Cecil G Woods Jr

Cecil Woods is a poor representation of legal service. I had a DUI charge in July of 2013. I was not able to make the first court date because I live out of state. He was able to get me a continuance. A judge denied the request for him to be able to enter a plea of guilty for me. I never heard b...ack from him concerning a second date for a court appearance. I was notified by my bail bondsman that I had a warrant out for failure to appear. I called Cecil's office and could never get ahold of him. Messages relayed from his secretary (daughter) was that his plan of action was to wait until the judge that denied my request to enter a plea was replaced and a new judge would be more likely to allow it. Over almost a year and a half this case lasted. My bail bondsman was able to get me on a court docket after only 10 minutes of work. Why couldn't Cecil do that? I called his office and told them that I was on the docket for Wednesday 7 January at 1 p.m. They said OK, he will be there. Wednesday morning, after driving all night from Missouri, I stopped by the office to be able to look at the police report. I had requested them to mail that to me three times and I NEVER got it. I showed up and said I wanted a copy of all the files they had for my case. ALL they had was the discovery police report. They did not ask for an ID to make sure I was even involved in the case. After a year and a half, I doubt they would remember what I looked like after only seeing me once. I could have been anyone. I was told in the office that Cecil was in Justice Court that morning and would be a few minutes late. I went to the court, arrived around 1115 a.m. I was not able to leave until my case was heard and I left at 445 p.m. Cecil NEVER showed up, never got a message to me, nothing. I called him the next day, and of course got his secretary and he was not in because he was at court. I asked why he wasn't there, and was told he got held up in court, in a different city. He had time to travel but couldn't call me??? I told the secretary that I had to represent myself, reviewed my phone calls from the last year and a half and only had one call from the office which I actually got to speak with Cecil. There was 23 outgoing calls a lot of which lasted under a minute because I had to leave a message with the secretary and have Cecil call me back. Never happened. I also asked why I did not have a copy of the audio/visual file from the police report. I asked if Cecil had in his due diligence told me to enter a plea of guilty without looking at all the evidence. The answer was "I don't know if it was viewed or not, I cannot remember." It's evidence and my lawyer is unsure if he saw it? That is unacceptable. I lastly informed her that I was requesting a refund of my retainer fee, due to the lack of/poor representation I had received. She said she would text Cecil and let him know. Less than two minutes later, she called back and said that Cecil JUST got back from court and wanted to talk to me. I didn't have a chance to even say anything. He went on a cursing rant about how he didn't do anything wrong and that the entire problem with the warrant out for my arrest was because of the bondsman and no one in his office said that he would be at court. Then he hung up on me. I was recording the phone calls. And I recorded the conversation when I was in the office the day of my court appearance. I am glad to provide it to anyone who wants to hear just how you could be treated if you hire Cecil to represent you. This should be a good case against his responsibility as a lawyer to act with professional conduct.