Whatever happened to Serenity’s court charges? – Post 13 of the Boise Roommate Saga

Whew, it’s all done. That whole saga is behind us.

When I left off the story, we had agreed to go to trial. We really didn’t want to go to trial. But our attorney explained that the prosecution wouldn’t take the time to look into the extenuating details of the case until they had a trial date looming over their heads.

Setting a trial date signaled to the prosecution that we thought we had a good case (which we most definitely did) and they had better look into the situation. It also gave the prosecution a deadline for when they had better be prepared to argue their case. Reluctantly we told our attorney that we were willing to pay for a trial. We had a hearing, set the trial date, and waited.

Sure enough, shortly before the trial, the prosecution came back to us with a much-reduced set of demands. Now Callan was being charged with disturbance of the peace, no jail, no fines except a very small amount to cover some court costs, and 6 months of unsupervised probation. Unsupervised probation is basically nothing – Callan doesn’t have to check in with anyone, travel is unrestricted; there are no requirements or restrictions at all. It just would be a bad idea to get into any further trouble during the next 6 months. Oh, and Callan had to take a short online anger management class. So everything is completely done now except to run out the clock on the probation.

I’m so relieved we avoided a trial. We were quite confident we would win if we did go to trial, but it would have been expensive and traumatic. I’m also glad we didn’t accept the first set of conditions the prosecution threw at us – it just didn’t feel fair or reasonable given the circumstances.

Callan and Chirstina now have a new roommate: a quiet, sane, well-employed, rent-paying, polite young woman occupying the downstairs bedroom. And the beautiful front suite upstairs is now doubling as their office and the guest suite. I am in the process of unofficially “buying” that room from Callan for myself – so I always have a little spot in Boise waiting for me.

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