an interesting uh point about sentencing by the judge alone doing away with a jury
i don't know if i'd be willing to accept the um abuses that would come along with that and that the it would be relatively easy to get some bad decisions or to even get to the judge from a standpoint of bribery but
yeah
or even if he just through years of being on the bench just becomes uh out of touch with uh the population and he only sees the bad side of life so much that he just ends up making bad decisions
however the complexity of some of these uh cases it's just they spend more time educating the jury up to the point where they can make a decision
um-hum
then it would take if the judge just made the decision especially when it is purely um noncriminal uh litigation type uh whatever you want to call it the term
civil uh suits as it were or even some corporate uh law
when there's not any individual involved and some of those are solved without a a jury but uh some some do choose to go before it
um-hum yeah
um what do you think about the aspect of unanimous jury when they do have a jury must all six or twelve uh agree before the the topic be final or or the verdict be final
yeah that that is uh a tough situation i mean because
you know i mean some sometimes i feel like maybe some of them are just kind of pressured or not really into you know and
and you know uh people go home and the jury duty is always like you know kind of whining about it all
seems like if people were were really you know into the subject and uh
i don't know i mean i guess if there if it was more people it would be better if it was just like you know the majority
but i guess the smaller number of that if it was like six or twelve which there usually are so
um and i guess unanimous
uh
yeah i kind of agree with that
okay if it the only thing that i was thinking about as far as having if you had one holdout out of say twelve
yeah
then is it reasonable or is it or could you assume that there must be some reason for that person to be holding out and obviously the other eleven or five cannot convince this person
uh-huh
that uh they should vote it one way or the other so maybe it is worth having that extra little
or going to the the
very
farthest uh safeguard that can be done and uh
yeah
trying not to get a wrong decision
yeah i can see that
the uh system as it stands now i think if if the juries were done away with the judge could render a decision much quicker
uh and you'd you'd feed more people through the courts as it were don't know where we'd put them once we got them through your courts but uh
yeah
i think the rate of processing is just about uh reached the rate of housing anyway so keep the keep the normal as it is can't upset the system very much
yeah
yeah i heard about um is is there true that there's a if a lawyer takes a a case to court and it's what do they call it um frivolous is that is there still a frivolous law that they can
probably yeah i would imagine the judge could throw it out
yeah but do you think he would fine the lawyer
i would imagine that's left up to the judge i i would assume he could consider it a contempt of court and and uh but anything he wanted whatever his limits are on contempt of court
oh
yeah i never i didn't realize until recently that there was actually a fine they could pretty interesting though
certainly makes sense because some of this stuff is you know you you're just doing this to do this you know it's
yeah
just doesn't make sense
yeah
so that's pretty bad a friend of mine is a is a judge here in the well actually you know it McKinney because we're in Collin County
uh-huh
and he is uh just recently changed from hearing all the the DWI type stuff to uh doing what they call more of a family court where he gets to go listen to all the divorces so it wasn't much of a step up as it were
oh really
oh really
oh
um it's really tough he says in a lot of cases where he has to make the decision so i guess in a lot of those cases it's it's all up to him as oppose to a jury
oh gosh
and there's just no good choice as to where to put the kids sometimes or
yeah
and of course there couples get kind of spiteful at times and
oh that would be really tough
and you hear it all through the worst side of people throughout the whole time
yeah you really do
well let me think here
um
as far as the judge making the decision
yeah i mean because seems like
i don't know i mean there's so many different different types of cases that come in i mean it seems like just general people i mean
who are live in the community and do different things you know you have different opinions kind of just one judge who sits there and listens to cases all the time would would get it start thinking a certain way and go go nuts
uh-huh
yeah that's true
but then look at the group that tends to accept jury duty
you you either have the person who who is uh the type of individual who can work for a large corporation that can afford to pay them you know let them go
yeah
and and those are shall we say blue collar that that
your work the assembly line type or technician some engineering uh you may not have the the self-employed businessman willing to go because he though he may be
yeah
current on all you know several social issues and have opinions on things like that he just doesn't want to take his time to go to the jury duty so he probably doesn't vote either so he doesn't get called in some counties
yeah
yeah
so it i don't know whether it would be wiser to have an educated judge even though he may get uh out of touch after a while or whether it would be uh worth it to stick to the class of people that end up there
yeah
that is hard to say
though i have had a judge fact this very judge friend of mine say that he uh does not like to have people on the jury that are from uh the electronics industry
uh-huh
and i said well me being from the electronics industry i'll bite why why don't you like it and he said well
he said the majority of them uh tend to dive into their little world of of electronics and be very technically minded and be very absorbed with what their field is
and they usually don't um read outside their field they don't read social type uh papers they don't they're not up to date on various uh current affairs as it were and
oh i hadn't ever thought of that really
and i said well that that's quite possible i said i've discussed some topics with people even over this situation and and discovered some views that i hadn't thought of in a while i just wondered if i got out of my little realm
if i wouldn't run into people with some more diverse views
yeah
but uh my realm is pretty well technical and those who you know friends i have are usually we discuss technical items and we don't uh try to follow the world's problems
yeah
i guess it's too frustrating
yeah it does
so
gosh
well i think we've managed to kill a little time on the topic and we'll go ahead and
yeah
we'll go ahead and call you another day maybe
all right well groovy it's been cool talking to you see you around bye
okay bye
