Because Nothing Says Class Like a Plaid Cadillac

After I left the firm, I worked for a long while at the court. My job was to read the parties' papers, review the record, do legal research, and draft decisions for the judges.

One of the cases I worked on involved a criminal defendant who had been arrested and charged with various crimes related to the fact that he was a pimp. Not only was he a pimp, but he was pimping 14 year old girls. So the crimes he was charged with included things like "sexual exploitation of a minor" and "child abuse" and "kidnapping." He was a pretty awful guy.

His defense? The usual SODDI defense (pronounced like "soddy" and stands for "Some Other Dude Did It"), pled by criminals who have no other defense.

One of his "ho's," a young teen, testified that he was her pimp. She testified that he convinced her to try whoring as a way to make some money, then kept her locked in an apartment (literally locked in, with a padlock on the outside of the door) and would not let her leave except when he wanted her to work. Then, he would drive her to Van Buren street and drop her off. He had threatened that if she tried to leave, he would kill her father. He gave her rides, she said, in his plaid Cadillac.

What? I thought.

I re-read it. Yes, I read it correctly. His plaid Cadillac.

Wonder what that looks like? I thought.

Well, I was in luck. Almost immediately after that, the prosecutor had the witness identify a photo of the defendant with his plaid Cadillac and had it admitted into evidence as Exhibit A. So of course I immediately went to the box containing all the trial records and rummaged around until I found Exhibit A.

Sure enough, Exhibit A was a photo* of a huge, late 1980's model blue, beige, and cream colored plaid Cadillac, with defendant standing in front of it wearing a blue pimp hat (yes, with a feather), a zoot suit, lots of bling, and blue suede shoes, and throwing gang signs and scowling (to look "tough," I suppose).

No lie. The outfit literally screamed "I am a pimp." (I'm not sure exactly what the car was trying to say....).

So much for his SODDI defense. I'm quite sure there is no other plaid Cadillac in all of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Although apparently last year, the U.S. Marshals seized this equally hideous pink and purple plaid limo. There's no photo of a pimp in this one, though, so I'm not all that impressed!

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* I sure wish I had kept a color copy of that photo. You guys would have enjoyed it!