Ann Arbor, Michigan Judge Cedric Simpson was shocked when a defendant with a suspended driving license joined a court Zoom call while driving.
In a clip of the hearing, as seen above, Simpson immediately clocked that defendant Corey Harris was behind the wheel despite recently having his license suspended. "Mr. Harris, are you driving?" Simpson asked Harris. "Actually, I’m pulling into my doctor’s office, actually, so just give me one second, I'm parking right now," he replied.
Simpson, clearly shocked by the revelation, dropped his pen and leaned on his wrist in apparent disbelief. "What are we doing?" he said, at which point Harris' public defender asked for the case to be adjourned if allowed. "Okay, so maybe I don’t understand something. This is a driving while license suspended [case], and he was just driving, and he didn’t have a license," said Simpson.
Harris didn't have anything to say about the moment but did let out a few "ums" while the court sat eerily quiet. "That is correct your honor," said the public defender. Harris had his bond revoked as a result, and was ordered to turn himself in to the local county jail later that day. "I don’t even know why he would do that," he said.
"Oh my God," Harris said in his last moments in court.
One Twitter user pointed out that Judge Simpson has presided over another awkward Zoom blunder, where a man smoked a blunt on camera and said he hadn't been taking the ordered amount of drug tests:
As for other recent bizarre Zoom court call blunders, 79-year-old former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani potentially forgot to turn off his microphone during a recent hearing and subjected everyone in court to audio of him urinating.
