When involved with criminal defense cases, you have to be smart. If you were working with a domestic violence defense lawyer, for example, you’d need to gather as much evidence and information as possible to assess the case and find out what strategies would work to get the judge to decide in your favor.
However, not everyone is intelligent. Even though there are about 759,800 lawyers currently practicing in the United States — many of whom are criminal defense lawyers — some people choose to handle their criminal defense cases themselves, and in turn, completely make fools out of themselves. And other legal defenses are incredibly strange even with an experienced lawyer on board.
Here are a few such strange criminal defenses that boggle the mind.
Woman Claims Horse Was Drunk, Not Her.
Tracy Nadine Ellenburg once stole a horse when drunk. When police confronted her, she swore she was sober, and went so far as to blame the horse for her erratic riding to defend herself. She claimed that the horse was drunk, not her. It didn’t fly, and the police cited her for disorderly conduct.
Woman Employs “The Matrix Defense” Successfully.
Tonda Lynn Ansley of Hamilton, Ohio shot her landlady in the head back in July of 2002, which was okay to her, because as she told police: “They commit a lot of crime in The Matrix.” Her lawyer for criminal defense then used this to build her an insanity case — one of the most common types of criminal defense cases — that claimed Ansley believed her landlady was attempting to brainwash her. It worked and she was found not guilty. There’s been no word on whether or not any other criminal defense attorneys have tried to use “The Matrix Defense,” and hopefully there won’t be any other similar criminal defense cases in the future.
My Evil Twin Did It.
Back in 2003, authorities busted Mr. Raj, a 27-year-old, Malaysian drug trafficker, when he was doing his illegal work. The only trouble was that Mr. Raj had an identical twin, and pointed the finger at his brother, who in return pointed the finger back at him. Authorities ultimately let them go because they couldn’t figure out which one was which.
Some criminal defense cases are pretty smart, and then others are a little less intelligent, if not downright strange. If you know of any other weird criminal defense cases, be sure to leave them in the comments.