Mistakes

In life, generally when you make a mistake, you're stuck with it. Oh, you can apologize to the wronged party; you can try to make amends; you can retrace your steps, and try to do things differently. But, a mistake is a mistake, and it's out there, and depending on how major the mistake was, it may continue to shape and mold your life for years to come.

In the law, we generally don't hold your past mistakes against you when you're on trial - in other words, if you're on trial for assault, if you hit someone before, we don't assume that because you hit someone in the past, you've hit someone in the case you stand trial on today. That's called propensity - and the law, for a change, acknowledges that propensity evidence has no place in a trial, and that frankly, it's the most damning, yet irrelevant evidence that could be put to the factfinder.

In the case I just tried, the Commonwealth was allowed to present evidence of all of our client's prior bad acts - not to show because he had engaged in aggressive behavior before, that he was aggressive on the date of the incident - oh, no, they know that would be illegal - instead, they used it to show that he had the legally guilty mental state before (i.e., he knew what he was doing was wrong 10 years ago), so he knew what he was doing was wrong in 2004.

Did I mention that my client was extremely mentally ill - and that this was conceded by both sides - the only issue in the case being was he legally insane at the time of this incident, i.e., did he know, or have some idea, what he was doing was wrong at the time he did it?

Is it a surprise to anyone that when the jury heard of his prior acts of violence, combined with the one in front of them, that they convicted?

But, that got me to thinking - what if you don't even have the capacity to understand you made a mistake? You can't apologize, you can't rectify, you can't change - the mistake is still going to shape your life, whether you know its there or not.

So, when I showed Maude to people, I held it up and said - see, the mistake is there - a few people at Rosie's peered at it - and said, "what mistake?" But, I could see it, and unlike life, I had the power to completely fix it, so that it would never gnaw at me again - so that everytime I lifted the thing up and saw the glaring missed yarn over, I would cringe.

Knitting is a beautiful thing - you can erase a mistake, and start all over again, fresh, clean, and spanking brand new.

So, I ripped all of Maude out, even at 80 increased stitches - and I'm pretty much back to where I left off. No more missed yarn over, no more section that looked like a pull in a sweater - where everything just moved a bit to the left. Just pretty Maude, mistake free - if only we could be so lucky!