It’s been fifty-four days since I last posted about my case, and a lot has happened since then. Phone calls have been made. Conversations had. Lies made. Emails exchanged. Hope had. Hope lost. Voices raised. Tears shed. Shit shat. But one thing has remained the same: I’m still a goddamn felon.
Let me walk you through how we got here. Which is nowhere.
Let’s pick up where we left off, which was with my previous lawyer informing me on October 2nd via text that he had quit his job with the law firm I’ve been employing. Not to be confused with my first lawyer who informed me on August 26th that he had quit his job with the law firm I’ve been employing. Different lawyers. Both quitters.
In neither instance did the firm find this information important enough to relay to me themselves, so in the days following the news of my lawyer’s departure I was forced to reach out to them to figure out how to proceed. Between the dates of October 2nd and October 20th I called my law firm eight times. They didn’t reach out to me once.
I’m willing to step back and admit that, under normal circumstances, calling someone eight times in the span of 18 days could read as a bit desperate. Especially when they never call you back. It’s like, take a hint, I get it. But when you have a felony on your record for a crime you didn’t commit in a town you’ve never been to and are paying someone $250/hour to resolve it, I think knowing how the people you’re paying $250/hour are spending their time is a reasonable request.
Unfortunately, I still don’t have an answer to that question. Every time I called I was greeted by the receptionist (or legal assistant, or paralegal, or whatever) who politely told me, without fail, that my lawyer was unavailable. Despite leaving several voicemails pleading her to call me back, I’ve still never heard the sound of my lawyer’s voice as of me writing this.
During one of the eight calls (they all blend together) the receptionist (or legal assistant, or paralegal, or whatever) could sense my mounting frustration when she once again told me my lawyer wasn’t available. In either an attempt to make me feel better or an attempt to break me she said “Hey, look at the bright side: at least you don’t have a warrant out for your arrest anymore. Things could always be worse.”
Things could always be worse. What an absolutely brilliant thought. And what an even more brilliant application of that thought. Covering up the horrendous job you’re doing by observing that hey, things could always be worse. I might have to start using that in my everyday life whenever I shit the bed on someone else’s behalf. “Sorry the client presentation was a trainwreck and we lost the business, but hey…it could always be worse.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I decided it was best for my sanity to stop calling for a while. All it was doing was causing me to yell at my dashboard on the drive home from work everyday, and my dashboard did nothing to deserve the verbal abuse.
I ignored the shit storm hanging over my head the best I could until I received a letter from my lawyer’s office. The letter informed me that my court date had been pushed back from October 25th to November 7th. Why? I have no idea, because that’s all the letter said. And when I called the law firm to ask why it got pushed back, you can guess what happened.
NOTE:
Because of how I write these and when I post them there’s always a ‘dead’ gap of time between where I leave the story and when the post goes up. For example, my last post went up on October 24th, but the story left off with my second lawyer quitting on October 2nd. Everything you just read is what happened in the weeks in-between. Which, as you can see, was pretty much nothing.
Back to the misery.
A couple hours after my last post went live on October 24th I received a phone call from my Dad. Never a good sign. The last time my Dad called me was to tell me they were putting down my childhood dog, so I was sure someone must have died.
It wasn’t much better. He told me he’s concerned that I’m openly discussing an ongoing case over the internet and warned that anything I say can and will be held against me. To prove his already valid point, he told me a story about a friend of his who discussed his case online which ended up opening a whole new can of worms, and heeded that sarcasm doesn’t always translate over text.
I was embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or whatever it is you feel when you’re very insecure about a thing and hope no one says anything about the thing but then someone comes along and confirms that you were right to have felt very insecure about that thing. And that person is your own Dad, so you feel even 100x stupider.
I respect my Dad’s opinion above any other. While I would argue I’ve done nothing but further illustrate my innocence with these stupid little posts, I knew he was (and still is) probably right. As I’ve been writing these, in the back of my head I’ve worried that it’s probably ill-advised. Hearing him confirm it made me feel like a stupid little kid. I wished he had called to tell me someone was dead.
He ended our call by requesting I refrain from talking about my case any further until it’s all officially said and done. I agreed that was probably for the best.
Fifty-four days is a pretty good run, though.
Later that same night my girlfriend, Lauren, got a call from her cousin, Ethan. He told us that his girlfriend’s parents happen to live just outside Neosho (y tho?!?!) and that her step-dad is friends with the District Attorney of the county. The DA isn’t the prosecuting attorney on my case, but rather her boss. Or boss’s boss. I think. I don’t really know.
Anyway.
My girlfriend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s mom had read my posts and agreed my situation is absurd. She suggested I share them with her husband so he could share them with his friend, the District Attorney. When Ethan asked if that would be okay, I was of two minds:
1) Do I really want to share an article where I describe Neosho as “if a $5 hooker were a town” with the man who has the power to make this shitty situation even shittier for me?
2) Fuck it.
I gave him the green light.
About a week went by before we got a text back from Ethan on October 30th. He said that his girlfriend’s step dad had read my posts and also agreed that the whole thing is insane. He had called the DA and was waiting to hear back. The following week on November 8th, we got another text from Ethan saying to give him a call.
Ethan told us that the DA had read my posts and requested that I send him some photos of myself 😏. He was going to look into the bank’s security footage and wanted to be able to confirm if it was me who cashed the check or not. If he could confirm without a doubt that the man in the footage wasn’t me (spoiler: it’s not), he said he could probably get this dismissed without me having to make another appearance. I hung up, collected some photos of myself, and sent them his way.
I was allowing myself to feel slightly optimistic. After sending the email I once again went about my life as usual while trying to ignore the shit storm hanging over my head…until November 23rd when I opened my mailbox and saw that I had another letter from my lawyer’s office.
I knew what it was going to say before I opened it, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating when I read that my case had been pushed back again, this time to January 21, 2019. And again, there was no explanation why.
I was unapproachable after reading that letter. My case, which should have never existed to begin with, that was originally supposed to be resolved on September 19, that got pushed back to October 31, then pushed back to November 7, was now being dragged all the way into next year. And God forbid my lawyer utilize 19th century technology and give me a phone call to explain what was going on.
I have no reason to believe this will actually be resolved on January 21st. I’m sure in the next couple weeks leading up to the holidays, probably on Christmas morning because fuck any joy that might still be rattling inside my heart, I’ll receive another letter saying my court date’s been pushed back to January 2020. And then in January 2020 I’ll probably get another letter that will skip right to the point and simply read “Go fuck yourself.”
The following week on November 27th, after I had mentally accepted that this case is now permanently part of my identity, I got an email from a coworker titled “felon stuff.” I had known ahead of receiving the email that my coworker’s husband was a lawyer because I had been encouraged by some other coworkers of mine to reach out to him for help. I’m not sure why I hadn’t. Maybe I figured if I kept pretending everything was alright that it would be. Maybe I was worried the more lawyers that got involved, the more complicated the matter would become. Or maybe I’m just stubborn and hate asking other people for help. Regardless, she made the decision easy for me by reaching out with a massive favor.
She explained that her husband had read about my case and was happy to lend his legal perspective. She said he was a civil lawyer, not a criminal lawyer, but that he could still look help me out as much as he could. At the bottom of her email she went ahead and included the email she had received from her husband after he read my posts about my case.
He won me over with his opening line: “My thought is that it’s absolute bullshit.” That sentence was, and still is, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. Seven words in and I was already smashing the subscribe button on whatever he had to say next. I was ready to run through a brick wall for this guy.
He went on to say that I might have a claim for “malicious prosecution,” something I didn’t understand at the time but made me say outloud to myself “fuck yeah I do.” He also said that he thought this was a gross abuse of power (seriously, someone find me a brick wall to run through) and ended it by asking a couple questions that even I was still hazy on, such as: Who exactly do the prosecutors think I am? Do they think Brian Bockelman is my alias or the other way around? Regardless, why can’t this all be solved by providing a birth certificate proving I’m Brian Bockelman? GREAT QUESTIONS.
For the sake of this writing let’s refer to my coworker’s husband as “Nick,” which may or may not be his real name. It might be, but it might not be.
But it might be.
But it might not be.
But it might be.
I got on the phone with Nick the next day to talk about everything that’s been going on, but not before receiving a phone call from…wait….what’s this…could it be…my lawyer’s office?! I had to take my phone to the Apple store to make sure it was working correctly because no way was my lawyer actually calling ME. And she wasn’t.
I answered my phone and the receptionist (or legal assistant, or paralegal, or whatever) informed me that my court date that was scheduled for the next day (November 29th) against the city of Neosho was still moving forward as planned.
You may be a little confused, as was I, because I had just received a letter telling me that my court date had been moved to January. As it turns out, but they failed to specify in the letter (because why would they?), is that my court date against Newton County got pushed back to January, but my court date against the city of Neosho was still scheduled for November 29th. This was made even more confusing by the fact that during one of those eight phone calls I made back in October they had told me the two cases were being consolidated into one.
But hey, at least they gave me plenty of notice.
Luckily, they told me it wasn’t necessary for me to appear. They had reason to believe everything would go smoothly and that the city prosecutor would dismiss the case. And I had reason to believe they were full of shit, but any reason to not go to Neosho was good enough for me.
Regardless of how the city case would go, there was still the case against the county looming so I was eager to pick up the phone when Nick gave me a call. I told him the spark notes version of my story and he began digging into my case with some sort of online lawyer database of some sort or something.
As he was doing this, I asked him about the “malicious prosecution” he had mentioned in his email. He explained that if I could somehow prove that the prosecutors were dragging my case out intentionally or were out to get me somehow, that I could potentially file a lawsuit. He admitted it would be incredibly difficult to prove, and more than likely what we’re dealing with is a case of gross incompetence. And unfortunately you can’t sue someone for sucking at their job.
Within minutes, Nick was able to pull up my case. He told me what I already knew: that a man named Steven Hurley forged a check for $38 using my identity, claiming that Brian Bockelman is actually his legal name. When he failed to appear at his court date in December of that same year, a warrant was issued for “my” arrest.
Nick looked up Steven Hurley’s record and, you’re going to want to sit down for this bit of shocking information, he’s far from an angel. Within the last year alone Steven Hurley has been arrested multiple times for a smörgåsbord of crimes including burglary, theft, driving without a license and breaking parole.
Huh. Strange. I wonder who’s more likely to have forged that check. The guy who’s been in and out of the Newton County legal system the past few years who they probably know by name, or the guy who’s been employed in Kansas City the past four years, has bank statements proving he had dinner in Kansas City the night of the crime, and has never heard of, let alone been to, Neosho before. It’s a tough one, it really is. I see why this is taking so long. Credit to everyone involved for working so hard to figure this out. Tell your friends and families I’m sorry for keeping you at the office so late.
Not only had Steven Hurley been convicted of all of those crimes, but he’s plead guilty to every one of them. Each time he’s gotten in front of a judge he’s pretty much just shrugged and admitted he’s a piece of shit. He’s also reportedly used an alias with the police in the past and they even have handwriting samples of his on file. Reminder: I included a bunch of my handwriting samples in the packet of evidence I gave the judge back in September. The packet of evidence that the judge apparently didn’t think was important enough to upload to my official case record.
Nick was also able to pull some of Mr. Hurley’s physical details. He’s about 5’10”, 210 pounds and has neck and chest tattoos. I’m 6’3”, 190 pounds and am so basic that the idea of me having a neck tattoo would cause you physical harm from laughing so hard. Man, would it be convenient if there was security footage out there somewhere that shows what the guy who did this looks like. If only.
The best part came when Nick looked up Steven Hurley’s driver’s license number: B9XXXXXXX5*. And the number he used when he forged the check? The one the bank teller wrote as proof of identity? B9XXXXXXX3. That’s my driver’s license number.
*Obviously the number doesn’t have a bunch of X’s in it. I’m sensitive about giving out any personal information these days. I think you understand.
So one of three things could have happened:
The bank teller made a human error and wrote down the wrong number.
The bank teller wrote down a 5, but their handwriting is so bad it looks like a 3. (Nick and I each tested this ourselves and a surprising amount of 5’s could be mistaken for a 3).
The guy with a neck tattoo and a history of committing petty crimes swapped the last digit of his license number to get away with forging a check, and I’m the poor schmuck whose number he happened to give.
Nick and I agreed that more than likely it was the latter. It stands to reason that Steven Hurley would have trouble getting a valid license given his track record, so to cash the check he simply changed the last number on his invalid license.
Before hanging up, Nick said he’d try to reach out to my lawyer on my behalf since I had yet to hear from her directly. He said he would give her the information we had uncovered (in just 30 minutes, mind you) in case any of it was news to them.
Just a few hours after we hung up, I got a call back from Nick. He said he had spoken to my lawyer (she’s real!) and that she was initially a little hostile. Apparently she thought I had hired Nick to replace her (could she even blame me if I had?) so had her guard up. When he explained that he was a civil, not criminal, lawyer and that he was just reaching out as a friend, she loosened up.
Nick told her about the similar driver’s license numbers, Steven Hurley’s criminal history, and his physical appearance. Apparently she sounded surprised when he told her all this and it was in fact news to her. So again, I’m not sure what I’m paying $250/hour for. Then when Nick mentioned how I told him that I still hadn’t heard from her yet, she refuted it and claimed that she had spoken with me that very morning.
This is false. Her office called me. Not her. If my lawyer happens to be reading this, I would love to speak with you directly. Please. I’m all but begging. I will take your call at any hour of any day. I’d love to talk about what you’ve been doing to his point, where we stand, and what we do from here. For what it’s worth, I don’t doubt that you’ve been doing everything in your power to help me (okay, maybe a little), nut I’d love to know what that is. I’m tired of being left in the dark and would love some basic information. I want to know why something so simple is taking so long. I want to know why my court date keeps getting pushed back. I want to know why you haven’t demanded the security footage be pulled. I want to know the case that the prosecution supposedly has against me. I want to know why the evidence I gave to the judge was dismissed. I just want to know that you give a shit.
Two days later on November 30, the day after my court date against the city, I got another call from my lawyer’s office. They confirmed that the prosecutor for the city had dismissed the case. Technically the charges don’t get dropped for another 180 days in case new information comes to light and they can reopen it, but for all intents and purposes it’s done.
The law firm concluded the call by billing me for their work on the city case. Which they had apparently been charging me for separately from my case against the county. Even though they initially told me they were consolidating the two cases into one since I was being wrongfully charged for the same crime twice. The same crime using the exact same defense and evidence. Evidence which I’ve collected for them.
Got it. Sure. Take my money. You’ve earned it.
Now all that remains is my case against Newton County, which I’ve been told could prove to be tricky. Apparently the county prosecutor, the one I spoke with on the phone the day I learned I wrongfully have a felony on my record, wants to drag this out. It blows my mind that she’s devoting so much energy to something she’s ultimately going to lose. Maybe she’s still offended because she claims I swore at her on the phone the day we spoke.
I never swore to her on the phone but to be clear, if she does happen to stumble upon this, go fuck yourself. Absolutely. Positively. Fuck. Your. Self. I don’t know who hurt you in your past that made you such an awful person, but I’m sure you deserved it.
And if this offends you, I’m pretty sure the first amendment has me covered. Here’s a Wikipedia link in case you’re unfamiliar.Now you’re one step closer to being a competent lawyer. Congratulations.
That’s where we stand. It’s now December 17th, and I still haven’t heard from my lawyer, and I haven’t heard from her office since they billed me on November 30th. I supposedly have a court date on January 21st against the county, but I’m sure it’ll get moved back again for undisclosed reasons.
A very sincere thank you to everyone who’s reached out to offer help. It means a lot. Seriously, I’ve been blown away by the amount of people who have lent a helping hand. I originally started writing about this because I found it therapeutic and it helps me sort through what’s been happening. I never thought it would turn out to be my best shot at getting this resolved.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.