136 Similarity
sentence him I would sentence him to the (uh) state prison and
certainly give him more than time served. The plea agreement
provides that the defendant may withdraw his plea uh.
Defendant: I don’t wanna withdraw my plea.
Judge: All right (let) the record show that the defendant has withdrawn
his plea and the court orders that the matter be set for trial um –
Defendant : I don’t wanna withdraw my plea! {louder than last time; basically
a shout; he shouts the rest of the time}
Judge: You don’t wanna withd/raw your plea?/
Defense lawyer: /Be quiet/ please. [2 secs.] Your
Honor, I would request that you withdraw his plea. If my client
doesn’t want to, I don’t know what I can do about it.The ensuing exchange features the defendant continuing to try to describe the
conditions under which he has been detained, stressing that he wants some imme-
diate relief from “twenty-four hour lockup... in a little cell this big.” The judge
and attorneys continue to proceed with the dialogue needed to prepare for trial,
ignoring this commentary. At one point the judge states that he is ordering a Rule
11 examination, to which the defendant replies:
Defendant: I’m not taking no Rule 11.
Judge: Who do you want?
Defense lawyer: Your Honor, Dr. Madigan.
Defendant: Fuck this shit.Eventually the defendant tried to hobble out of the courtroom (for a second time).
How do we make sense of the judge’s comment “Let the record show that the
defendant has withdrawn his plea” immediately following a turn in which the de-
fendant has quite clearly indicated that he does not want to do so? Again we see
the primacy of the demands of legally defined dialogic position; regardless of what
the defendant wants, the judge (the authoritative voice of the law in this setting) is
going to withdraw the plea. He does not hesitate to provide the correct response
for this defendant when the defendant refuses to; putting fictional speech into the
mouth of one’s interlocutor is an important part of discursive practice in some legal
settings. The student in the law school exchange is uncooperative in the process,
perhaps in part because she is taken aback by this direct a usurpation of her voice,
and perhaps because she simply can’t divine what the professor is seeking. This
creates a problem, however, which the professor eventually solves not by explain-
ing the point he wanted to make, but by speaking for the student. The prisoner
also creates a problem when he will not provide the requested locution, will not
occupy the position required by the ongoing dialogue; this is not supposed to be
quite as easily solved in a criminal law setting. However, the judge and attorneys
do override his protests; his own attorney takes his place in the dialogue (despite
the defendant’s obvious opposition to allowing his voice to be represented in this
way). In both cases, the speaking “I” forged by legal discourse for each person is
clearly not their own: it is that of a new persona, carved and crafted by the demands
of legal discourse.