I’ve seen some strange things in the courtroom, and I’ve occasionally listened to an adversary’s closing argument and thought how appropriate it would be for him to be struck by lightning or for his pants to catch on fire. But I never thought it would actually happen. Too bad I wasn’t in a courtroom in Miami in March watching 28-year-old lawyer Stephen Gutierrez make his closing argument when his pants suddenly caught fire.
Ironically, Gutierrez was defending a client, Claudy Charles, in an arson case (Charles was accused of intentionally torching his car), and he had earlier tried to argue spontaneous combustion as a defense. Early in his closing, Gutierrez noticed that his pocket felt hot (he had several small e-cigarette batteries in his pocket at the time), and with the heat intensifying he ran from the courtroom straight to the men’s room. After tossing the battery in water, Gutierrez returned to the courtroom with singed pants but unharmed. The lawyer, a 2015 graduate of Florida International University Law School, insists that it wasn’t a courtroom demonstration or a stunt gone awry. “This was not staged,” he said. “No one thinks that a battery left in their pocket is somehow going to explode.”
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