Over the course of 33 years in courtrooms all over Texas, I thought I'd seen it all. But then I ventured online and learned about the vast universe of legal weirdness out there. For example, the recent jury selection in Florida of the high-profile sentencing of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz featured one of the oddest excuses for avoiding jury duty that I've ever heard. Given that the trial is likely to last several months, Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer was prepared to hear health- and family-related hardship excuses. But she was taken aback by the excuse proffered by a prospective juror identified only as "Miss Bristol," who said she would have a tough time serving because "I have my sugar daddy" and "I see him every day." Scherer said she was "not exactly sure" what the married Bristol was referring to, but she was dismissed nonetheless. Somewhere out there, judge, a sugar daddy thanks you.

As strange as that might seem, how about being prosecuted by the Easter Bunny? No, the beloved rabbit didn't really hippity-hop into the Polk County (Iowa) courthouse and start cracking down on offenders. But if you glanced at Iowa Courts Online (the statewide court systems official web-based repository of court records) you would discover that the "Easter Bunny" is representing the prosecution in several hundred Polk County criminal cases. Apparently, due to a recent realignment and transfer of cases from one specific assistant county attorney (Kailey Gray) to a different and as yet unnamed prosecutor in the county attorney's office, the IT department selected a "placeholder" name to put in the system while the transfer was pending. As a result, members of the public could log in and see that cases have been "assigned" to the Easter Bunny in what criminal division clerk supervisor Stacy Curtis called "a nightmare for me … those should have all been cleaned up so you wouldn't be able to see that." Of course, the Easter Bunny isn't the only celebrity prosecutor to show up on Iowa Courts Online: certain "test" records revealed in December 1997 one "Santa Claus" was convicted of felony burglary, while in 2014 Mickey Mouse filed a small claims case against Donald Duck. And while this was "just a test," imagine how the Easter Bunny would fare as a prosecutor? It would certainly make the Easter egg hunt more interesting if the eggs contained plea deals rather than candy …