separately.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From Lowering the Bar. Which is all I have to say, since the headline tells you everything else you’d want to know, i.e., why you MUST read this piece. Lowering the Bar Lawyer\u2019s Pants Catch Fire During Closing Argument Mar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1175],"tags":[1309,487],"class_list":["post-32003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-facts-of-life","tag-closing-arguments","tag-problems-with-lawyers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t
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