Posted on 04/03/2008 2:47:03 PM PDT by jdm
Apologies for the vanity, but I've been trying to find some more information on being charged with menacing, AFTER pleading guilty to disorderly conduct for the same incident.
Timeline:
1) Person A gently brushes Person B's car; they both exit their vehicles, examine for damage, and find little to none, and an officer arrives at the scene.
2) Person B starts getting lippy, cursing at Person A and is charged with disorderly conduct, pays $125 fine.
3) Everything appears to be done - case-closed.
4) Three-four weeks pass and Person A comes back and files a menancing charge for the same incident, against Person B.
5) Person B has two priors (the disorderly conduct I mentioned from the same date, XXX XX, 2008, as well as a traffic control device violation from exactly four years earlier).
6) Person B apparently has a good lawyer, but if found guilty what ramifications are most likely (this is in Ohio), i.e., license revoked, etc.?
7) Unfortunately, I have no idea what Person B said which brought the disorderly conduct/menacing charges, which is probably incredibly important here.
8) Person B claims they didn't say anything **that** bad (LOL), but since an officer was present, it is not a he-said-she-said case between Person A and Person B, right?
Most importantly...
9) Does waiting three-four weeks to file the menacing charge AFTER the disorderly conduct was settled hurt Person A's credibility?
Menacing? Civil case? Witnesses?
IMHO, no, three to four weeks doesn't sound all that unreasonable considering there may be time to consult lawyers, etc.
6) Person B apparently has a good lawyer,
what does the lawyer say ?
Don’t know about witnesses other than the officer, but this is listed under traffic/criminal, not civil, in the case lookup.
The lawyer says not to worry, that the person will probably get a larger fine this time, but likely no jail time. But a simple search of the cases in this municipality shows very few menacing types since they started the database. That’s what worries me.
Thanks. I was wondering about that too. The person charged here said "that woman must have gotten this idea to pursue a menacing charge against me after talking with people." And I thought, yeah, duh, those people are called lawyers.
Person B needs to be smacked about the head and shoulders for several minutes.
LOL, but I agree with you totally.
I went in, called the police, told them what had happened. Thug took off before the cop came to take a report. A neighbor from across the steet saw everything that had happened but didn't hear what was said. Between my neighbor and I the cop had a clear picture of what was going on. Cop advised me "to stay inside for a few weeks, give the guy a chance to cool down." When I asked her if he could be charged with menacing, she laughed at me. "Just stay out of his way." Fortunately, I know a couple of detectives from our Tri-County drug squad, and the house was raided and boarded two weeks later.
Long story short (!): There is no such crime as menacing, at least not in Lansing.
Thanks very much for your post!
Boston gangster Whitey Bulger had a way of dealing with guys like that. One day some old lady from the neighborhood came into his hangout, and complained to him about this house that served as a drug den. It wasnt unusual for people like her, and little kids on the block to find drug paraphernalia littering the outside of the house. Bulger went right over to the house, found the guy who ran the place, stuck a gun into the guys mouth and told him that he had a couple of days to leave the neghborhood. The drug dealer didnt stick around that long. He left that very day. (Though Bulger was involved in the drug trade himself, and probably got rid of competition)
The policewoman wasn’t too happy with me. She told me I should have called the cops in the first place and shouldn’t have picked a fight with the guy. I could not make her understand (and I tried!)—I didn’t pick a fight with Thug. I didn’t even realize that he was outside. I went out of the house to tell the clients (three teenage white kids in Daddy’s brand new Pontiac) to move along, they had their pot, go roll it up someplace else. Even though it’s a shared driveway, it’s easy to tell where to park your car, depending on which house you’re visiting, but these idiots parked right outside of my dining room window. When I told them to leave, I scared the cr@p out of them, even though I was surprisingly polite about it. They said “Sorry ma’am” and took off in a real hurry. I didn’t say a single word to Thug. The policewoman’s attitude was, basically, MYOB and this won’t happen again. Dumb broad.
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