Apocrypha (28)

Sometimes defendants, especially those with a grievance about being arrested, lose sight of their own interests. A man charged with an offence worth three months at most finally came to trial after many wasted weeks. We sentenced him to prison, but our sentence, after early release at the halfway point, came to less than he had aleady served. His barrister had earlier told our clerk that she had advised him a few weeks ago to change his plea, since he could then have been released on the spot.
But he wanted his day in court, and that's what he got, along with a few extra weeks in the slammer that cost the rest of us many thousands of pounds.