Supreme Folly

by Rodney R. Jones, Gerald F. Uelmen

Recounts unintentionally humorous incidents from actual legal cases, including Supreme Court cases, unusual rulings, and the testimony of inept criminals

Genres: Law

205 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1990

Reviews

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humor in the courtroom. Some of them from actual events, others mere products of the fertile imagination of bored lawyers and judges.

Let me give you a sample of the former. A federal trial judge in the then Territory of New Mexico, probably an aspiring poet, presiding at Taos in an adobe stable as a temporary courtroom, nature all around him, sentenced a man convicted of murder as follows:


"Jose Manuel Xavier Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish and the air will become soft and balmy. In short, Jose Manuel Xavier Gonzales, the annual miracle of the year's awakening will come to pass...But you won't be here.


"The rivulet will run its purring course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of the imperial domain will blossom as the rose...Still, you won't be here to see.


"From every treetop some wildwoods songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happily as it pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature, Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, will be glad but you. You won't be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a nodding bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead.


"And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I further command that such officer retire quickly from your dangling corpse so that the vultures from the heavens may descend upon it until nothing shall remain but the bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, sheep-herding, murdering son-of-a-bitch!