With the aim of taking breaks from the study of law, a task I perform not whimsically, but with the aim of passing the North Carolina bar exam in July, and to preserve a scintilla of sanity, of which may be saved by select ruminations on the language that may fall out of the law, like apples falling from Newton's tree, I will attempt to spend a modest 10 minutes a day writing a narrative or poem around an excerpt from the Barbri Conviser Mini Review. Enjoy!
Except: HYPO 25. Dudley and his friend, Pyro, are sitting around drinking beer one night at Dudley's house. After polishing off their fifth six-pack, they decide that it would be fun to create a big bonfire by torching the empty barn next door. They grab some lighter fluid and matches from the garage and stumble out the door. One hour later, the duo is arrested as they stare transfixed at the towering inferno they created. Can Dudley and Pyro plead intoxication as a defense to the following crimes? (1) Conspiracy to commit arson? Yes. Conspiracy is a specific intent crime. (2) Arson? No. Arson is a malice crime.
Part I
Dudley came from a long line of Dudleys. Douglas William Harrison (born 1890), Douglas William Harrison, Jr. (1915), Douglas William Harrison, III (1940), Douglas William Harrison IV (1965), and, finally, on a frosty morning in early February 1987, Dudley was born Douglas William Harrison, V, to the parents of Douglas William Harrison IV and Mary Harrison in Hertford, North Carolina.
The Harrisons were a family of some influence in the Albemarle Sound region of northeast North Carolina. The original Harrison was born to a family who owned substantial amounts of land, cultivating tobacco and cotton. While the trade cash-crop trade was not always so strong, the family continued to exert influence as each of the subsequent Harrisons went into one of two fields; real estate development or law.
However, Dudley was decidedly on a path contrary to that of his predecessors as evidenced by his company of a balmy May 2014 evening.
"Pyro," as Patrick Daniels was known by the local community for his conviction five years earlier
along with another unsavory character
for conspiracy to commit arson, had come over for drinks. The moniker from which Pyro did not shy away.
"Brother, Duds!" said Pyro as he approached Dudley's abode. "What's say we get lit and go shoot some water fowl?"
Dudley, having little reason to say no, said, "That's not a bad idea, Pyro."
And so the two men sat outside Dudley's small living quarters on the bank of the Perquimans River, watching the fireflies twinkle in the night, listening to the squeaking of the cheap lawn chairs they sat on, and talked about things that any pairing of men drinking together will talk about: women, sports and the politics of their daily lives, which on this evening included the politics of Dudley's family.
To understand the politics of the Harrison family, an examination of Dudely's home and the situation that landed him there first must be examined; boiled down succinctly, Dudley was kicked out of his family home, the one where his parents, Doug William Harrison, IV, and Mary Harrison live, six months ago due chiefly to Dudley's disinterest in participating in the normative professional progression of the Harrison family. Dudley had the misfortune of possessing two of the worst qualities a monied person can have: he was lazy and felt entitled to the money he always had.
A positive trait, and one that has allowed him to survive unbothered by much of his parents' prodding has been his insouciance for his own condition.
And so when Dudley's parents kicked him out of the house, unemployed and generally uneducated, except for three
alcohol-filled
semesters at East Carolina University, he did not argue, or have any reaction whatsoever as he picked up his backpack and left down a long driveway, flanked on both sides by weeping willow trees, with Douglas William Harrison, IV, an attorney at law, shaking his head, and his mother, whose mother was the prettiest woman in Hertford two generations ago, weeping and burying her auburn hair into the chest of her husband.
Dudley just hung a right at the end of the driveway to the street and walked five blocks, left the street on a trail, walked for three mile along the Perquimans River where he stopped at a small shack. It was a place he had built ten years earlier, made of rotting pine trees and plywood. Inside were fishing poles and a shot gun, a couple blankets and a book, "The Sirens of Titan," by Kurt Vonnegut.
END Space – I have exceeded my writing time by about ten minutes, writing a total of 20 minutes. This story will continue at another point.
