How to Escape Jail Time after getting 3 Felonies and 3 Misdemeanors in one Night (no Seriously)

 Ok friends well on to another adventure of smokedsteam’s drunken haydays…ready...let’s go down the rabbit hole…   

This is the tale of how I received custody of johnny law, 3 felonies and 2 misdemeanors in one night out partying and only ended up with 100 hours of community service. 

God bless America. 

So we begin our harrowing tale in sunny California about 17 years ago on a balmy 70 degree evening on Friday night…

A friend of mine owned a club in a beach town ( we will keep the specific name of this town out of the picture for obvious reasons) and he said to come down and he would give me and my friends a VIP table on the house, he knew we were big spenders, like $5,000 a night easy for drinks when we went out, so he just wanted us in there.   

I call a few friends and we head out…not having any idea that I would wake up in jail with 3 severely bruised ribs and 6 serious charges on me but this was my life back then, every night was another night when anything and everything could happen, and did. 

We enter the club and the owner greets us and walks us to literally the best table in the house, right next to the dance floor with a great/open view of the whole place. We start out ordering 2 bottles of Grey Goose, big ones. Now I would like to point out that at this point of my drinking career I didn’t drink drinks..no no..that was for babies…I would literally do straight shots until one of 4 things happened: 1. I met a girl, partied and left 2. I got in a big fight 3. Got thrown out 4. I blacked out ( and probably one of the first 3 would happen as well) - more to come on these 4 in other upcoming posts by the way.  

So the drinking commences…shot after shot, when the owner comes over and asks, and I quote, “You need anything else?”, to which I reply, and I quote, “Sure how about some coke and some girls?” to which he says, “Sure.” Within 10 minutes he comes back with a bag of coke and some super hot chicks. Now at this point most normal individuals would head to the bathroom to partake in the white devil, but not this deranged individual at the time. I proceed to dump the bag on the table, in front of the whole club and do lines, no joke. The bouncer comes over and asks, “what the fu** are you doing man?” I don’t remember my reply but he said stop of the owner will throw me out, please remember we are only about 1 hour into the entire evening please remember. 

 Ok so after some more shots and screaming at people, which I used to do also, I never talked, I screamed at them when I was drunk, a hot girl asks if I want to smoke a joint outside, I said sure and she hands it to me. Of course I proceed to light it up right then and there to everyone’s horror at the table.    

Here comes the bouncer again…he says something to the tune of, “You must be kidding me?” and proceeds to ask me to leave. I, of course, after half a bottle of Grey Goose and coke and weed in my system come back screaming and my friends are cracking up as I get escorted out the front door…. 

Now if you are still with me my friends, here is where it gets downright ugly…  

Ok so first of all –the LAST thing I remember was being thrown out the front door and cursing…then I woke up in jail, feeling like death and bruised up. The rest of this story is from my lawyer’s detective as he undug ( is that a word?) all the facts from the evening and many eye witnesses.   

So I wake up….no idea where I am…eyes open…I see I am wearing orange and look up to see bars. Didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize I was in jail for something.  I stand up and suddenly feel a super sharp pain in my ribs…and also my left arm was not working very well, I could hardly lift it. I call for a guard to get some answers…one comes over finally and I ask why I am in here. From the looks of this guy he was involved with me earlier as I was being brought in and didn’t like me at all….he proceeds to say, “Well ass****, we had to drag you in here last night after a major scene downtown and you have some serious charges on you.” Now I had only had a few DUIS so far in my life so I am not really worried, yet… 

I ask him what charges, he said, “Call a lawyer immediately kid and find a way to post $25,000 bail.”  

Ok…I thought to myself, “What the hell did I do?” as I seriously did not remember ANYTHING from the previous evening no matter how I tried in my alcohol, drug polluted brain. 

Now I was making great money at the time ( God bless the American legal system by the way or I would probably still be in prion to this day because of this) and called a top lawyer in my area from the prison phone, he said, “Give me your Corvette as collateral and we will post the bail for you.” My Corvette was my baby…a new, black, 2000 but I had no choice did I?, so I did. At this point I still had zero idea what my charges were.   

The lawyer picks me up, and takes me immediately to the hospital where I find out I have 3 severely bruised ribs and a dislocated elbow. I get fixed up and head to the lawyers office to discuss the charges…Ok so let’s go further down the rabbit hole and get to my charges, ready kids? 

3 felonies:   1. Assaulting a police officer 2. Grand theft auto 3. Cocaine possession

 3 misdemeanors 1. Drunk in public 2. Destruction of private property 3. Resisting arrest  

I simply ask him, “Is this a joke?” to which he simply replies, “No.”

 So I proceed to tell him I really don’t remember anything so he says he needs to bring in his investigator to reenact the evening and get stories from possible witnesses. Cost $10,000. His fees - $300 an hour and if it goes to trial, $50k retainer minimum. Fun times!

So his investigator begins and I go home and sit in amazement at my stupidity and how I need to stop partying, which I had said probably hundreds of times before this after events like this, but this was a biggie.I was emotionally and physically in a bad place, but it didn’t stop me from getting wasted the same night, nor many nights further…more to come on those evenings in further postings.  

I get a call from the lawyer 2 weeks later telling me to come in…so here is how the evening unfolded according to eyewitnesses and credit card receipts from that night…  

When the bouncers threw me out of the original club, none of my friends came with me, they stayed and racked up a $3,600 tab on me…nice friends right.  

I then went to a bar like 3 blocks away, partied hard, bought the entire bar drinks to the tune of $1,900 on my cc’d and got thrown out when I punched a patron in the face. 

Then onto bar #3...where I continued the evening by more of buying drinks for everyone but this time I threw a shot glass through the bars huge mirror, shattered it and got thrown out. This is charge #1 – misdemeanor – destruction of private property. Also a $1,300 bar tab here. Is everyone keeping up? Here is where it gets really good… 

4th bar – bought $800 worth of drinks, according to credit card receipts, which by the way, all of them were signed by me with some kind of a strange T, just T, but like a 1 year old wrote it, all scribbled, to this day I have no idea why I signed them like that, my first or last names do not begin with a T. My friends used to call me the monster when I partied for the monster I became, maybe that was my alternative identity’s signature. So I somehow proceed to challenge 4 guys to a fight and the bouncer throws me out… 

So…here it is 2am, I am sitting on the curb at a stop light ..probably drooling at this point, bars closed. Why I didn’t take a cab from here still mystifies me to this day. Misdemeanor #2 – drunk in public, and a car pulls up….4 guys…I get up and ask for a ride. They tell me to take a hike so I proceed to pull the driver out of his car and steal the car…Felony #1 – grand theft auto  

His friends are trying to obviously get me out of the car and at some point they say I stopped the car, in the middle of the road no less, and we all got into a big fight…ribs hurt here? Elbow? I don’t think so. I think the cops jabbed me with their nightstick when they tried to arrest me and twist my arm but one will never know. 

So during the fight the cops arrive and try and arrest me…I, being the wild, drunk, coked up, high animal that I was, do not comply with their wishes. Misdemeanor #3 – resisting arrest. 

They take me in, they find the bag of cocaine which somehow I had taken from the club. Felony #2 – cocaine possession 

At some point in them bringing in this wild animals to make the streets safer, I punch a cop in the face as he is trying to cuff me. Let’s introduce the final felony!! - #3 Assaulting a police officer.   

My lawyer tells me I am looking at like 10-14 YEARS for all of the charges. WTF? I think right? I was floored, as anyone in my position would be.   

Now this is where America is great…if you have the $ and a great lawyer, anything can be fixed. 

So how did I get out of this crazy mess with only 100 hours of community service? 

My lawyer was an ex-DA of this town….he talked to the DA, told him I blacked out, only had 2 DUIS in my past, was an outstanding citizen of the town, a business owner, very remorseful, had a 40 foot boat in their harbor, contributed to the community, showed her some letters from some big wigs around town vouching for me, etc.….in other words he does what he is paid to do and she agreed to drop the assault on the police charge..there goes felony #1.    

Then the guys in the car agreed to drop the grand theft auto after a handsome payoff through my lawyer, felony #2 – gone.   

#3 felony – cocaine possession. There was a law at the time where it is your first offense that you can do a 18 month class, 2 times a week for 2 hours each class and the charge is dropped entirely. I did it. I had no car or license ( because they took it because of the car thing and this whole thing…guess they didn’t want an animal like me driving) and I rode my bike 7 miles each way to the class for 18 fuc*** months, it was a nightmare. People kept telling me I was a coke addict and I was an alcoholic, but no one believed me. I did meet some hot chicks there and partied with them, oh yes, I didn’t stop partying yet…not for 8 more years of harrowing tales my friends. Felony #3 – gone.   

So that leaves us the 3 misdemeanors, I got 50 hours for the drunk in public, I got 50 hours and time served on the resisting arrest and bought the bar a new mirror and apoliged profusely and they dropped the destruction of private property. I also had to pay off the owner of the place a large sum also. Misdemeanor #2 – gone.   

Then I served my 100 hours at a soup kitchen and learned how homeless people eat – they get all the thrown out sh** from the supermarkets and it is cooked into a “stew” or sorts, moldy cake, old milk, etc. I even ate it somedays, not half bad. I served my time under some 400 pound female cook who was literally a Nazi - here I was the owner of a multi-million dollar company with 40+ employees and she is ordering me around like a beaten dog, quite humbling, If I barked back she would have reported me to my probation officer, which would have reopened the case so I kept my mouth shut. Misdemeanor #1 and #3 - gone. 

So, to end my reminiscence from the past.. ladies and gentleman, total cost to stay out of jail - over $50,000 but I escaped any real prison time.  

 To this very day, I have no idea how I pulled that off, but I did. I count my blessings for sure daily.  

Did I stop partying, hell no, I thought I was made of steel now…it only made things worse…but that is another tale for another time…   

Well thanks again for reading and see you next time for another electrifying tale from SmokedSteem-   

PS – please try and remember I am now like an 80 year old Japanese gardener now at 48, who reads and drinks tea, those days are over and when I am done with my tales I will begin on how I turned my life around and live a healthy, happy existence, which is a bunch of quite interesting tales on their own…