A man in Michigan who had his driver’s license taken away joined a digital court hearing about his case while driving.
Corey Harris did not show up in court on May 15 for his hearing. Instead, he called the Zoom call while he was driving, as shown in a video of the case on the YouTube page of Washtenaw County Judge Cedric Simpson.
Harris was asked by Simpson if he was driving when he came to the meeting. Simpson was pulling into a parking spot at his doctor’s office when he told her that he would be ready for the hearing in “one second.”
After a short pause during which Simpson confirmed that Harris was “stationary,” Harris’s lawyer, Natalie Pate, who was in court that day, asked for two to four weeks to go by.
Simpson seemed to look over the case in front of him and then said, “Okay, so maybe I don’t understand something.” “This is a driving while license suspended?”
Pate said that he was indeed looking into a case involving driving without a license.
“And all he did was drive?” “And he doesn’t have a permit?” Simpson told him.
Pate said, “Those are the charges, yes.” Simpson quickly answered, “No, I’m looking at his record.” He isn’t going to drive. It’s been taken away, and he’s just driving.
Pate said it again: the judge was right.
Simpson then took a long pause and looked around the courtroom with a shocked smile on his face.
“I don’t even know why he would do that,” he said, referring to Harris, who was still on the car Zoom call.
Simpson then took away Harris’ bond and told him to go to the Washtenaw County Jail by that evening.
His head hung back and he said, “Oh my God.”
At first, it wasn’t clear if Harris had done what Simpson asked and turned himself in.
A court representative said the judge doesn’t talk about issues that are still going on. Pate could not be reached right away for comment on Wednesday.
