Stevie Nicks a wallet

That happy smilin' fella you see at right is named Stephen Patrick MacGilvray. Smilin' Steve has been recently employed as a defense attorney down North Carolina way, but now, like a mechanic whose car breaks down, he needs a defense attorney his own daggone self.

Now, let me be clear. First of all, I have many friends who are lawyers, and some of them are even judges.  So I'm not one who is dead set against the legal profession.

And I also know enough to know that SPM might be totally innocent, but it sure doesn't look like he is. 

Enough preamble. Here's the story from WRAL TV, showing the video from the Wake County Courthouse in which a guy is seen dropping his wallet after going through the security screening.  Then we see MacGilvray pick up the wallet, look around furtively in the time-honored manner all people have when they're making SURE no one is watching what they're up to, and slinking off.

We even see him getting off the elevator upstairs and looking at the wallet.  Later, according to the county sheriff, Donnie Harrison, MacGilvray went to another security station in the building and turned in the wallet.

Empty.

The man who lost it was there to pay off a court-ordered debt, and he was of course unable to do so, what with his money being in other (improper) hands.

It didn't take long for Harrison's crack detectives to crack the case and take MacGilvray into custody Tuesday morning in a courtroom, where he was representing a client.

That has to be embarrassing, when your lawyer gets arrested while he's in court representing you.

Stevie Mac was released Tuesday afternoon after posting a $3,000 bond.

Remember when lawyers
wore ties?

So here comes his attorney, one Bill Young, (pictured at right) saying, "It is more complicated. He is cooperating, and we expect there will be a resolution that is favorable for everyone involved."

Young went on to say, "As damning as that information looks, it’s only part of the story. It’s probably the smallest part of the story. There’s a much bigger part."

The rightful owner of the money was supposed to have it back two days ago, and MacGilvray, an associate with the Coolidge Law Firm in Raleigh, will be back in court in March.

David Coolidge, owner of the law firm, had no comment. I think it's telling that Mac G hired Young, from the firm of Hatch, Little & Bunn, and not one of his own coworkers.

I do have a comment.

Assuming that MacGilvray is found guilty - and that is a big assumption - he should be disbarred and not able to practice law again.  But his attorney, Young, told another station some sob story about how "we're expected to manage everyone's life trauma and problems without any effect on ourselves, and we'll have a lot more to say about that in the near future."

I guess he is trying to establish a legal precedent in which it will be all right for attorneys who are exposed to the seamy side of life through their clients' misdeeds have the right to get a little dirt on their hands as well. "If it please the court," as they say on tv law dramas, then it will be acceptable for chefs who are exposed to people eating to gobble as much food as they want to in the kitchen, and for police who see a lot of people speeding in their cars to drive 135 miles an hour on the way home from work.

Mr Young? Mr MacGilvray? Might I suggest you both admit it was wrong to steal the money from the wallet, take the punishment like men, and stop coming up with the sort of nonsense that makes people really not like lawyers?