I attended Department 3 at the Lake County Courthouse recently, and I was appalled at the protocol that I witnessed. Attorneys walking around like busy bees, in and out of the court room time after time, talking to their defendants within the court room instead of taking them into the hall to talk. It was very distracting, to say the least.
And then, why don”t the judges and attorneys use their microphones? You couldn”t hear what was being said at all. My relative, who was the defendant, when spoken to by the judge, couldn”t understand what the judge was saying due to the fact that he couldn”t hear him. In a public trial, isn”t everyone in the court room entitled to hear what is going on in the proceedings, including the audience, but more importantly, the defendants? Why in the world do they have microphones, if they don”t intend to use them?
Surely, someone who is being judged, is entitled to hear what is being said to him or her.
Darlene Thomas
Brookings, OR
