Last May, I accepted a plea bargain under Washington's State equivalent of a nolo contendere plea for felony harassment and unlawful display of a weapon; I still maintain that my wife and I were the true victims of a vicious attack and that I only acted to drive off our attackers.
Briefly (I hope to be, anyway), one night I called the police on three drunks who were terrorizing the neighborhood by revving their motorcycle unnecessarily loudly and taking turns driving it while drunk. When the police arrived and then left, the drunks started right back up, yelling obscenities and revving the motorcycle again. I started yelling at them and about them, and, upon hearing me, they came up to our apartment, opened up the case of the fire extinguisher in our stairwell, and knocked on the door. When my wife answered the door thinking that it was the police responding to my yelling, they blasted my wife, whom they would claim in their statements to the police they were protecting, and me. I tried driving them away from our door first with a vacuum then with a frying pan, but they were persistent. So I armed myself with kitchen knives and chased them out and away from our apartment. They were still blasting me, and the police saw them nearly cave my skull in with the fire extinguisher, yet they still arrested me instead because of the kitchen knives in my hands.
For 22 months I was on the hamster wheel of continuance after continuance, four of them due to my first assigned counsel being ill with a chronic lung disease, many due to my acute anxiety disorder calling into play a competency hearing, two due one or more of the alleged victims going on vacation in China, several more due to my second counsel's putting rapists ahead of my case, and at least one after I complained that the second counsel considered the prosecutor's abuse of my anxiety disorder and the libel, readily proven by the pages of discovery (a copy of my first counsel gave to me), minor details that he couldn't worry about; I got a third counsel, and she would have needed time to catch up on my case.
All three counsels had advised me to take the felony plea, and after I survived a suicide attempt resulting from a severe anxiety attack, I acceded.
However, after my counsel had told me to not concentrate on the details of what actually happened in my statement to the court because she would present my side herself, she limited her comments to how I was an upstanding citizen who was well esteemed by my employer and people who knew me and didn't say anything about how my wife and I were both hurt by the chemicals -- one of the alleged victim even said he was amazed that I hadn't passed out because he had trouble breathing with miniscule amount that came his way -- about how one of them confessed to an investigator that they had instigated everything, about my allegations of misconduct about the prosecutor, or anything else that we discussed, aside from my lack of prior convictions on my record. Then, after the prosecutor, who had admitted to my wife during his pre-trial interview with here weeks before then that he knew that the victims were the real culprits, repeated the perjury contained in the Declaration of Probable cause, my counsel refuse to rebut the prosecutor and wouldn't allow me to address the judge to give my account of the incident after all.
I was given two years of community custody and one-year probation, which stipulates that I cannot leave the county without written permission and that I have to report regularly, like some common thug, to a corrections office, and I had my right to vote in this last historical election, among other constitutional rights, revoked, all because three assigned counsel underrepresented me.
Now, after many months of trying to take a break from thinking about this horrendous ordeal, I find myself with only five months left of the year I had to file a collateral attack without a clue on how to proceed; I have no money for an attorney and am under a mountain of debt with very limited employment opportunities, thanks in no small part to the felony on my record.
Please advise. My case number is 06-1-031514. The date of the incident was July 9, 2006. The date of the plea was May 12, 2008.
Briefly (I hope to be, anyway), one night I called the police on three drunks who were terrorizing the neighborhood by revving their motorcycle unnecessarily loudly and taking turns driving it while drunk. When the police arrived and then left, the drunks started right back up, yelling obscenities and revving the motorcycle again. I started yelling at them and about them, and, upon hearing me, they came up to our apartment, opened up the case of the fire extinguisher in our stairwell, and knocked on the door. When my wife answered the door thinking that it was the police responding to my yelling, they blasted my wife, whom they would claim in their statements to the police they were protecting, and me. I tried driving them away from our door first with a vacuum then with a frying pan, but they were persistent. So I armed myself with kitchen knives and chased them out and away from our apartment. They were still blasting me, and the police saw them nearly cave my skull in with the fire extinguisher, yet they still arrested me instead because of the kitchen knives in my hands.
For 22 months I was on the hamster wheel of continuance after continuance, four of them due to my first assigned counsel being ill with a chronic lung disease, many due to my acute anxiety disorder calling into play a competency hearing, two due one or more of the alleged victims going on vacation in China, several more due to my second counsel's putting rapists ahead of my case, and at least one after I complained that the second counsel considered the prosecutor's abuse of my anxiety disorder and the libel, readily proven by the pages of discovery (a copy of my first counsel gave to me), minor details that he couldn't worry about; I got a third counsel, and she would have needed time to catch up on my case.
All three counsels had advised me to take the felony plea, and after I survived a suicide attempt resulting from a severe anxiety attack, I acceded.
However, after my counsel had told me to not concentrate on the details of what actually happened in my statement to the court because she would present my side herself, she limited her comments to how I was an upstanding citizen who was well esteemed by my employer and people who knew me and didn't say anything about how my wife and I were both hurt by the chemicals -- one of the alleged victim even said he was amazed that I hadn't passed out because he had trouble breathing with miniscule amount that came his way -- about how one of them confessed to an investigator that they had instigated everything, about my allegations of misconduct about the prosecutor, or anything else that we discussed, aside from my lack of prior convictions on my record. Then, after the prosecutor, who had admitted to my wife during his pre-trial interview with here weeks before then that he knew that the victims were the real culprits, repeated the perjury contained in the Declaration of Probable cause, my counsel refuse to rebut the prosecutor and wouldn't allow me to address the judge to give my account of the incident after all.
I was given two years of community custody and one-year probation, which stipulates that I cannot leave the county without written permission and that I have to report regularly, like some common thug, to a corrections office, and I had my right to vote in this last historical election, among other constitutional rights, revoked, all because three assigned counsel underrepresented me.
Now, after many months of trying to take a break from thinking about this horrendous ordeal, I find myself with only five months left of the year I had to file a collateral attack without a clue on how to proceed; I have no money for an attorney and am under a mountain of debt with very limited employment opportunities, thanks in no small part to the felony on my record.
Please advise. My case number is 06-1-031514. The date of the incident was July 9, 2006. The date of the plea was May 12, 2008.
