My respect for lawyers and judges went way up when my daughter was in the middle school ‘Mock Trial’ program. The middle schoolers put on a make-believe trial as prosecutors and defense lawyers. The real judges and lawyers donated their time to oversee the program.
I have served three tours of jury duty on our Circuit Court which see’s the worst of the worst. In those tours I have served on probably a good dozen juries, everything from civil trials, to first degree assault, drugs, to fist degree murder.
I sat through two judges, one of which was a convicted drunk driver in a neighboring state. Despite this he ran a pretty tight ship in the court room. He took care of his jurors, didn’t let the lawyers run the show and if he screwed up he admitted it(me and another juror noted a discrepancy on his instructions, sent a note to him and he declared a mistrial on his mistake).
The other judge I like but he lets the lawyers run the show and ignores his jurors. During one murder trial we took two weeks to seat the jury with us showing up at 9:00am and getting home at 7:00pm. The lawyers would approach the bench, we would be sent out for a fifteen minute break which were usually two hrs, return, ask a question, a lawyer would ask to approach and out we would go again for fifteen minutes, actually another two hours. The entire jury pool was livid at the judge, the prosecutors and especially the defense attorneys, seething hate and contempt would be an apt description at the way they felt towards the court because of the way we were treated by all parties involved.
We had one trial that started late because of the lawyers, he wouldn’t stop for lunch and by 1:30 one of the jurors a diabetic summoned the bailiff and said I have to eat something soon I’m a diabetic. He handed her candy and we still sat another thirty minutes.
Of all those cases there were two attorneys worth anything. One was the Commonwealth’s attorney and another was from out of town. The rest were uninterested, took cases they knew they would lose but their clients paid. One put his client on trial for murder on the stand, it was a massacre and he lied himself along with the evidence into a thirty yr sentence.
Good judges and lawyers are few and far between...