Hello, goodbye!

You know what's fun? When someone ditches you during a smoke break.

You know what's more fun? When law enforcement officials are sent out looking for that person because he was supposed to go to prison.

Conroe-area police are looking for Carl Batiste, a 34-year-old Houston man who ditched his trial Tuesday before the jury found him guilty on Wednesday for possession and intent to distribute cocaine. The Courier is reporting he left his trial for a "smoke break" and never returned.

"I saw him (Batiste) down the hall and I told him he had two minutes before his trial would begin," said Dexter Patterson, Batiste's court-appointed defense attorney. "He asked me if he had time for a smoke break and I said, 'No, you don't have time for a smoke break.'"

The sentence that Batiste didn't stick around long enough to hear? Seventy-five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Still, according to The Courier, Patterson plans to appeal the case for his client. "I believe the first thing he'll say when he is imprisoned is that he had an ineffective lawyer and I'll say that I had an ineffective defendant," Patterson told the newspaper.

flickr photo: diseuse