No, I don't , that is up to the courts and the laws the court has to follow.
I never meant to say that a fair trial should not be held. Just that the prosciuttos should have enough evidence that should be enough to convict should not take over one week to present. If it does, they should never bring the case to trial.
If he shows up for jury duty he does but he only gets to vote on the charges presented. Blue cities are ignoring "minor" crimes and won't act until they become major crimes. That generally happens in that atmosphere. Giuliani and Bloomberg proved it in New York. Prosecuting minor crimes cut the major crime rate. DiBlasio is well on his way toward proving it again from the other side. He is soft on minor crime and the major crime rate is soaring again.
It didn't work so well for the people who were being hung.
If making America great again means going back to the early 1800's you can count me out. I don't watch Westerns and fantasize about how good things were then.
Are you calling the prosecutor a ham by design or accident?
By the spell check putting in the wrong spelling.
However it may fit like some of the ones that are on TV.
Then you must watch the cop shows on TV now and fantisize about how many criminals are caught and jailed.
Should it really be necessary to spend a week to a month to just find a jury ? I spent all day in a court room just so a jury could be selected for a traffic offence where the cop gave a ticket to someone for a traffic violation. Not even a wreck.
While I agreee that if someone wanted a trial for something like even a speeding ticket the jury should be the first group up that did not know the person on trial or the cop.
Certainly Marsha and Chris of OJ fame.
That is why most traffic cases are pursued as a civil matter. It has been that way in most places for decades. It also softens the rules of evidence so the outcome is more certain for the municipality. They get to sidestep things like the 5th amendment since it is not a criminal charge. You don't really have that many rights in a civil case.
I don't know what or how, but about 50 some years ago when taking the driving class in school we had to go to a traffic court and observe for a day. There was only a judge, and the lawyer for both sides and the cop. No jury and the judge just made the decision. They were mostly drunk driving , stop light and sign cases.
I've been to traffic court twice when I lived in Philadelphia many years ago. The first time, had to be at least 50 of us. The judge comes in and is announced, "Honorable Judge Joe Smith presiding". Everyone stood. The judge then asked, "how do you plead?" Everyone said "not guilty". We were all dismissed.
Second time, I was waiting and my turn came up so my name was called out. The court stenographer said "with a name like that, he ought to be dismissed". "Dismissed" said the judge.
I've only been selected for a jury once and that took all morning. The trial lasted 15 minutes. The judge called the prosecutor into his chambers, ripped him a new one, came back out and apologized for wasting our time.
Like the Rittenhouse trial the prosecutor must of slept through that part of law school where they say it's a good to have some idea of what your star witness is going to say.
Drunk driving is usually a criminal charge with the possibility of jail time. It is the stop lights and speeding sort of thing that are civil. That is all about the money. When they started that in DC in the 60s my cop buddy said it caused a legal problem because the cops can't chase someone for a civil complaint. If the cops lit you up, you could just keep driving. They came up with the criminal charge of "evading and eluding" to give them PC to chase you if you don't stop. That is still what gets most of the "dindoos" in trouble. It is an interesting twist being civil tho. That is how the cops can ask you questions like "do you know how fast you were going?" without reading you your rights. This is a civil complaint, not a charge so the 5th amendment does not apply. Most of the sanctions are administrative too, not subject to 6th amendment due process (traffic school, license suspensions etc).
Since it is a civil beef, you can usually get all of it reversed with a decent lawyer if you are willing to spend the money.
That is why most DUI lawyers say "don't blow if there is any chance you will fail". Some say never do it. They can get that automatic (administrative) suspension reversed. You still have that 5th amendment right, since DUI is a criminal charge. Once you blow, in an evidentiary test (not usually on the side of the road) that can be used against you in court and much harder to beat.
In Maryland traffic court usually went
Did the cop show, if not dismissed. Did the cop screw up his testimony? Couldn't get the details right. Dismissed If you were found liable it was usually half the fine and one point. The trick was to keep postponing the date and hope the cop lost his notebook or just missed the date. Worst case, your points didn't get assessed until the trial and some others may have aged off by then. The clock on points starts on the citation date, not the trial date. I had trouble driving 55 so I knew the game well.
OTOH in Florida it was different. The judge walked in and said "OK you could have all just paid the collateral and not wasted my time. You understand I can fine you all $500. I am going to have a short recess. If you change your mind you can pay my bailiff".
I got in line with everyone else and paid my $50 but I did sit there a few minutes after he started back up. He threw the book at the first holdout and I left.
I can't stand cop shows. I saw part of a Cops episode many years ago and I was appalled at how badly the cops behaved, and that's with them knowing they'd be on TV. The show should have been called Cops Behaving Badly.
In recent years, I'm seeing an awful lot of videos of police encounters where the cop clearly screws up and has to backtrack, including two that I saw this morning. On the first, a guy gets pulled over for running a stop sign. He tells the cop, "I have a dash cam." The cop says, "Be careful, have a great day," and lets him go The guy's dash cam clearly showed that he had stopped to let a car go by, so it was actually an extended stop. Without the camera, they guy probably would have received a ticket.
The second one was a cop stopping a car on suspicion of a crime and he demands to search the vehicle. The cop goes around the rear of the vehicle, opens the rear passenger door and tosses a small plastic bag onto the rear seat containing who knows what. The driver calls him on it, the cop denies planting it and claims he found it on the seat. Then the driver says he has a camera (and we get to see the video that clearly shows the cop pull the plastic baggie from his vest and toss it onto the seat). At that point, the cop takes the baggie, closes the car door, and goes back to his car, yelling over his shoulder to 'have a good day'. WTF, right? Without a camera, that could have been a very different encounter.
Those are exceptions, of course, and not the rule, but there are so many of those exceptions.
Voir dire can easily take that long or longer. The more serious the case, the more certain both sides want to be that they have an impartial jury. Full impartiality is an illusion, but both sides do the best that they can and it can take a while.
That's the voir dire process.
I have been summoned for jury duty five times but only served once.
Process depends where you live, even can vary between counties.
Here they bring in a large group for a single trial and if not selected you go home. Some places they call you in and you might have to come in for a month until you are selected. The trial I served on took a week and it was an interesting experience and I learned a lot from it.
I appeared once in traffic court before a magistrate. Time was prearranged and I was only one there. I plead no contest to a fine and paid it. What was interesting here was that if I plead guilty and, had to go to civil court for the serious accident I was in, I would not have been able to contest the charge in Delaware. This was on advice of one of my lawyer sons. Fortunately I was not sued.
And you think that's possible in 7 days following arrest?
Just that
The more evidence, the longer it takes to present, to cross examine, etc. The really long trials, eg OJ, are the exception, not the general case. Look at the Rittenhouse case for example, that's a high profile case, where everything possible is going to be thrown out there by both sides, it;s going to take about two weeks to present.
Clearly that is an exception. I would think even in your state, 99%+ of traffic cases are heard by a judge, not a jury. And apparently it took a day to select the jury, not a week or month.
No defendant and their lawyer either? I'm sure they were there and that's exactly how traffic cases are handled here in NJ and I would expect most states. If NC is holding jury trials for traffic cases, it's a state problem.
Another example of why I'm glad I don't live in Florida. You're more like Ralph's version of justice.
Years back, I was jury foreman in a 6-juror traffic trial.
The knucklehead pro se defendant's defense was that the state had no right to require him to have a driver's license, put license plates on his car, get an emissions inspection, have liability insurance (all of which he had none) or "persecute him" for driving 68 MPH through his own subdivision with a few beers under his belt while wearing around-the-ear sound-sealing headphones blasting music in his ears and blowing well north of .08 on the breathalyzer.
Five of us were immediately ready to string him up but one do-gooder woman felt "oh so sorry for him" and didn't want to "judge a fellow Christian".
Using a little psychology, I sat us around a table, started with the person on her left side and went around the table counter-clockwise voting until I got to her and said well, m'am, all 5 of us have strongly and definitely voted guilty. Can you maybe just go along with that for now? She finally acquiesced.
Problem was, when I called the bailiff in and said we had a verdict, he said y'all ain't been in here but 10-15 minutes; wouldn't look right. How's about some nice hot coffee and donuts, then y'all can come out :-)
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