Last week I received a visit from the local police department. They came bearing a gift, a subpoena ordering me to appear in court as a witness in a DWI case. It's not that unusual for EMS to end up in court for one call or another to give testimony. This case was a bit different as this was the DWI case for the driver that almost struck me head on back in April. One of the things that I have still yet to get used to here is that you don't get much warning, 1 week is all you get.
As requested I was in court at 0800 to meet with the prosecutor and as expected nothing ran on time. The prosecutor didn't meet with me until well after 0900. We discussed what my testimony was going to be and he informed me that the defense attorneys (yes, plural) wanted to go to trial as soon as possible and that they had eleven witnesses to call.
I returned to the waiting room with my iPad to read a book and wait to be called. A couple hours later I saw the defense attorneys speaking with the prosecutor. One of the defense attorneys pointed in my direction and the prosecutor nodded. The defense attorneys stepped away and whispered to each other and then came back to the prosecutor. They shook hands and the prosecutor came over to me and told me that the defendant was going to plead guilty. He volunteered that the defense attorneys changed their minds when he told them that I was the paramedic that their client almost hit head on. I was free to go.
I had to laugh a little, I never considered myself to be that much of an imposing figure so I can only suspect that whatever they expected me to say in my testimony was going to make their defense of their client difficult. No matter, I'd take it any way it came. Probably a good thing that they were asking about me since the prosecutor had spoken to me a few minutes before to tell me that they may need to ask for a continuance since they had yet to locate the arresting officer.
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