Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Bat-Wielding Maniac Attorney Jailed

Many of you will remember the story of the West Virginia lawyer who went bonkers and assaulted a client who showed up at the lawyer's home wanting to know where some embezzled guardianship monies were from an earlier report here on Bad Lawyer.  Well, we have a small picture from the Charleston Gazette and news that the water keeps getting deeper for this guy. Charleston Gazette reporter, Gary Harki's account follows in excerpt: 

"Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Duke Bloom set Joshua Robinson's bond at $25,000 or 10 percent cash at the 8:30 a.m. hearing and gave him until 4 p.m. to come up with the money.  When Robinson failed to appear, Bloom responded by signing a capias arrest warrant for Robinson Monday afternoon. At 9:30 p.m. Monday, several Charleston police cruisers lined Lee Street in the area near Robinson's home. An officer on the scene said he could not reveal why police were in the area.

Robinson sat alone at the defense table Monday morning and asked Bloom to postpone the arraignment a second time. Bloom had already postponed the hearing from Thursday to give Robinson time to find a lawyer. 'We'll do the arraignment today,' Bloom said, noting that if Robinson didn't have the money to hire a lawyer, one could be appointed for him.  Robinson, representing himself, entered a plea of not guilty to two counts of embezzlement, one count of obstructing justice and one count of malicious wounding. He was indicted first on charges of embezzlement after allegedly stealing more than $1,000 from his client, David Lee Gump II, then on the malicious wounding charge for beating him with a baseball bat when Gump came to his house to confront him about the missing money.

After police started looking into the beating, police said, Robinson lied to them about the incident, attempting to manipulate the testimony of a witness. Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Plants said that led to the indictment on obstructing justice.  When asked by the judge whether he had any prior record, Robinson said, 'Not of any significance.'"
_____________________________________
Not much you else can say about this guy other than it appears from additional information in Haraki's article that this is one drug-addled guy. 

2 comments:

  1. BL. In the months of coverage of this very important story, why are we still in the dark regarding a significant evidencial component? Was the bat wood or aluminum? And if wood, was it corked?

    ReplyDelete
  2. okiedoke--

    From the original story, I believe it was a wooden bat. I don't know about "corked," but from the second article he may have been "coked."

    BL

    ReplyDelete