I hope this is okay here, since I'm not a legal professional- but one of my family members is mentally unwell, and when their episodes are particularly bad, they have violent tantrums that include using weapons, and calling the police to flip the script. For most of my life this didn't result in any legal issues (for me), responding officers can see the physical evidence of who is harming who quite clearly. But one day I got an officer who wasn't that bright (I don't know if it's relevant but he shared his anti-vax views with me on the way to the station). But when my trial date came, I was told I had an attorney, so no option to ask for a court appointed one. This attorney asked for an extension "to speak with my client", which makes sense because I never even heard of this guy before. But then I still don't hear from him, later I find out he never even tried to reach out to me. The second time in court he lists a few of my assaulting relative's mental illnesses (as being mine) and saying that my case was a clear mental health diversion, or something like that. I assume he was using modern speak for an insanity plea. For the next few months I'm trying to contact him to no avail, and one of those times I'm in the same house as the relative in question and shortly after my call is dodged, they received a call.

Long story short, it turned out that after spinning a tail to the police, that relative paid a lot of money to hire an attorney and told him to not speak with me (maybe they convinced him my disabilities make me incapable of holding a conversation, grasping with reality, Etc. I wasn't there for that) but whatever it was he bought it. For months I was being tried by two prosecutors, getting their stories from the exact same person, and agreeing to hold court with each other while I wait outside. To this day my lawyer* has never even heard what the events that actually transpired were. I was able to catch him after court and talk to him a little, but he always kept the conversation short and very condescending, until the day he agrees to a plea bargain with the prosecutor.

I was literally innocent, and he told me more than once, in no uncertain terms, that if I didn't take the plea deal I definitely would be going back to jail. So I signed while crying, he leaves, and I search his name on Google for somewhere I can at least voice what happened, which led me to his law firm's Yelp page. I gave it a one-star review and describe the events, and minutes later I get a call from a guy whose name matches the name of the law firm, he says he's in the middle of something, but he really really wants to talk to me as soon as possible. We schedule and have a long sit-down where he has trouble believing some of the crazier parts, but the parts that I thought would be huge (like the relative having falsely reported their domestic violence to police in the past) apparently weren't that helpful because they happened in a different state several years prior. And the things I thought were small at the time (like how the lawyer never asked me what happened, and dodging my calls to go through someone else), were actually huge according to Name of Firm because no matter who pays the attorney fees, I'm the defendant so I'm the client.

From then on, it felt like one of the attorneys wasn't a prosecutor, and today my record's clean. Although it's not all bad, as a hopeful writer I'm happy to have as good of an outline for a novel as I do, obviously I changed some details like making the crime in question against a third party, and that crime being murder (but still right in front of the protagonist). Because if I had been accused of murder I might not have been free enough by the plea deal part to make a Yelp review on my phone, and I might have gone through the entire legal process without even being allowed to speak to any of the attorneys or give my side. Whereas they were both getting their stories from the actual offender.