Legal lessons
Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:06 am
I bet there's another lesson that the cops would have liked to have given her...A drunken, belligerent law student who lectured police on the law after being kicked out of a Wollongong hotel has lost her bid to have charges against her dismissed.
"F... off, pig, I'm a lawyer. I got 94 in my UAI and I'm sorry you are so inferior and don't know the law," Morgan Elderfield allegedly told police in the lead-up to her arrest on November 13 last year.
However, the 22-year-old's apparent legal expertise was little help to her yesterday, when she was convicted of a number of charges relating to her booze-fuelled outburst.
Advertisement: Story continues below Wollongong Local Court heard earlier that Elderfield had gone out with friends to the North Wollongong Hotel and consumed a number of drinks before being asked to leave by security.
Instead of walking out the front as directed, the Wollongong woman kicked up a fuss, throwing a beer over a security guard before sitting on the ground and refusing to leave.
Eventually two guards had to grab Elderfield by the wrists and pull her out, as she struggled against them.
When they finally had her out the front she continued being aggressive and argumentative, this time directing the verbal onslaught at police.
Police gave her numerous warnings to go home but she was finally arrested after she stuck up her finger and allegedly abused an officer before stumbling stomach-first into a taxi.
During the arrest she thrashed and screamed at police, scratching one of them on the neck, drawing blood.
Elderfield had strongly denied the allegations, telling the court she left the premises peacefully and was planning to go home when security guards and police acted unreasonably.
Giving evidence in court, her friends alleged both the guards and police had been unnecessarily forceful when dealing with Elderfield.
The magistrate, Ian Guy, found there was no substance to her claims, describing several parts of her evidence as "unconvincing in the extreme".
"It is improbable in the absolute extreme that the security guards have decided for absolutely no reason to jostle and throw a woman who was doing precisely what they had asked her to do," he said.
Mr Guy said police, similarly, had no reason to arrest her if she was doing as she said and complying with their instructions.
He told Elderfield being drunk was no excuse for her behaviour.
Mr Guy found Elderfield guilty of six charges, including assaulting police, behaving in an offensive manner in public and failing to leave licensed premises.
She was subsequently fined a total of $2000 and placed on four 12-month good behaviour bonds.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/f64-off-pig-i ... 19583.html
